kagablog

in contempo #3, aug 2006

This year’s National Arts Festival was thankfully not lacking in controversy. Catherine Henegan’s multimedia production,The Shooting Gallery, divided audiences like no other – some walked out, some gave standing ovations, others sat in stunned silence long after the play had ended. Woven loosely around the story of the war journalists Kevin Carter and Ken Osterbroek, the play gouged at the unhappy divide between the grim reality of world events, and the media’s profane hunger for these events as sensation-generators – ‘if it bleeds, it leads’.

The lead was acted by radical literary figure Aryan Kaganof, who spent much of his time suspended naked and upside-down before a huge screen, while images of the globe’s violent conflicts were projected into him. He went on to smear himself with blood and crawl through the audience, leaping up to answer a call on his cellphone, from his mother. This was strong theatre, though too disjointed to fully realise its potential. But The Shooting Gallery was a worthy addition to the festival, and shame on the South African newspaper that slated it in their review, saying ‘We South Africans just want to be entertained’.

david bannister
this review originally appeared in scene 4 magazine

photo suzy bernstein

for an extremely concise but detailed overview of the shooting gallery, reviews, responses etc, please click here

A naked man hangs suspended from the ceiling of a stage, upside down. A backdrop of shifting images is projected behind him. These images are sourced live from the Internet and include horrifying footage of the current war in the Middle East. The manipulator of these images is a newspaper copy editor (present on stage in front of her computer), cutting and pasting for what could be an edition of a newspaper you are currently reading.

Probably the most ‘current’ art available on our stages, Catherine Henegan and Aryan Kaganof’s The Shooting Gallery is a searing work about many issues. Ostensibly about the “Bang Bang Club”, that band of war photographers, specifically Kevin Carter, the work is about a great deal else as well. It delves deeply into the issues of reporting, of re-presenting reality, journalism and art. Of cutting and pasting horror and pain. Of accessing and presenting images. Of communicating (or not) too much reality or too little. Of our inability or lack of will to act in the face of injustice. Ultimately of responsibility and compassion. It is an astounding work in its courage and ability to get to the core of some of the most salient issues we face today.

Because it is a great time to make art. It’s a crude, even brutal assertion, but it is. It may be that more difficult to get the means to produce it but there is no lack of subject. Very few of us have been able to find words to express the tragedy that is happening in the Middle East at this moment. It is more like an inarticulate scream of rage. That something so brutal, so obviously unjust can be taking place at this time can only produce a silent scream. When the most powerful of nations dither and fiddle while innocent lives are lost, how is it possible to contain and articulate a response?

And closer to home, what of the excessively, increasing violent crime? It would seem that the only way we can touch each other is if we hurt each other. How does one formulate a response? It is bewildering and difficult to digest.

And yet it would seem that our response as a nation is ultimately to numb ourselves. Signs of escapism in our society are so patently present at this time. Just recently even President Mbeki has fore grounded as a burning national malady the rampant materialism, a growing consumerism most of it on the very available credit facility offered by financial institutions. And the economists are despairing. There is too much credit they say. Yes those increasingly long queues at Woolworth’s and Edgars are built on candy floss money. Is this a manifestation of our need to escape the realities of pressing issues into mind numbing, rampant spending?

But there is a moment in a theatrical event such as The Shooting Gallery when art and reality meet. And for those moments at least confrontation of that reality helps to ease the burden of denial. It clears the head. It makes it possible to make some sense and move on. At the very least it inspires recognition of brutality and how we cope with it.

Some such moments are available in Mlu Zondi’s work, Silhouette, to be staged at the Jomba! Dance Festival at the Sneddon this month. Look out for it. And this year’s Festival with works from various parts of Africa as well as some of our finest new voices promise to turn those bewildering, intangible questions into something we can hear and touch and feel.

So the next time you have a mind numbing urge to go increase your credit, check out some art. Some real art. Art that won’t numb you. It may just place the world more in perspective. And hopefully get to the root of our need to escape and give form to that inarticulate scream.

