Child’s play on death offers coping skills
A DURBAN arts professional has delivered a theatre production intended to address death with a comforting, compassionate message which will be appreciated by all age groups.
“Memento Mori” is multi-award-winning theatre maker, designer, writer, activist and Durban University of Technology lecturer Penelope Youngleson’s latest production.
What started out as a small cosy, children’s bedtime story has been bumped up to a large-cast play with 53 students intrinsically involved in this work of art, which includes a colourful set, props and costumes.
It runs from October 17 to 19 at the DUT’s Courtyard Theatre on Steve Biko Road, Musgrave.
In Latin, Memento Mori is a reminder that everyone dies, and Youngleson conceded it was “not a very cheerful title or common for a children’s production”.
“I wrote a short story about death when my father died because my niece and nephew struggled to understand that he was not coming back.
“So I decided to write a story to help explain it to them, without being patronising, but to do it in a kind way that was not scary.”
Youngleson said death impacted everyone, so she set about demystifying this reality with her play.
“When we remember people, they don’t die, we keep them alive in our memories,” she said.
Memento Mori is diametrically opposite to the theatre productions Youngleson is known to deliver.
“This is not my wheelhouse per se, and I don’t work with a large cast. I prefer to do political dramas.”
Youngleson, who has received Fleur du Cap and Gold Standard Bank Ovation awards for previous works, turned professional in 2008.
She moved to Cape Town when she was 17 and returned to Durban just before lockdown to care for her parents.
Youngleson remained in Durban after her father’s death and joined the DUT last year.
“I was asked by DUT to do a children’s production… I thought why not? I knew I had the story of Memento Mori in my back pocket.”
She had already written the script with the hope of featuring it at the Makhanda National Arts festival, but “lockdown happened and it didn’t go anywhere”.
She increased the number of characters and built the storyline a bit more after the DUT request.
“It is a paradigm swing from politics to kids stuff, a big stretch for me as a writer. I enjoyed doing it and the students did a fantastic job.
“As a director, I treated it very similarly to my regular stuff because there was quite a lot of crossover. There is politics everywhere you go.”
She said it was beautiful to watch the first year students, aged 18 and 19, perform because many were not first-language English speakers.
“To watch them grapple with the words and the text and apply themselves to quite high level concepts around emotional engagements and emotional intelligence was touching.
“They did a sincere job with humility and sweetness.”
Youngleson said students who were pursuing a higher certificate in backstage work, lighting, sound and design helped to design costumes, the set and prop pieces, most made of recycled material.
The play is set in a woodlands forest.
The lead characters are Tempus Fugit (time flies), a clockmaker, inventor and fixer of things, played by Sibongiseni Maphumulo, and Amanda Ntombela is cast as EtVita Brevis (life is short), who lives in the kaleidoscopic cottage next door.
The two elderly best friends are set in time and are not of any time themselves.
One day, Tempus goes to the market and never returns.
“We never explicitly find out what happened to him. It is inferred that he died. The story is about coping with loss, what happens when you don't know and carrying on from there.”
She said some of the other characters, which includes indigenous birds and wildlife from KwaZulu-Natal ‒ purple crested turacoes, hoopoes, red bishops, yellow weavers and a spotted eagle owl ‒ start to talk and ask an overwhelmed EtVita about her missing friend.
“It is a sincere wholehearted effort to ease people’s pain rather than make myself look like a good theatre maker. I think it is a family show that has broad appeal,” she said.
Tickets can be booked via email BawinileM1@dut.ac.za or at the door.