Handspring’s Basil Jones tells us about Faustus in Africa!
It’s been 30 years since Handspring Puppet Company first presented its award-winning production of Faustus in Africa!, a reimagining of the iconic tale of an intelligent man’s vaulting ambition, moral compromise, and his ultimately tragic deal with the devil. This year, as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, the play is reworked in conjunction with legendary director William Kentridge. Exciting doesn’t begin to cover the possibilities of this collaboration, so we were delighted to be able to chat with Basil Jones, Co-founder and executive producer of Handspring, to find out more.
Basil it’s really great to chat with you again! The last time was when Handspring brought their breath-taking, five star production of The Life and Times of Michael K to Edinburgh, which left me utterly choked.
This Faustus in Africa! is a reworking of an earlier version. What’s different about it?
Its faster, shorter, and a more intense experience for the audiences! The brilliant director, Lara Foot, first started working with Handspring on the multi-award winning Life & Times of Michael K, so she was able to approach the reworking of this show with confidence and a degree of irreverence. Much of the action now flows out from behind the playboards, surging forward towards the audience. And the filmed sequences run simultaneously with the stage action. Kentridge’s animations have been cleaned up and re-digitised and are looking magnificent with luscious blacks and more nuanced silky greys.
How did the collaboration with the legendary William Kentridge come about, and which of his many disciplines feed into the production?
When the National Emergency was declared in 1985, the Apartheid Government no longer allowed us to perform in schools around the country. So we moved from Cape Town to Johannesburg hoping to find work in TV. Happily we fell in with the Junction Avenue theatre crowd who happened to live next door to us. Kentridge was one of their founders and we often ended up having long and languorous Sunday lunches together. William was just setting out on his journey with animated charcoal drawings and frankly struggling with the many drawings needed for close-ups. He complained of how many variations were needed to animate a simple hand gesture. He had the idea that maybe puppets could move in the foreground and the backgrounds could be the animated drawings. Out of this a new type of theatre was born. With Mabu Mines, Handspring was one of the first theatre companies making extensive use of video projection.
There are hugely political themes in the show, including climate change and colonialism: is it even possible to keep the story from becoming overwhelmingly depressing?
The main rescuer in this case is the delicious irony and wit of Lesego Rampologeng’s texts. Lesego is a famous poet in South Africa, ever alive to the absurd situations we find in our daily lives. Kentridge was very wise to bring him in to help stitch together Goethe’s beautiful poetry, to keep things light and make our audiences smile.
How do puppets and objects work in relationship with real people to describe a tale of essentially human fallibility and manipulation?
Agency is always an important issue when blame is being apportioned. The ultimate shame is when you betray your own humanity. Who’s to blame? Somehow the puppet is a perfect exemplar of this dilemma. And the audience – the participants in acceding to the life and humanity of the puppet –are then ensnared into Faustus’ culpability. The audience does not simply observe what is happening on stage; it magnifies it, transforms it. Our intense and ancient need to believe in the life of an inanimate object somehow enables this puppet to become incandescent – more real than even a person could be. This focussed consciousness and complicity of those watching turns them into co-creators of Faustus’ monumental betrayal.
Can you tell us about the process of designing the puppets for Faustus?
The faces of the puppets come from a number of colonial sources. Faustus was inspired by Brazza the Belgian explorer whose name was attached to Brazzaville in the then colonial Congo. His servant Johnston, who becomes emperor, has the face of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratic president of The Congo, who was tragically assassinated by the CIA. And Helen of Troy was based on a 1930’s Hollywood-style cigarette ad.
Bulgakov’s Cat, from The Master & Margarita, morphed into our Hyena, a minor devil puppet in Faustus in Africa! The design of the hyena’s front paw (which enables it to play a game of checkers with Helen), was a fortunate discovery, and eventually led to the hoof-curling mechanism that gave such fluency to the legs of horses in War Horse.
Aside from the world-class visual art you’re bringing, what musical contribution is in the show?
The punk rock anti-Apartheid hero, James Philips, was an icon of the resistance music amongst Afrikaner youth in the years leading up to the unbanning of the ANC in 1989. He and Warrick Sony’s magnificent soundscape of wistful irony and longing, signalled an exciting new direction, tragically cut short by a fatal car accident soon after the premier of Faustus in Africa! Sony has lovingly restored the recordings for this re-mount.
And what about the cast and crew? Who’s coming along? Will you be bringing performers from Africa?
We are bringing you a seriously hot acting team. It’s led by Atandwa Kani the handsome, award-winning son of South Africa’s very famous actor, John Kani. Atandwa is best known as the young king T’Chaka from Black Panther. He plays Faustus in this production. The puppeteers are ably led by the masterful Mongi Mthombeni, who has appeared in Handspring productions across the world.
Enormous thanks to Basil for taking the time to tell us about this totally tempting production. Watch out for ET’s review in August!
Faustus in Africa! runs at The Lyceum, Edinburgh, from Wednesday 20 – Friday 23 August as part of the Edinburgh International Festival.