Natal Mercury Column 13: by Jay Pather

(photo natalie payne)

i did catch the last performance of the shooting gallery on sunday afternoon. once again, i really enjoyed it. and on the second time, james webb’s sound design was much more apparent to me. there was a wonderfully “brechtian” moment at the end of the performance. just after catherine henegan, aryan kaganof, and the black poet (mac manaka) had sped off-stage and out of the theatre in the merc, a middle aged white couple appeared in the brightly lit doorway. they peered into the darkness of the auditorium, conferred ernestly between themselves, and then walked in and took their seats in the front row. it seems they were lost and trying to find some other performance, but there was that moment when they could have been the coda to the shooting gallery.

beste
christo doherty

(photo natalie payne)

I went to go see this piece on its closing day. There were some amazingly beautiful moments, such as when aryan swung naked from the ceiling, blowing out candles in remembrance, or his hilarious first phone call about war being great for his career. A comment on mass media as producing reality, some important messages in the piece (tho occasionally the piece itself felt a little too mediated). Definitely a historical landmark for networked performance in South Africa, if not the world.
nathaniel stern

this review first appeared on nathaniel’s blog

As ’n mens die teater binnestap, is ’n vrou, die bladuitlegkunstenaar of -redakteur, besig om oorlogfoto’s op die Reuters-webblad te koop. Kliek, kyk, koop?.?.?.? Een-een gooi sy die een bloederige foto van die oorlog in die Midde-Ooste na die ander in haar virtuele inkopiemandjie.

Só begin The shooting gallery, ’n ervaring wat ’n mens nie juis as toneelstuk of drama sou beskryf nie. Eintlik is daar nie begin of einde nie, want dié blik op die rol van die fotojoernalis, die media en die verbruikers van die media is ver van ’n storie. Met sy sterk postmodernistiese streep word elkeen van die gehoor se verwagtings deeglik ondermyn.

Die mantra van die koerantwese – “If it bleeds, it leads” – en die subtitel – “?’n digitale seremonie vir ’n oorlogfotograaf” – waarsku reeds dat Shooting gallery meer ritueel gaan wees as dokumentêre vertelling. Die reuse-skerm waarop die uitlegkunstenaar se koerantblaaie geprojekteer word tesame met foto- en video-materiaal word later die fokuspunt. Op einste skerm sien ’n mens vroeg in dié ervaring ’n tipiese SABC Simunye-advertensie wat ’n kerngesonde reënboognasie uitbeeld. Dié word mettertyd deur die bloed, derms, vrees en bomme ondermyn.

Kaganof is ’n lyk onder ’n kombers wat opgehys word teen die oorlogsbeelde as agterdoek. In ’n Tom Waits-agtige stem vertel hy hoe hy sy eie begrafnis bygewoon het. Later sien ’n mens ’n koerantberig oor ’n fotograaf wat dood is en dat selfmoord nie uitgesluit word nie. Uiteindelik bestaan daar nie verlede, hede en toekoms nie. Beelde versmelt tot flitsende oordaad, terwyl James Webb se klankbaan ’n onheilspellende dreunsang word vir ’n geslag wat vet gevoer is op MTV en CNN.

Die uitlegkunstenaar teug aan ’n glas wyn, eet haar toebroodjie en wend grimering aan, terwyl sy wag vir foto’s van die oorlogveld. Die fotograaf bel sy ma om te sê dié oorlog is “wonderlik vir my loopbaan” en dat hy dalk die voorblad van Time gaan haal. Later is hy bloedbesmeerd en voer die bladuitlegkunstenaar vir hom ’n skyfie appel en ’n bietjie wyn voordat sy sy mond en oë toeplak. Hy strompel die gehoor binne, terwyl hy “democracy” probeer skree.

