ABSTRACT
This interview was recorded at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, after a performance of Athol Fugard's Boesman and Lena, directed by Jerry Mofokeng, with Bill Curry as Boesman and Nomhle Nkonyeni as Lena. This adds the perspective of an ‘actor’ to the voices included in Part 1 of this volume, for while Mhlophe and Dike both perform their own plays and poemdras and poetry, there is a different process involved in taking words written by someone else and finding a way to bring them to life on stage. Nkonyeni faced this challenge in a revival of one of South Africa's best known plays, written by a white Afrikaner male. She was the first black actor to play the part of Fugard's Lena, a black character written to be played by the (white) actor, Yvonne Bryceland. [For more details on Fugard and Boesman and Lena, see Dennis Walder's article, pp. 51–59.]
