THE STORY: A bus transporting a group of international Red Cross workers through the township of Soweto, on a fact-finding tour, is bombed and many of its passengers killed. In the ensuing chaos one survivor, Lydia De Jager, a white woman in her forties, escapes and is sheltered by Simon Kgoathe (a Sowetan in his late forties, early fifties). This single compassionate act may doom him - a fact he quickly realizes. Any hope of utilizing his meager options are thwarted firstly, by Lydia's fear and her recklessness; then by his discovery that she is a South African, by events outside and, finally by the intrusion of a young black man, Sipho, who may or may not be a government informer and who is also urgently in need of Simon's help. As Simon tries desperately to survive in the increasingly dehumanized environment of a country without hope and a township seething with rage, he strives also to hold onto his humanity. Isolated in what is, for Lydia, both a fragile haven and a frightening cage, these two people, so vastly different in character and experience, struggle through mistrust and prejudice towards a tenuous understanding. As the night progresses, Simon's main hope of survival becomes his secret underground "cubby-hole." But, from Sipho's entrance, events spin out of control and the play is propelled towards a powerful and moving conclusion.

This powerful drama set in the black South Africa township of Soweto, on the edge of change, centers on the fate of a black man and a white woman thrown together by force of circumstance. "Her writing is beautiful, compassionate and philosophical, and her play works extraordinarily well" - Stanford Daily. "Ross develops an exchange between the two characters that is at once compelling and somewhat comic." - Bay Reporter.

Publisher

Dramatists Play Service Inc.

Format

Play

Binding

Softcover

ISBN

9780822202745

Stock code

9780822202745

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