In Molora the device of the ancient Greek Chorus is radically reinvented in the form of a deeply traditional, rural Xhosa aesthetic. Farber chose to collaborate with The Ngqoko Cultural Group with the intention of rediscovering the original power of the device of the Chorus in ancient Greek theatre. In her quest to find a group that could represent the weight and conscience of the community – as she believes is the Chorus’ purpose – she happened upon the unearthly sound of the Ngqoko Group’s UMNGQOKOLO (Split-Tone Singing).
Farber drove out to the rural Transkei to meet with the women, where she told them the story of the Oresteia. The reaction to the story was deeply felt and met with much discussion on the moral implication of killing your own mother. Farber instantly knew she had found the Chorus to this new Oresteia.
Trained in this ancient art of singing, these women have been taught from an early age, the skill of creating this vocal phenomenon, as well as being masters of the ancient musical instruments that are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives in the rural Transkei. The mouth bows, calabash bows, mouth harps and milking drums form an array of traditional musical instruments that they – as Chorus – play in accompaniment to the text of Molora. The sounds of these unique Xhosa artists lend a haunting texture of sound, which is unfamiliar to most modern ears, and evokes a deeply emotional accompaniment to the work.
The envisaging of the Chorus as a group of ‘ordinary’ African women provides the context of the Truth Commission, which witnessed thousands of such ‘ordinary’ folk gathering in halls across South Africa to hear the details of a loved one’s death at the hands of the State.
The individuals that constitute The Ngqoko Cultural Group represent, in this context, the unique grace and dignity that was evident in the common man who chose a different path for South Africa. Within the Ngqoko group are two spiritual diviners who are trained in the channelling of ancestral powers. While these women are restrained in their use of authentic trance on stage, their authority in spiritual conduct allows a moment in which the audience may experience a deep participation in a prayer to our ancestors for an end to the cycle of violence in South Africa – and indeed the world.
Acknowledgements
| • | Yana Sakelaris for her dramaturgical contributions and assistance when adapting the text |
| • | The Ngqoko Cultural Group for their songs, praises and traditional practices which profoundly shaped this work |
| • | Bongeka Mongwana for her Xhosa Translations |
| • | Past and current cast members, with whom Molora grew and continues to grow |
| • | This work was first made possible by Standard Bank National Festival of the Arts |
MOLORA
Dedicated to Lindiwe Chibi, Molora’s original Elektra
Your light continues to shine for us all
A Note on the Quotations
The patchwork of quotations from the original Greek plays used in Molora are flagged up in the footnotes: where the translations are known they are identified with initials (see below); where I have been unable to rediscover the original version I quoted from, the references are followed by (SU), ie ‘source unknown’. The known sources are:
Aeschylus, Agamemnon
LM: Louis MacNeice (Faber, 1967)
RF: Robert Fagles (Penguin, 1977)
Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers (Choephoroi)
IJ: Ian Johnston (http://www.mala.bc.ca/~Johnstoi/aeschylus/libationbearers.htm) [line numbers refer to the translation]
Sophocles, Electra
RCJ: Richard Claverhouse Jebb
(http://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/electra.html)
DG: David Grene, from Grene and Lattimore, eds, The Complete Greek Tragedies (University of Chicago Press, 1957)
Euripides, Electra
ECP: Edward Paley Coleridge
(http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/electra_eur.html)
The line numbers of the Greek text are given in square brackets at the end of the footnotes. These are taken from the following Loeb Classical Library parallel editions of the relevant texts: Aeschylus, vol II (William Heinemann, 1957); Sophocles, vol II (William Heinemann, 1961); Euripides, vol III (Harvard University Press, 1998).
Characters
KLYTEMNESTRA
ELEKTRA
ORESTES
CHORUS OF WOMEN &TRANSLATOR
The first British performance of Molora was at the Barbican Centre on 9 April 2008, in a production by the Farber Foundry in association with Oxford Playhouse (originally produced in association with The Market Theatre, Johannesburg). The cast was as follows:
KLYTEMNESTRA, Dorothy Ann Gould
ELEKTRA, Jabulile Tshabalala
ORESTES, Sandile Matsheni
CHORUS & MUSICIANS, The Ngqoko Cultural Group: Nofenishala Mvotyo, Nogcinile Yekani, Nokhaya Mvotyo, Nopasile Mvotyo, Nosomething Ntese, Tandiwe Lungisa, Tsolwana B Mpayipheli
Creator and Director Yael Farber
Assistant Director and Dramaturgical Contributor Yana Sakelaris
Vernacular Text Translators Current and past cast members
Instrument and Song Arrangements The Ngqoko Cultural Group
Set Designers Larry Leroux and Leigh Colombick
Costume Designers Natalie Lundon and Johny Mathole
Lighting Supervisor Paul Peyton Moffitt
mise en scène
This work should never be played on a raised stage behind a proscenium arch, but on the floor to a raked audience. If being presented in a traditional theatre, the audience should be seated on stage with the action, preferably with all drapes and theatre curtains stripped from the stage and the audience in front of, left and right of the performance. Contact with the audience must be immediate and dynamic, with the audience complicit – experiencing the story as witnesses or participants in the room, rather than as voyeurs excluded from yet looking in on the world of the story.
The ideal venue is a bare hall or room – much like the drab, simple venues in which most of the testimonies were heard during the course of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Two large, old tables – each with a chair – face one another on opposite ends of the playing space. Beneath Klytemnestra’s testimony table is a large bundle wrapped in black plastic. Upon each