(photo natalie payne)

En die gehoor? Almal staar hipnoties na die skerm vir nóg bloederige tonele wat met advertensies vir ’n toiletskoonmaakmiddel afgewissel word. ’n Resensie van dié ervaring word later deel van die bladuitleg met ’n foto van die gehoor daarnaas. Die kyker word deel van môre se nuus. Henegan stuur ’n e-pos aan die Markteater se publisiteitsbeampte om navraag te doen oor $400 wat nodig is vir die aankoop van ’n foto. En bedank die beampte vir die drankies vir die media ná die opening. “Ons hoop hulle geniet dit.” Ironies? Absurd? Of intellek-tuele masturbasie?

Selfs al sou ’n mens dit intellektuele masturbasie noem, sluit jy jouself (as kyker en gehoorlid) in. Al het jy nie “deelgeneem” nie, het jy gekyk en verbruik. Is Shooting gallery nie maar net ’n spieël nie? En wat sien j?? Daar is nie ’n einde nie en Henegan en Kaganof verskyn nie vir applous nie. Is applous enigsins nodig? Klap jy vir jouself hande as jy soggens in die spieël kyk? Of deins jy eerder terug uit vrees vir wat jy sien?

The shooting gallery is ’n verbysterende, grensverskuiwende teaterervaring. Dit bied ’n kreatiewe omgang met tradisionele teaterkonvensies sonder vooraf verpakte antwoorde of storievertelling. Dit is juis dié klas eksperimentele teater wat só broodnodig is in die Suid-Afrikaanse teaterbedryf. ’n Mens is dankbaar dat die Nasionale Kunstefees dié soort werk ondersteun en dat Henegan en Kaganof die waagmoed aan die dag lê om gehore wakker te skud met ’n multi-media-produksie wat ook die geykte en voorspelbare ondermyn.

Mag dit ook ander verhoogpraktisyns inspireer om minder veilig te speel en veral by die Afrikaanse feeste kanse te waag. Mag dit die hele mediabedryf na die teater lok om hand in eie boesem te steek. The shooting gallery is nie vir sissies nie, hoewel die Suid-Afrikaanse jeug dit nie durf misloop nie. Wees verseker: Hier is genoeg materiaal om nagte later nog by ’n mens te spook. Wees gewaarsku!

kobus burger
this review originally appeared in beeld of 12 july 2006

August 1st, 2006 by christo doherty

(photo christo doherty)

Sitting behind her Powerbook, with her back to the audience, Director Catherine Henegan’s Upgrade! presentation at this week’s Digital Soiree was an extension of the role that she plays in The Shooting Gallery, her controversial “digital ceremony” which is currently running at The Market Theatre in Johannesburg. The Shooting Gallery was Catherine’s debut as a theatre director in the Nederlands, where she studied at DASARTS (The Amsterdam School for Advanced Research in Theatre Studies). During her performance in The Shooting Gallery, she communicates through her keyboard, dipping into archives of current news photographs, assembling in realtime an electronic meditation on the media world beyond the theatre. Projected onto a large screen in the theatre space, the mosaic of images, text, and video is also an interaction with the single performer, Aryan Kaganof, who improvises a primitivist counterpoint to the video stream on the screen above his head.

The form she has designed for The Shooting Gallery is an innovative attempt to incorporate physical energy with modern media technology. Kaganof, himself a digital filmmaker and a cult-figure on the Joburg underground scene, spends a significant part of the performance suspended upside down and naked, his body a cruciform screen onto which Catherine projects a spluttering collage of cut-up video and photographs. Lowered to the ground, Kaganof enacts a series of ritualistic sequences while Catherine assembles an electronic newspaper that progressively takes shape on the screen.

In her texted presentation she introduced the two works which were stepping stones to the creation of The Shooting Gallery. Her own short film, The Island (2004), a verite documentary about the life of a female beggar and her child who live on a traffic island in a busy Johannesburg traffic intersection; and and SMS, a mash-up of network news footage and South African struggle images. For her own video technique makes use of the Trivid software, designed by TeZ and Aart Muis of Sub Multimedia. The software generates random sequences from the actuality footage which she loads into it. This then becomes the raw material for her own edited sequences used in the context of the performance. Originally inspired by Joao Silva and Greg Marinovich’s book The Bang Bang Club about the group of young photographers who operated in the violence and turmoil of the South African black townships during the last years of Apartheid, the play goes beyond the immediate circumstances of that history to become a meditation on the construction of reality through contemporary global media.

this article originally published on http://atjoburg.net/

Hi Aryan

I really enjoyed the show last night, thank you very much.

