Meaningless Labels: A review of "Blood Knot" at the Project Arts Centre on June 8 by Cari Wieland

Kolade Agboke as Zach in Shiva Productions' Blood Knot 

        Shiva Productions, which produced Athol Fugard's play, Blood Knot, at the Project Arts Centre from June 6-11, has this to say about itself: 

"Shiva Productions is a newly-founded theatre company that believes passionately in theatre as a tool for change in society.  We aim to present plays which give voice to the disempowered in society and around the world: to provoke a response to action and thus create positive change."

         Bloodknot is a two character play about brothers, both of whom are disempowered but in vastly different ways and for different reasons.  Zach is a dark-skinned black man who suffers constant oppression in his daily life during the Apartheid era in South Africa.  His brother Morris has much fairer skin and could pass for white if he wished, though he chooses throughout the play to remain in the single room shack they share.  Using their conflicting dreams, desires, and attitudes about life, the play explores themes like the construction of race, the perpetuation of stereotypes, and what it means to be brothers in a world where skin color is more important than anything else.  While it remains to be seen whether the production will create positive change in the world, it definitely made a solid attempt at illuminating the dark spaces in the complicated relationship of Zach and Morris.    

            This production used a single set, richly detailed to depict the extreme poverty Zach and Morris live in.  The walls of their shack are made of corrugated iron sheets, covered in paper and cardboard where the metal has rusted out, Zach sleeps in a tiny bed with a thin mattress and single blanket while Morris sleeps on a pad on the floor, the stovetop is of the gas-powered camping variety set on top of two shelves containing both of their cooking pots, as well as their sorely deficient food stores, and there are only mere feet between the stove and the bed.  The play opens with Morris tidying up the space and preparing for Zach’s arrival home from work.  As he moves about, straightening the bedclothes, brushing crumbs off the table, boiling water to make a salt bath for Zach’s feet, the viewer gets a sense of how little there is to do in this environment, how limited Morris’ activities are due to a sheer lack of space.  Morris goes to the door several times to look out for Zach’s arrival.  We get the clear impression that this is the highlight of Morris’ day, and no wonder.  He has nothing to do and no one to talk to until his brother gets home, and when he does, Morris is visibly comforted by caring for and doting on Zach.  The brotherly relationship is convincingly portrayed by Keith Ward and Kolade Agboke, who move about the space and one another with the practiced ease of people who have known each other for a long time.  They switch back and forth between moments of tenderness, like when Morris lovingly presents Zach his dinner, and moments of irritation, as when Zach is annoyed at Morris’ incessant chatter.  This deft alternation of feelings gives us a full and rich picture of their particular sibling relationship.

With this opening scene, we are confronted with the disparity of a white man appearing in all ways to serve a black man and Fugard has promptly turned our presumed stereotypes on their heads.  In many ways, Zach seems to have more freedom than his light-skinned brother which is not at all what we would expect in South Africa at this time.  Zach leaves the house everyday to go to work, while Morris virtually never leaves, though we discover through their dialogue that Morris’ imprisonment is self-imposed.  Morris seems to be engaging in behaviors that oppress himself as a manifestation of white guilt.  For while Zach is able to leave the home and work, his experiences in the white world consist of belittlement at best, and abuse and violence at worst.  Because the text specifically calls for a white actor to play Morris, what we see is a white man choosing to live in servitude to his black brother in order to apologize for the crimes of his race.

Keith Ward’s Morris is stoop-shouldered and soft-spoken, giving the impression of a brow-beaten slave, while Kolade Agboke, as Zach, has the booming voice and bombastic style of a man entirely comfortable in his own skin and with his place in the world.  Set against this unexpected role reversal, however, are the advantages and privileges that Morris enjoys as a result of being fair-skinned.  The most important of these is that Morris can read and write while Zach cannot, and Morris knowingly uses this against him when they have a disagreement over the letters to his white, female pen pal.  Zach comes in proudly carrying a letter from Ethel and he does not want to share it with Morris just yet, preferring to savor the experience of gazing at the envelope and marveling at the handwriting in his own time before handing it over for Morris to reveal the content.  Morris is jealous and annoyed that Zach wants to keep secrets and belittles Zach by asking him if he is sure it’s his letter, insisting he cannot possibly be sure it is addressed to him since he cannot read.  Zach’s aplomb withers in short order and he hands over the letter.  This kind of power play between white and black men is indicative of the exchanges between races outside of their shack.  In fact, one theme of the play that Zach rails about is that not even the dreams of black men are safe from whites, that a man cannot keep a secret even in his mind.  And while Morris agrees with him at the time, he unwittingly perpetuates that oppression by forcing Zach to turn over his letter.

            Fugard uses the dreams of Morris and Zach to illustrate another philosophical difference between black and white men in South Africa.  Throughout the play Morris careful stashes Zach’s earnings from work, which he dreams of using to buy a farm where he and Zach can live in peace and have some measure of prosperity.  His farm represents an escape from oppression of all sorts, for both himself and his brother.  He is willing to sacrifice in the present in order to bank on a happier future, while Zach is the polar opposite.  Zach is portrayed as having immediate, pressing desires which he wants to satisfy right away.  He balks at saving money and in the second act, blows their entire savings on a suit for Morris to wear on a date.  This frivolous purchase is not as thoughtless as it seems; rather it is an indication that Zach does not believe he has a future to save for. Because Zach, like all black men, lives at the mercy of the white power structure, he completely lacks control over his own destiny.  By spending that money, Zach is thumbing his nose at his brother and, by extension, the entire white system, because it is one of the only things in the world over which he has control. 

            Shiva Productions’ decision to present this play at this time in Ireland, and using Irish actors is no accident.  If we look back to their mission statement, recall that they intend to use theatre “as a tool for change in society.”  This production comes at a time when there are an unprecedented number of black immigrants in Ireland and prejudice is an issue here as much as it is in America or South Africa.  By showing Ireland the extreme conditions of apartheid in South Africa, Shiva Productions intends for the Irish people to look at themselves and decide if this is the direction they want their country to go.  They want the Irish to see that race is, in fact, a construct, and it is perpetuated by our behavior toward one another as much as our belief in stereotypes, or our fear of the “other.”

            Zach and Morris are two human men, related by blood, sharing a house, who nonetheless experience the world in entirely different ways due to the colors of their skin.  What Fugard wants us to understand is that those differences are arbitrary and are culturally enforced.  As such, they can, and should, be discarded in favor of equality because no human is inherently any more valuable or worthy than any other.  By using a black man and a white man to play brothers of different “races,” the production encourages us to conclude that race is a meaningless label and nothing more.

Outside the Project Arts Centre after Blood Knot.
We will return again twice to this space, the leading venue for experimental and new performance in Dublin.