My Plaas se Naam is Vergenoeg

My Plaas se Naam is Vergenoeg by George Weideman (1947-2008)

My Plaas se Naam is Vergenoeg ("My farm's name is Vergenoeg", i.e. "far enough"), also cited in the press and in scholarship simply as Vergenoeg, is an Afrikaans South African play in nine scenes, set in Namaqualand during the era of the land commission hearings. A commission sits to decide whether Grace Boois, a former farm worker, may bury her son on the Veldsman family's farm Vergenoeg; a chorus of animals comments on the proceedings and on human possessiveness, and between the human and animal worlds moves the shape-shifter Altydanders, child of Tsoei-Goab.

The original text

Written by George Weideman, and the only one of his stage plays to be published: My plaas se naam is Vergenoeg. Drama in nege tonele (Dainfern: Praag, 2005).

Grace Boois had left the farm with her child seven years earlier. Her son, Whitey, was the illegitimate child of the farm owner's brother, and died in a veld fire. The question of who owns Vergenoeg is put in competing terms: the San laid out stones to mark the land as theirs, the farmer bought it, and the animals contend that their claim precedes both. Against the Boois family's claim to ancestral presence, Jan Veldsman argues that a burial would give strangers a moral hold on the farm.

Seven animal characters appear in the dramatis personae, functioning much as a classical Greek chorus does and commenting on events both on and off stage. Alongside them the play sets all-knowing narrators, jesters, and the morphing figure of Altydanders, child of Tsoei-Goab, producing an effect of magical realism on stage. The play sets the historical and the contemporary against one another, and has been read as combining the animal epic with Greek tragedy. It has also been linked to Pieter Fourie's Die Koggelaar, another ecologically aware Afrikaans play in which an animal figure becomes the voice of the earth and calls the farmer to account.

Performance history in South Africa

2004: Premiered at the Volksblad Kunstefees, Bloemfontein, produced by the University of Stellenbosch Drama Department and directed by Johan Esterhuizen. Jackie van den Heever played Grace Boois, and the cast included Riaan Visman.

2013: Staged by the University of the Free State Department of Drama and Theatre Arts in the Wynand Mouton Theatre, Bloemfontein, from 14 to 17 May, directed by Pieter Venter. Cast not traced.*

Awards

2004: Winner of the first Sanlamprys vir Afrikaanse Teater, presented on 17 July 2004 at the Volksblad Kunstefees in Bloemfontein. The production took the overall award, and three of the individual prizes went to the same production: George Weideman for best text, Johan Esterhuizen for best direction, and Jackie van den Heever for best performance as Grace Boois. The overall prize was conditional on the production being staged at two further arts festivals.

Critical response

The play has attracted more scholarly attention than any other Weideman drama. Susan Meyer reads it as a postcolonial and ecocritical intervention in the South African land debate, arguing that the animals' claim gives the ownership controversy a dimension absent from novels such as Agaat and Disgrace (Meyer 2012). Hennie van Coller and Anthea van Jaarsveld treat it in their two-part study of Weideman as dramatist (2007, 2008), and it is discussed at length in Christina Maria Beuke-Muir's doctoral study of his dramatic work.

Sources

Weideman, G. 2005. My plaas se naam is Vergenoeg. Drama in nege tonele. Dainfern: Praag.

Meyer, S. 2012. 'We who cannot speak lived there first: A new claim to land in My plaas se naam is Vergenoeg by George Weideman', Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 49(2): pp. 34-50.

Van Coller, H. & Van Jaarsveld, A. 2007. 'Vergenoeg: George Weideman as dramaturg (deel 1)', South African Theatre Journal 21(1): pp. 328-342.

Beuke-Muir, C.M. n Ondersoek na George Weideman as dramaturg. Doctoral thesis, University of the Free State.*

Botha, D. 2004. "'Vergenoeg' laat jou dink én wonder", Die Burger, 6 August 2004: p. 12.

Coetser, J. 2006. 'Drie welkome én veelseggende dramatekste in Afrikaans', Beeld, 20 February 2006: p. 19.

Volksblad, 19 July 2004.

https://www.roekeloos.co.za/teater/my-plaas-se-naam-is-vergenoeg/

'My plaas se naam is Vergenoeg', University of the Free State Department of Drama and Theatre Arts, professional productions archive, 2013. https://www.ufs.ac.za/humanities/departments-and-divisions/drama-and-theatre-arts-home/drama-and-theatre-arts/general/unlisted-pages/productions/my-plaas-se-naam-is-vergenoeg-317

George Weideman, ESAT.

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