Moments of the sublime. Wish there was a lot more of such daring work.

Shot
Tim Greene

(photo suzy bernstein)

in a way, your show has made me more conscious of this perpetual
mediation…

on the news just now, the talking head says “and still dominating headlines
across the world – the tsunami and etc etc”…the story is about the
size of the story…not a fuck about any people or experiences or tragedies
or truth or whatever, but purely in terms of narratology…the impactability
and the “level of interest” which might be shown in it…

and then straight afterwards the presenter (in a more kindly tone)
has us know that “nelson mandela spent his birthday away from the
lime-light of the media eye”…as the camera helpfully pans up to
show the man being “away from the media eye w/ his family”…

jesus, it’s lunacy…it’s funny, it’s frightening…

REVIEW:THEATRE /VIBE – The Citizen – 21 July 2006

PLAY: The Shooting Gallery
Cast: Aryan Kaganof and Catherine Henegan
Director: Catherine Henegan

By Christina Kennedy

(photo nathalie payne)

Don’t go into The Shooting Gallery expecting straightforward theatre. It will twist, warp and mangle any preconceived notions you had of the traditional play. Go and see it with an open mind, ready to be challenged to the “nth” degree. This production is not really a play. It could possibly be better described as post-modern reality theatre. But the best description, really, is simply that it’s a multi-media mind f**k.

Aryan Kaganof has become renowned as the efant terrible of the South African literary and filmmaking scene. He has shifted – nay, demolished – boundaries with his work, including his film SMS Sugar Man, supposedly the first 35mm film shot entirely on a cell phone. Amsterdam-based Catherine Henegan has also worked extensively in video, performance and installation, and has collaborated with Kaganof before.
With their respective pedigrees, it comes as no surprise that The Shooting Gallery is uncoventional theatre.

(photo nathalie payne)

It revolves around the life of a war photographer, loosely modelled on the members of South Africa’s famous (or notorious) Bang Bang Club, who adhered to the notion “if it bleeds, it leads” when documenting township violence in the early 1990′s. As the audience enters the theatre, they are assailed by images, projected onto a large screen, of the war in the Middle East. This. it turns out, is a Reuters wire feed.

Henegan sits on stage behind a laptop – a sub editor who proceeds to copy-paste and lay-out pages of a newspaper on screen. She casually eats a sandwich and SMSes on a cell phone while the horrors of the world play out before her, as if she is disconnected from that reality. Meanwhile, Kaganof, who is a body under a blanket when we enter, gradually rewinds his life as he is hoisted aloft and suspended naked against the screen, across which flicker images of brutality.

The oblique tale unfolds of a conflict photographer who admits that war is good for his career – but at what personal cost? Torment and madness? We are reminded of Kevin Carter, whose Pulitzer Prize winning photo of a vulture stalking a starving child helped to propel him to commit suicide.
The play is light on literal spoonfeeding and heavy on symbolism, which is great as it gives the old grey matter a bit of a workout. Afterwards you can ponder whether the crucifix motif is deliberate and if so, what it means. It’s bold, risqué’ and unusual way of making an anti-war statement, as well as probing journalistic ethics and the way media manipulates the public agenda.

(photo nathalie payne)

For those who like their theatre combined with left-of-centre art, music and poetry, The Shooting Gallery is stimulating theatre. It’s profoundly odd, but innovative and thought provoking. Be warned: this avant-garde fare will not be easy for those who like their entertainment served up in a fast-food polystyrene box.

Review
Tom Jasiukowicz

July 14, 2006…8AM…Israeli planes bomb Lebanon

July 14, 2006…8PM…The Shooting Gallery opens in Johannesburg

Johannesburg, South Africa, lies thousands of miles away from the war-zone of the Middle East. Yet…I am sitting in a theatre in this city confronted by the reality of this morning’s Israeli bombing attack on Beirut. I am in the front row of this darkened theatre – the Laager at The Market Theatre – feeling as if I have been transplanted to the front-line of the Middle East conflict.

