The show begins with Kate sitting alone , late at night starring at a half-full glass of wine, distressed as her love somehow forgot it's her birthday. She sits alone contemplatinglighting a cigarette which she held to her mouth for close to ten minutes. Her lover storms in, drunk and unapologetic.
Tuesday July 2016 at the Joburg Market theatre, a South African stage play written by Kim Sanssoucie played out on stage post it’s successful run in Paris and London.
“The Dirt Road” play is led by Sanssoucie who plays the character of Kate and Batsile Ramasodi who plays the character of Simphiwe Ndlela.
This play shows different themes from love, marriage, commitment and culture. The story revolves around two people who were once madly in love with one another, who now can not have a decent conversation without wanting to slid each other's throats. It also reveals the good side of both partners when they first met and fell in love.
This is seen when the couple was in the first trimester of their relationship, when Simphiwe declared his love for Kate in a poem he shared with the audience. In his poem he says, “She was always modest, humble and equally complex. The passion we had disrupted everything in my soul, we were like two teenagers. Sometimes we were different, other times we were separate, but most of the time we were the same”
The play reveals also the stereotypes associated with each culture. Kate is a colored woman, and Simphiwe a xhosa man. One of the ways this theme is reinforcedshows when Simphiwe says to Kate 'don't all colored people speak Afrikaans, to which she responded that she grew up in Durban and can't speak Afrikaans. Kate goes on to say Xhosa men are womanizers, arrogant and handsome.
The playshows us how the two tried to change each other, this evident when Simphiwe insists that Kate quit smoking as he regards it an “unhealthy habit”.
The couple goes through all the fights and troubles of a relationship, their love is challenged by cultural differences but at the end love wins.
IOL