South African Monologues

This volume of translated plays serves a dual purpose.  First it highlights the work of South African playwright Ashwin Singh whose plays showcase the trials and tribulations of the country’s minority groups, in the two plays we translate here, Indians, working-class people and women.  Secondly, it celebrates the proximity of monologues as audiences cannot help but be drawn to the diverse characters that the sole actor portrays on stage. Post-apartheid theatre remains a forum for negotiating new ethnic, class and gender identities, so transformational plays like monologues need to allow the possibility for rethinking communal experiences and for emphasizing how fluid cultural identity actually is.  Singh’s one-person performances both reenact traditional African performances as well as incorporating a quintessential South African dramaturgical strategy that can be found in countless local playwrights, namely humour alongside traumatic events.  Reoca Light traces the history of a family of indentured labourers, together with all the racism and hostilities suffered over the years. The play, however, is a celebration of the survival tactics of many similar families in their struggle to form part of the nation.  High Stakes features Gita, one of the characters from an earlier play Beyond the Big Bangs.  Singh was inspired to write the one woman play after the resounding success of the character.  Gita, a widow and very untypical grandmother,  is a regular at her local casino.  Gambling is another of contemporary society’s disturbing addictions so Singh’s character may be endearing in her honesty and her combative feminism, but the play queries whether spectators should really identify with her solution to the constraints of Indian womanhood even in diaspora spaces like South Africa. The two monologues chosen for this volume have been translated into six Romance languages: Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, Rumanian and Spanish in order to encourage readers from these linguistic groups to discover the delights of Singh’s plays