Imagine this, its the 1970’s in South Africa where young black prisoners are secretly brought together to create a play about what it is like to live incarcerated in their country because of apartheid. As they developed the play they realized all of South Africa was a prison. They rehearsed their play without scripts just in case the SA authorities found them they could immediately break into song and dance… “no this isn’t a play boss, we’re just playing around!”
The term “apartheid”, an Afrikaans word, derived from the French term “mettre à part”, literally translated to “separating, setting apart.” Apartheid, an official South African policy initiated in 1948 is founded on the idea of separating people based on racial or ethnic criteria.
Last year on July 29, 2024 the first ever recording of the play was produced by PlayCo at the Africa Center in Harlem, New York.
PlayCo and The Africa Center, in association with the National Black Theatre, present Survival, an inter-generational reading featuring two of the play's original creators.
A product of Workshop '71, the first interracial theatre company in South Africa, Survival was devised in a highly physical, experimental style under conditions of radical uncertainty and repression. Launched shortly before the 1976 student uprisings, the play's searing, irreverent tone captured carceral life during Apartheid and tapped into the collective spirit shared among Black South Africans. Touring extensively in turbulent times, Survival was shut down by the army mid-performance in Soweto, and in 1977 invited to tour California. Shortly after, the play was banned in South Africa, and the cast remained in the US in exile.
The event will reunite Fana Kekana and Seth Sibanda, two members of the original Workshop '71, and will include a post-show conversation with artists, South African community leaders, and the audience facilitated by Jonathan McCrory, National Black Theatre's Executive Artistic Director.
I know this story well as it touched my life deeply 1976-1977 when we helped to get the actors of Survival out of South Africa to tour the play in the US. I created the staging, ran the lights and toured with the actors up and down the west coast from the Mexican border to the Canadian border.
When it was discovered a few years ago that the play had toured the West Coast of the US the question was asked if it was ever recorded. We had footage of rehearsals when they first arrived in the US but the full production was never filmed. This then led to the recording you see here of the stage reading. Below you’ll find two posts revealing the journey along the way to arrive with this story and recording traversing 50 years of Survival.
I am ever so grateful to the team and original actors who brought Survival back to life to make sure the play that never was, was and is about… Survival.
Survival
The 1977 documentary by David Fanning, “A Question of Survival” is featured in the video above along with segments from sharing my history bringing the play Survival to the west coast of North America.
Context is everything…
So here we are now in 2025 wondering what in the world is going on and how will we survive the onslaught!
As synchronicity would have it with the release of the filming of Survival we are witnessing another foray into desired forms of Apartheid and racist antics around the world.
Ebrahim Rasool, who served as South Africa's ambassador to the United States, was expelled by the Trump administration on March 14, 2025. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Rasool persona non grata following remarks in which Rasool criticized President Donald Trump and his allies, including Elon Musk (link to Musk’s family history and SA roots), accusing them of promoting white supremacy.
The expulsion occurred amid escalating diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and South Africa. Earlier, President Trump had criticized South Africa's land expropriation policies and issued an executive order suspending aid to the country, alleging anti-white discrimination.
To top it off President Donald Trump has nominated Leo Brent Bozell III as the next U.S. ambassador to South Africa. Bozell is a conservative media critic and the founder of the Media Research Center, an organization dedicated to highlighting perceived liberal biases in the media. He is also known for his strong pro-Israel stance.
This nomination comes at a time of strained diplomatic relations between the United States and South Africa. Tensions have escalated due to disagreements over South Africa's stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict and U.S. allegations of racial discrimination against white South Africans.
Bozell has a history of opposing the African National Congress (ANC) during the 1980s. In 1987, while working with the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), Bozell joined a coalition opposing the Reagan administration's engagement with the ANC, labeling it a terrorist organization. He expressed pride in being part of the "Coalition Against ANC Terrorism.”
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