This is contemporary, current, off-the-cuff real live theatre.

A huge screen forms part of the stage props on which the days’ headlines and vivid pictures from Reuters, The Star and other media keep rolling accompanied by sound bytes of gunshots, the anguished wails of people and eerie effects buzz around this theatre as if it were a bunker right-slap-bang-bang in the middle of any war-zone in the world.

The drama is The Shooting Gallery – a play being staged at The Market Theatre in Newtown, Johannesburg.

For 30 years, The Market Theatre has presented revolutionary drama to theatre-goers and none could be more revolutionary than The Shooting Gallery. Devised and directed by Catherine Henegan, who co-performs it with Aryan Kaganof, (the only actors in the drama). Kaganof’s character personifies what it means to be a photo-journalist/war-correspondent.

Catherine Henegan spends most of the play sitting behind her desk, in her role of a News Editor, behind an array of PC-equipment, punching away at the keypad and mouse – clicking the images that come up on the screen which confront the audience as if the screen itself were an actor involved in the play – perhaps involved in the way a camera is involved in a war – objective, detached, unquestioning and yet totally realistic.

What you see is what you get!

And it seemed to me that the screen overshadows the two people on stage. Because the vivid scenes of soldiers, rioters, guns, faces twisted in anguish and war-zones past and present serve as the focal point of the action of the drama.

The actors seemed to be almost secondary to the plot – what taking photos of a war is all about and what it does to the mind of a photo-journalist.

Aryan Kaganof spends most of the play paying homage to the great TV screen in his attempt to convey the demons and tortures that plague the mind of a war photographer. The conclusion I got from his portrayal is that taking shots of war scenes is not all fun and games. It is not sitting in front of the TV sipping coffee watching a war-movie. In a war-movie, the actors do not actually get shot, nor do the cameramen get shot or experience the stark reality of witnessing real blood being spilt.

In any war, violent attack, or even a crime scene standoff between the cops and the robbers…people die, bystanders get wounded in the cross-fire and even photographers get in the way of bullets.

In 1994, war-photographer Ken Oosterbroek died when a stray bullet hit him during the violence in Thokoza. Fellow photographers Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva wrote the book The Bang Bang Club (published by Random House in 2001) in which Marinovich describes various incidents in which he himself got wounded while taking pics of the violence which marked South Africa in the years leading up to the first democratic elections in 1994. Film footage of these scenes flash by on the big screen.

The Shooting Gallery was inspired by this book and I get the impression that Kaganof has based his portrayal on the nightmares and mental images of pain and anguish these photographers experienced in their documentation of the images of war on celluloid. In particular on the experiences of Kevin Carter, a member of this Bang Bang Club who committed suicide in 1994.

In the book, Greg Marinovich wonders: “why did we continue to do work that brought us so much guilt and pain?”

Can a photo-journalist whose days consist of documenting the deaths of countless victims and the anguish of bystanders and loved ones remain uninvolved, unemotional? Uncaring? Is he just doing a job to do to earn a living? What motivates photographers to work in the frontlines of battle-grounds? Is it the adrenalin rush they experience on hearing gunfire and the explosions of bombs? Is it a sense of telling-it-like-it-is because someone has to do it?

Can a war take place if no-one reports on it? Does war feed on the ensuing publicity in the media – in the press, on the TV screen – so that those watching it at home can be entertained by the spectacle of war?

Eventually, the self-realization hits home as Kaganof proclaims…that he… “collects frames”…that is all he does because…”the war feeds me”. Then he wakes up at his own funeral. Did Kevin Carter come to this conclusion? Was the reality too much for him to take?
The Shooting Gallery is real live off-the cuff theatre – the play is adapted to the circumstances of the world of any given day – and it will leave you asking a lot of questions…questions such as…why do we find the coverage of war so fascinating? Are war-correspondents simply feeding our insatiable hunger for our own entertainment?

this review originally appeared here
the shooting gallery runs at the market theatre until 6 august

(article first published : 2006-07-8)

There’s no denying that The Shooting Gallery which appears on the main programme of the National Arts Festival has marvellous imagery and the ideas and philosophy behind the production are sound. What results, however, is an over-long piece where statements are made and over-made until the audience is in danger of feeling patronised.

