| Looking for something to do while strolling through "The Village" in the summer of '70, I came upon a cheap matinee performance of a show about the affect of South African Apartheid on its residents. There were loads of empty seats in the small theater at this particular performance. The show starred a couple of performers that I did not immediately recognize, James Earl Jones and Ruby Dee. But WOW! At this point, my recollection is solely that of being over-powered by the performance. I was 19 years old at the time, so it's hard for me to answer what was so absolutely emcompassing: the staging, the script, or the actors? And since we all now know about the actors, and since I find it difficult to distinguish between the other components of staging and script, this was clearly an event that could not be forgotten. I left the theater mesmerized, walking out into the warm and muggy early evening knowing that I had just witnessed something amazing, and feeling a new passion about the tragedy of apartheid. |
