Scene One
from The Bells of Amersfoort
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 May 2019
Summary
The stage is divided into three distinct acting areas, located in any manner the director may deem fit. These areas may even be represented by different levels on the stage. One represents TAMI VSfalaza's present world. The second represents the world she has left behind, which is also the world to which she will return. The third represents the world she will never reach, the world she observes from her window. She vicariously participates in this world as well, although it unfolds across the street. The three worlds, of course, will not necessarily remain static. Sometimes they may collide or even merge and become one world. As lights rise on her world, TAMI is discovered standing next to a barstool - the only piece of furniture on this set. On the barstool is a bottle of red wine, an elegant wine glass and an ashtray. On the floor next to the barstool is a shimmering trombone. She pours herself some wine and has a sip. As lights rise on the second world she looks at it expectantly. Nothing happens. It is bare.
TAMI [as if addressing the blank space]: At home there were aunts and uncles. There were grandmothers and grandfathers. There were friends and neighbours. And, of course, there was Luthando.
LUTHANDO materialises in the blank space of the second world.
LUTHANDO: Dear Tami, since you left, the boys have come out thrice. Maybe four times. I have lost count. And the rains continue to cut deeper into the already wounded earth, taking with them bits of soil from the barren hills into the Telle River. From the Telle River into the Orange River. From the Orange River into the Atlantic Ocean. The rich soil of our scarred Qhoboshane Valley enriches distant oceans. What do oceans want with our soil when they already own a world of sand? But it is the coming out that I want to tell you about. The last coming out of the boys from the initiation school of the mountain, where the cutting of the foreskin transformed boys into men.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Fools, Bells and the Habit of EatingThree Satires, pp. 114 - 119Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2002