It’s a clever interaction of physical theatre alongside computer and video technology but if a good 20 minutes were cut, I think it would become the stunning piece it has the potential to be.

Presented by The Market Theatre, The Shooting Gallery is an A Glasshouse/Huis A D Werf Production. It is conceived and directed by Catherine Henegan who also produced the narrator’s text and appears on stage working behind a computer.

Aryan Kaganof appears as The Actor and The Photographer, at one time hanging naked from the roof for a good 20 minutes before he is deposited into a circle lit by candles.

The Photographer’s text is by Kees Roorda and the project initiator is Yvonne Franquinet. Lighting is designed by Wesley France.

The production aims to deal with the moral dilemmas and challenges of photographers in a conflict zone – take the photograph that will shock the world and thereby bring stronger focus on the situation or go for a “softer” and less stomach-churning image? Is it right to accept personal gain at the suffering of others? Can one cope with the relentless exposure to horrific situations?

The above issues are strong on paper – in this production they didn’t transfer successfully to the stage. – Caroline Smart

this article first published on the artsmart website, reproduced with kind permission of caroline smart

well, i suppose one of the main difficulties is 
that it isn’t really theatre and there’s no
“acting” involved…so people don’t know 
what to do with it…
 
there are some incredible, unforgettable moments,
but there are also arb moments that seem trivial…
if i’d seen it before the run i would have
given you an analytical breakdown of my 
reactions & maybe some suggestions, but
now that it’s running, best to let it run…
 
but the one thing you might consider is the
lull after yr on the ground and massaging
yr feet..there’s a real hiatus there – nothing
happens…wouldn’t it be possible to stick
in a few minutes of visuals and/or sound 
while yr putting on yr pants?…because 
after this intense introduction (and the beginning
is the strongest part) it suddenly feels flat
there…
 
i think it might also seem obscure to many 
people…you guys are so smart that you’re
making these connections which i think most
people don’t get…they want things spelled out
more…
 
for me it’s essentially a piece of performance art,
and part of a tradition which is hardly ever seen
out here…so i think it’s great that yr doing something
which is very different to all expectations, and
also cool that it’s so unashamedly anti-american,
i don’t think i’ve ever seen anything as oppositional…

but/and/whatever - as yr fond of saying “it is what it is”…
you made something, a lot of people won’t like
it, but i also think that there are a few people
who will be very inspired by it, who will walk out
and think – “fuck, i didn’t know one could do 
something like that, i didn’t know one could break
the rules of the form to that extent”…so, i definitely
think it’ll have made a huge and very important
impact on some small unkown sample you’ll
never get to meet…
 
cheers fighter
 
a.

by moira de swardt
published by mambaonline

“The Shooting Gallery” pays homage to the work of war photographers. It
is not light entertainment by any means.

This is a high tech production. One enters, avoiding the dead body
clutching a handful of coins, at the entrance, to watch the screen
with the ever changing current news from the internet. The angst
has started. A news editor sits at her desk and lays out the pages.

There is a circle of tealights in front of the screen. Images of
violence fill the screen.

The naked “dead” body is slowly hoisted to form a silhouette in
front of the screen, images now reflecting on the body as well. A
high-pitched whine assaults the ears, even as the images assault one
‘s mind. I wonder if the nudity adds anything to the play and
decide it doesn’t. Nudity doesn’t offend me personally, so I don’t
dwell on the issue.

Once the body comes to life, many, many minutes later (the show is
short on action other than violent images) the frenetic pace of the
images gets worse, not better. The body and the character are
obviously two different beings. The character is Jewish. The naked
body isn’t. Even if he does phone home to wish his mother a good
shabbes.

