Serpent Players

Founding

Founded in the early 1960's (some sources have 1963, Nkonyeni says 1961) by a group of industrial and service workers led by Norman Ntshinga and including Nomhle Nkonyeni, John Kani, Winston Ntshona, Welcome Duru, Fats Bookholane, Mike Ngxolo and Mabel Magada.

The name came about when the group was first formed. While searching for a venue in which to perform they were offered the use of the recently vacated Port Elizabeth Museum premises in Bird Street, Port Elizabeth. As their first venture, they decided to stage a theatre-in-the-round production in the empty snake pit and settled on the name, Serpent Players. The production was never staged, but the name stuck.

The group also had exchange agreements with Rob Amato's East London based Imitha Players and Don Maclennan's Grahamstown group the Ikhwezi Players.

The Serpent Players and the Fugards

Working with Athol Fugard and Sheila Fugard (they gathered secretly once a week at Fugard's home at Schoenmakerskop), they performed in St Stephen's Hall and other spaces in New Brighton and initially tended to produce local adaptations of European classics.

The Serpent Players led to a long term friendship and partnership between Athol Fugard and members John Kani and Winston Ntshona, which was inter alia to result in such memorable workshopped plays as The Island and Sizwe Banzi is Dead.

Harassment by the Security Police

The Serpent Players were constantly harassed by the Security Police. However, help came from Frank Tonjeni, principal of the Cowan High School, Madala Street, New Brighton. He allowed the group to use one of the classrooms for rehearsals and Fugard would sneak into the school to tutor the players. When Special Branch cars stopped outside the school the actors would sing hymns and when the police enquired what was going on, the actors would claim to be practising church songs. Fugard, in the meantime, quickly ducked away. The Players had no need for ‘lookouts’ because the classroom they used faced the street and the Security Police could always be seen arriving.

Growing tired of the police harassment, the Players eventually decided to move to more neutral grounds in the nearby suburb of Korsten where they used a sympathiser's garage. Unfortunately, the police found out about their new venue and started hassling them. They suspected somebody was disclosing their activities to the Security Police exactly because they always searched for scripts. The actors were trying to raise awareness of the things that were happening. The people replied that those were the laws, but the actors replied “bugger those restrictions the government imposed".

Productions

The Serpent Players created several pieces of theatre, including:

• The Coat (1965)
• The Last Bus (1966) about the relationship between black and coloured people in Port Elizabeth.
• Friday's Bread on Monday (1967) (addressing the theme of poverty - based a real-life incident, it concerns a group of boys, who trek across town to buy three-day-old bread because Brito’s Bakery sold it at a cheaper price on Monday.)
• The Cure (1968) - an adaptation of Machiavelli’s La Mandragola (directed by Fugard and set in a township).
• The Sell Out (1971) about police informers.

Other productions include:

• Büchner’s Woyzeck
• Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle
• Sophocles’s Antigone (1965), chosen because the play was about the first conscientious objector dying for her cause.
• Camus’s The Just (also known as The Terrorists) (1972) for the SABTU Festival in Durban.

Sources

Loren Kruger, 1999: 136-138, 156, 159;

Gosher, 1988.

Tucker, 1997.

S'ketsh' July 1972, p. 17.

Material held by NELM: [Collection: FUGARD, Athol]: 1987. 25. 12.

The E.P. Herald, 6 June 2006.

Zakes Mda's Introduction to John Kani's Nothing But the Truth. 2002. Witwatersrand University Press.

'​Actor, humanist, mentor'. Mail and Guardian. 17 August 2018.

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