kagablog

Anton Krueger’s new play, Chatter, recently played at the Grahamstown Festival and at the 969 Festival in Jo’burg. The play was the winner of the Gauteng Pansa Festival of Staged Readings last year and is directed by Greg Homann. It features Wayne van Rooyen, Asher Stoltz, Shannon Esra, Alex Halligey, Stacey Sacks and Jemma Kahn.

Critics describe Chatter as “a delightful comedy of errors in which Alan Ayckbourn-style farce meets chat room culture”. The Herald describes the plot as a tale of two brothers: “… one has arrived back in South Africa seeking the fiancée he has ‘met’ online, while the other is eagerly setting up his first major business deal. Various cell phone calls, online chats and sms communications lead to hilarious misunderstandings, all of which culminate in a chaotic gathering at a restaurant called Casablanca. As part of the stage and décor set-up, the characters’ chats are projected on a screen in the background.”

“A farce about Facebook” - must be a first! You (and Greg) being keen Facebook users, what are you farcing about?

I think that headline came more out of a creative urge to be alliterative on the part of the person who wrote that particular review, rather than an academic need to fully describe the play. Chatter isn’t specifically about Facebook, though I suppose one of its themes is modern technological communication and how a multiplicity of interfaces doesn’t necessarily facilitate comprehension. But in response to your second question: as it happens, yes, I do enjoy the “little village” of Facebook. I’m not sure how committed Greg is to the Face, but he’s also out there.

Is Facebook worth all the hype? It’s time-consuming, and compared with other countries, local internet is expensive and connections slow.

I guess it’s a good way to reconnect with people you lost touch with. The endless applications, I agree, are mostly a colossal waste of time.

Your play In the Blue Beaker is also a farce. What are the challenges of writing for this (difficult) genre?

Hmm … I don’t think Blue Beaker is actually a farce … more a black/absurd comedy. It’s a very technical genre, I suppose, with more consideration going into structure and rhythm than, for example, characterisation. So in that sense it’s almost easier in that the writing can be approached almost mechanically, like trying to solve a problem, or playing a particular game. But having said that, it did go through a very long process of development, so it wasn’t “easy” in the sense that it happened quickly. Still, I think that when you’re writing (especially comedy) you shouldn’t lose your sense of play, and when you’re playing you tend not to notice whether something is “easy” or “difficult”.

You recently completed a doctorate on New South Africa Theatre and graduate in a few weeks. What insights did your research bring?

If by “insights” you mean practical knowledge about the context of drama in South Africa, then it was very helpful, because I didn’t originally study drama, so there was a lot I needed to find out about what’s going on and who’s who and how they’re doing things etc. But if by “insights” you mean knowledge about the ultimate nature of reality, then not at all.

Your play Tsafendas was nominated for two FNB Vita Awards in 2002 (Best Script / Best Actor) and in the same year it won three SANCTA awards. Your plays have also been widely performed – in countries ranging from South Africa, Venezuela and Chile to Australia, America, England, Wales and Monaco. Are your plays in demand, and will you ever become a full-time playwright?

I’m not sure I’ll ever become a full-time anything. I like playing and experimenting and trying different things. But really, I’m essentially an amateur. I have a personal dislike for the word professional, which to me sounds like somebody taking themselves too seriously, or someone who’s defined their identity in terms of a job or a corporation or something artificial. I don’t know – other people have different connotations to the word, sure, but for me it has a funny flavour, like something mechanical, something less than human. I wrote up some of these ideas in Manifesto of Amateurism which – should you be so inclined – you can peruse at the link provided.1

Do you have a favourite saying, anything in print that changed the way you look at the world, at human nature?

Too many. All the time. Every day I read something which affects me.

All this networking – has it contributed to anything else apart from the farce? Why do you network?

The network is us and we are the network … All the world’s a circuit and we are merely nodal moments in the framework. As Lyotard2 says somewhere, the choice we have is to pass information on or to block the circuitry, but what “we” think of ourselves as “us” is a confluence, a sort of intersection of network patterns. So, I suppose what it’s contributed to is “us”, or our sense of self, which can be farcical or tragic depending on your perspective of history etcetera (though actually, it doesn’t exist in any permanent, or even very long-lasting form).

Okay, well you were wanting a quote – here’s a nice saying from Chögyam Trungpa, who was Allan Ginsberg’s guru and the guy who founded the monastery (Samye Ling) which is the headquarters of the group I’m now affiliated to. He said, “Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people because you no longer regard people as a drain on your energy.” So that’s all about networking, I suppose.

Greg teaches directing and acting at Wits with his particular field of interest contemporary South African theatre. What was his approach with Chatter?

I think of Greg principally as an actor, and he’s a very good one. He also studied at RADA and whatnot, so I think his approach was, on the one hand, influenced by a quite technical, well-versed-in-the-structure-of-farce type approach, but also informed by the point of view of the actor.

