By BRUCE DENNILL
Pieces Of Me / Directed by Royston Stoffels / Barney Simon Theatre, Market Theatre, Newtown, Johannesburg
In South Africa, given its appalling history, it’s unusual for a white person to struggle with their identity on the basis of being categorised in that age group. This is the basis of Bo Petersen’s one-woman (plus an accompanist who links parts of the production with carefully chosen music) show Pieces Of Me. It’s a mixture of full-immersion character sketches and no-fourth-wall audience engagement and it is a simple moment in one of the latter moments that has arguably the greatest impact, revealing – for audience members who aren’t familiar with the actress’ story but have at least some sense of generational damage apartheid caused – a level of pain and trauma that can’t be understood unless it’s personally experienced.
Having started the show playing a selection of characters with very different accents to her own, Petersen introduces herself to her audience and then turns to the pianist sitting behind a keyboard in a corner of the stage, who looks unlike her on a number of levels, but most notably (in context) skin tone, and says, “And this is my cousin, Christopher.” It’s a connection that ingrained South African culture, particularly for audience members who grew up up either repressed or brainwashed by apartheid, simply doesn’t instinctively allow for.
This dynamic, in the room, profoundly informs the scripted sequences and the multi-faceted story they tell as they are connected together, unpacking how family members had to live on different sides of physical and philosophical barriers, which resulted in their lives being defined by completely divergent emotional and economic factors.
Petersen is a powerfully physical presence on stage, pacing and making provocative eye contact with her audience as she lays out – physically in one part of the show – aspects of her, her family’s and South Africa’s history that have been responsible for a monstrous tragedy that will continue to affect citizens of this and other countries for decades or even generations still to come.
Petersen includes insights into the hows and whys telling her story theatrically versus other means adds to its power, talking about settling under the skin of a character as she gets to understand them as an actress. Again, the layers here – she is playing members of her family whose loves turned out completely different to her own – and the unsettling accessibility of Petersen’s writing and the way she expresses herself, blurring the line between personal (cousin; woman talking about her family) and professional (actress; user of stagecraft; activist against prejudice) make watching her show a reflective and intriguing experience.
