When attending “HERO: A Play in Development,” audience members are held in the lobby before being brought into the George Houston Bass Performing Arts Space. Upon entering, attendees are invited to step onstage and play a game.
The two-player show “Hero” starring Vuyolwethu Sotashe and Kineta Kunutu incorporated childhood games, songs and rhymes into a story of two children coming of age in post-apartheid South Africa.
The play, which is still in development, was performed at the Rites and Reason Theatre last weekend. The performance holds roots in South African protest theater, which was developed in resistance to apartheid.
“Artists of all kinds were using their talent and craft and skills to protest and subvert the systems of oppression that were taking place in South Africa,” according to Shariffa Ali, director and co-creator of “Hero.” Ali is also a guest director-in-residence at the Rites and Reason Theatre.
In South African protest theater, performers did not use scripts. “If they had a script, that could be used as evidence of an illegal gathering,” said Oluwaṣiji Ṣoẹtan ’25, the assistant choreographer of “Hero.”
Modeled after this form, “Hero” also had no script. The cast and crew convened at the theater three days before opening night to develop the production.
In a Q&A session immediately following the performance, choreographer Ogemdi Ude told the audience that her favorite part of theater is its adaptability. While the play was originally envisioned for older audiences, its accessibility to all ages and the presence of younger audience members enhanced the experience.
Gina Rodriguez-Drix ’09, the events and performances manager at the theater, said she hoped “Hero” would bring a “spirit of joy, resilience and resistance” to the stage.
Ali noted a large portion of the creative team holds a marginalized identity. “For us to make a play about joy and triumph and overcoming obstacles is an act of resistance because our system doesn’t want people who look like us to thrive,” Ali said.
The main conflict of “Hero” was a real event in Sotashe’s childhood: having to dress up in a girl’s skirt to perform as a soprano in his school choir. “The act of remembering is a collaborative thing,” Sotashe told the audience as part of the performance. “Can you help me?”
Sotashe then proceeded to draw a box around himself in chalk, speaking about his adolescence and “the many boxes, small or big, that we would put ourselves into or walk away from: to protect ourselves, to pretend like we were a part of something.”
Later, this same chalk box served as a “dressing room” for an intimate, silent scene in which Sotashe tried on the girl’s uniform, grappling with his own journey with gender and queerness.
The first version of “Hero” was performed last year, and this year’s show was a follow-up to the original performance. After the production, the cast and crew collected feedback for a possible next assembly of the play.
Throughout “Hero,” the audience was invited to join the performers onstage in games that members of the creative team would play growing up in South Africa. Over the course of the production, the two performers danced, played hide-and-seek, jumped over ropes and instructed the audience in song. “What’s been really amazing to me about this process is how open the audiences have been to playing,” said Joanna Ruth Evans, the co-creator of “Hero.”