In an interview with Dawie Roodt, Deon Opperman said his dialogue never sounds the way it does in his head; he therefore writes it to be accessible to different actors. What is your approach to writing dialogue?

I think specific actors have a lot to do with the way dialogue takes shape. I don’t have a problem adapting dialogue to a particular actor.

South Africa boasts an array of exceptional talent in the fields of playwriting, acting and directing – the likes of Marthinus Basson, Mike van Graan, Nicky Rebelo, Jaco Bouwer, Saartjie Botha, Lara Foot-Newton, Clare Stopforth, to name but a few and in no particular order – but we still lack the broader fields to workshop (young) new talent. In the UK there are, as you know, opportunities to have manuscripts workshopped. There are manuscript readings for minimal fees, opportunity to write for radio (eg BBC), theatre-goers participate in discussions post-shows, etc.

Well, there are many efforts towards that, like the Market Theatre Lab as well as, generally, their nurturing and development of texts which they produce. There’s the PANSA thing and the Sanlam thing. It’s really just a question of the size of the industry and the money available. In England the theatre industry is 1 000 times bigger, so of course there’s more going on.

You’re a lecturer, playwright, poet, film-maker, musician, artist … You’ve got an award-winning play out, your album with Die Plesier Parade last year was favourably reviewed by Toast Coetzer in Ons Klijntji and by Woodstock Slim.3 You had an exhibition of photos recently opened by Gordon Froud in Pretoria, you recently made another short film … The list goes on. How do you find time in your busy schedule for your kagablog?

Just to be clear: it isn’t my kagablog, but is run by one Aryan Kaganof. I’m a contributor on his blog and send him stuff once in a while. How he manages to keep the thing pumping with so much material every day is something you’d need to ask him. The guy’s a real live wire.

“Anton Krueger” (via Google) is found on a vast number of sites. What is the future of e-magazines, e-publicity? Can the internet ever compensate for the printed versions?

To use a word like compensate implies that there will be some sort of loss when printed text goes the way of all flesh. I don’t know what a paperless future will be like. We might be nostalgic for it, sure, like we are for Kings and Castles, but I guess its good news for the peasants and the trees.

You are not the German Anton Krueger who lived from 1795 to 1857 reincarnated?

I’m three out of those four.

You are listed with Wikipedia (although it needs updating). Does this meaning anything to you?

Am I? Well, it means I’ll have to look myself up to find out what I’m like. (I always wanted to find myself.)

Do you mind if people are familiar with you? Your thoughts on familiarity?

I prefer it. The social game of formality has, I guess, as its aim the cultivation of “courtesy” and gentleness, but instead an overemphasis on etiquette and form often ends up choking the lifeblood of a group of people hoping to form some sort of connection with one another.

It’s been a year of many changes for you. You relocated to Grahamstown, where you are now teaching in the Drama Department at Rhodes, and sadly, you have resigned as LitNet’s OpStage editor. How do you document yourself in 2008/2009?

There are many plans in many pipelines, lots of adventures still to pursue. But as a very general future plan I’m becoming more and more committed to the study and practise of Buddhism and plan on trying longer and longer retreats and travelling more to get teachings and so on because in answer to your previous question, that’s where it’s at for me.

Why Buddhism? What are you seeking? Buddhists believe the world has many religions because of the world’s many different personalities and each should choose one that fits him or her best. But if you try to be a little of this or that, you’re not either? What are your beliefs, or are you still seeking (a truth)?

I converted to Buddhism officially last year, to a very specific lineage of the Vajrayana path. It’s not a case of “a little of this or that” for me, but rather a case of a whole lot of Buddhism. Last year I went on three ten-day retreats. I also went to India in December for the ten-day Monlam in Bodhgaya with the Karmarpa, who leads our lineage. So I’m not “seeking” anything at the moment, but rather trying to practise it. I’ve found something and now it’s a question of action, of applying the teachings, of trying to train the unruly monkey mind. As to the question of seeking a truth, for me the teachings of Buddhism are true in a very straightforward, rational, commonsensical and experiential fashion. I guess the word also has connections as a verb, in the sense of being “true to”, so it’s also perfectly reasonable for me to imagine that other people are “true to” other beliefs and value systems.

Is secularism not a necessary ideal for any multicultural society such as South Africa?

Not necessarily. It can so easily decline into greed and sheer capitalism and attempts at hardcore objective materialism etc. Secularism can be beneficial and helpful sometimes, and sometimes not, just like any religion. Whether you’re religious or not is not the most important thing. But it’s an odd thing: having converted now I find I have a renewed respect for other religions about which, in the past, I might have been dismissive.

1. Manifesto of Amateurism

2. Jean-François Lyotard (10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) is the author of La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir. He was a French philosopher and literary theorist and well-known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and the analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition. (Wikipedia.com)

3. Woodstock Slim

this interview originally appeared on litnet