Market Theatre: I Declare this Building Open

Stopping smoking has not as much changed me as helped me become myself. Nomalanga a DJ for VOWfm who goes under the name Miss Sunshine says my face is more open. Her words should be a declaration at an opening ceremony “Ladies and Gentlemen I declare this face open”

At 9am I am in Killarney Mall at Europa café to meet Philip Miller and by eleven thirty we have finished an enlightening and enjoyable discussion. I drive into town, to Market Theatre, and pick up shots taken by photographer Ruphin Coudyzer who took pictures of John Kani when first he played Othello in South Africa in 60’s….

At 1.30pm I am at 44 Stanley to meet Katarina. We have been facebook friends for an age. Katarina is an Ethiopian adoptee and we immediately declare kinship, we eat and we laugh. We who feel it know it. We who have been through the transracial rapids can sit on the banks of the river and know still waters.

At 3pm I drive up hill to met Sbu an old and long time friend who coincidentally was the DJ at Katarina’s birthday party last week. Sbu and the men of Melville sit out the café and tell loaded jokes to each other and talk about what’s in the press: sbu offers a party on Sunday and I am moved.

Later in the evening at the theatre – this amazing theatre – I walk onto stage and see in the audience Habesha, Habesha people with faces like polished ebony teardrops. They are the workers and business owners of Little Ethiopia. They are here. Ishi. They are here. They are here They are here They are here…


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