There is some blood, a beaten bucket, a lot of noise and very little
drama. Some graffiti is created at length. It is tedious and not
worth the wait.

The imagery is interesting, shocking, horrible, angst-ridden and
excessive. The drama is gimmicky, clever and uses real-time images
of the audience and e-mail style information, but ultimately it
fails to make a statement stronger than the images.

I was left with a vague sense of distaste rather than disquiet or
discomfort as I left the theatre. The message did not contain
anything which I had been prompted by the show to ponder in depth.

“The Shooting Gallery” with Catherine Henegan and Aryan Kaganof.
Director: Catherine Henegan.

Cut to the bone. That’s what happens to people in wars, whether by bullets, shrapnel or bits of flying debris: this is the end result.
There are plenty of such gory images in Aryan Kaganof’s and Catherine Henegan’s play the Shooting Gallery, a commentary on the role of the media in the depiction of war.
the Shooting Gallery cuts to the bone too. The opening scene has Kaganof suspended upside down and nude, in front of a screen of shifting killing field images, gleaned from war correspondents like Joa da Silva.
The visceral imagary continues as, once lowered to the floor, he smears himself liberally with fake blood, coffee, Sunlight soap and Zambuck. Kaganof loves to shock, but without shock treatment, we are not jerked out of our reverie, and we will not question what we take for granted.
If you agree with a press review of the play, also projected onto the screen, that “we deserve light entertainment and fun because we have democracy” then you are missing the point Henegan and Kaganof are making.
They question if democracy – labeled as “demonocracy” in Kaganof’s graffiti scene – is indeed the solution to the conflicts in which we find ourselves continually enmeshed.

Kaganof puts it plainly when he states at the play’s conclusion, that standing in a queue once every five years has left the “previously dissed” off no better, because they still don’t own the ground they are standing on to queue.
Could it be the puppeteers of “democracy” are asking us to accept that war is inevitable, that our daily dose of war footage should be as ordinary a thing to us, as drinking a cup of coffee each morning?
Gallery questions how we can put such images at arm’s length and continue with our daily lives as if this were something that is normal, merely part of life, that happens “over there”. Similarly, the ragged Kaganof seems to ask, should we really assume it is normal that we pass people daily who have no homes or income?
‘Its Ok mom, I get shot at here while I cover this war, but I get shot at in Joburg too,” says Kaganof over a phone. Is it a natural state of affairs that South Africans face gunfire every day? “I’m making good bucks here, getting some great shots.” Why should the misery of war be a source of income to anyone?
How immune have we become of the mind-numbing repetition of violence in the media? Does Shooting Gallery make us yet more immune, or does it make us shift uncomfortably in our chairs, and make us wonder if we are, like the Kaganof is at one stage in the play, also gagged and blindfolded, unable to see what is truth, and unable to express it?

Henegan’s sole action in the performance, aside from operating two laptops which control the screened images, is to offer succour to the bloody Kaganof, who is at that stage, ranting off about Telly Tubbies and cancer into a bucket on his head.
She offers him grapes and wine (yes, there is other religious iconography in Shooting Gallery, including an extended worship of the “tell lie vision”) and comfort, while he reclines in her lap, a la Michalengelo’s Pieta. He appears to relax, temporarily.
But when she returns to her desk, smeared with second-hand gore, has she appeased the bewildered and frantic victim of war and war media coverage, only to feed him some more? What role has she assumed and lost? Make up your own mind and watch the play. Don’t expect to drive home humming merrily.

The so-called “media performance” that is currently drawing full houses at the Market’s Laager Theatre is a model of Eurocentric post-postie pretensions, clumsily executed. Conceived and directed by Catherine Henegan who spent years in Amsterdam apparently honing her digital craft at highly respected Academies like Das Arts, one wonders what possible relevance this turgid play has for South African audiences.

