A Travelling Song

The past is A TRAVELLING SONG which cannot easily be suppressed or silenced. It travels with us and shapes our future. For South Africans to create a new ‘song’ after endless years of oppression much needs to be re-interpreted re-discovered and re-born. Two actors, GCINA MHLOPE and PATRICK SHAI, meet on the stage-set of Athol Fugard’s “Playland”, and consider this task. They perform and improvise on the stage but realise that the theatre is too confined a space for the stories they seek and that they are bound to go out into the real world. Patrick descends two kilometres underground in a metal cage to meet the men who dig gold in mines worked for 100 years. Gcina meets their wives. All of this creates a very unusual, very different documentary film, which they find themselves making. Indeed, they realise they will have to make several films. In fact, they will need a whole new TV channel.