Lacking plot, protagonist and/or purpose, The Shooting Gallery confronts the unsuspecting audience with a barrage of grim images from the reality of global warzones. These images are dizzily edited in a series of short films that remind one of the very worst of Soviet agit-prop of the nineteen twenties. Dziga Vertov springs to mind. But Henegan is no “man with a camera”. She is apparently, a revolutionary, and wants to start tomorrow’s revolution now, according to the postcards that she printed at her own cost and has been seen distributing in Johannesburg’s plush northern suburbs in the weeks prior to the show’s commencement.

Quite why Aryan Kaganof is suspended upside down stark naked for almost half the duration of this grubby little “ritual” is never made clear. The programme notes in the obscurely printed catalogue that accompanies the show make mention of the Tarot and deranged German philosopher Nietzsche is quoted extensively. For those of us not taken in by high faluting quotes by dead Europeans, the experience of The Shooting Gallery remains baffling.

When asked why he brought this Dutch production to South Africa the Market Theatre’s artistic director Malcolm Purkey spoke a lot about “Brechtian devices, absurdism, Ubu, Dada” and other outdated European concepts of theatre. His no-neck response was unconvincing to say the least. The fact remains that audiences in South Africa like to be entertained. We like singing and dancing and smiling. We want to leave the theatre feeling happy. After all, we are free. We have had enough of this kind of theatre whose only relation to our struggle is that it is a struggle to stay awake through. Let us end this review with a quote from an icon who really knows something about people’s theatre, Dr. John Kani: “now that we have democracy we can enjoy entertainment.”

Inspired by The Bang Bang Club, a new computer-aided production at the Market Theatre explores how the media ‘constructs and reconstructs’ news and fiction.

July 17, 2006

By Ndaba Dlamini

ACCOMPANIED by a cacophony of music, a huge screen flashes fleeting news images of war, famine and acts of brutality. As the music grows to a crescendo, a man, stark naked is hoisted upside down in front of the screen.

These are scenes from a production by Catherine Henegan, The Shooting Gallery, now playing at the Market Theatre’s Laager Theatre. Shocking, graphic and a bit eerie, the play, described as “a digital ceremony for a war photographer”, maps out the messed up life of a photo-journalist played by literary cult figure, Aryan Kaganof.

Catherine Henegan’s The Shooting Gallery, at the Market Theatre, tracks the way media ‘constructs and reconstructs’ news and fiction

Aided by a computer and projection screen, the editor, Henegan, tracks the way media “constructs and reconstructs” news and fiction. The tragic protagonist, Kaganof, is a conflict photographer whose gruesome photos precipitate a moral dilemma. Haunted by what he has witnessed and his actions on duty, he struggles with his conscience and the ethics involved in this line of work.

The play was inspired by The Bang Bang Club by Joao Silva and Greg Marinovich, a book about a group of young photographers that became known for their shocking and close-up photos of violence in the townships prior to the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994.

“In this group were Ken Oosterbroek and Kevin Carter. Oosterbroek was tragically killed in action in 1994, while Carter committed suicide shortly after receiving the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography also in 1994,” says Henegan.

Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in South Africa and witnessing the transformation of the SABC from mouthpiece of a fascist regime, to the main manufacturer of new ideologies such as the Rainbow Nation and Simunye, Henegan says she is particularly interested how the media operates to shape people’s consciousness.

Henegan’s work revolves around video, performance and installation and she has worked in collaboration with visual artists, theatre-makers, filmmakers and musicians.

About the play, Henegan says: “If you can’t see what’s happening in front of you and around you, how could you expect to see your own nature? It is not by closing your eyes that you can see your own nature. On the contrary, you have to open your eyes and wake up to the real situation in the world – that is being able to see completely your whole Dharma body. The bombs, the hunger, the pursuit of wealth and power – these are not separate from your nature.”

The Shooting Gallery is an unusual piece of theatre that some may find fascinating through its use of multi-media, with others finding it disturbing because of the graphic details portrayed. It carries a nudity and violent images warning.

The play is on until 6 August at the Laager Theatre. For more information, contact the theatre’s publicity department on 011 832 1641.

this article origianlly appeared on the official website of the city of johannesburg