Mercy stays revenge’s hand : “I have long wanted to create a work that explores the cycle of violence; and the dilemma of survivors who have to choose between the impulse to avenge and the impulse to forgive.” – Yael Farber (South Africa)
Mercy stays revenge’s hand
The Market Theatre in association with the Farber Foundry
MOLORA – Adapted from the Oresteia Trilogy by Aeschylus
Directed by Yael Farber
“I have long wanted to create a work that explores the cycle of violence; and the dilemma of survivors who
have to choose between the impulse to avenge and the impulse to forgive.” – Yael Farber
This is Yael Farber’s acclaimed adaptation of the Oresteia Trilogy by Aeschylus, set in a contemporary
South African context. “Molora” is the seSotho word for “ash”.
Yael Farber’s international credentials include a recent run of her widely praised work Amajuba: Like Doves
We Rise off-Broadway and throughout North America, following runs at London’s West End, the Sydney
Theatre Company of Australia and five additional years of worldwide touring. New projects with the Culture
Project and the Public Theatre of New York City are in development, scheduled for 2008-9,
following tours of Molora through Europe and North America.
Molora weaves together ancient cycles of revenge with recent South African history, portraying the appalling
incidents that came to light at the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in the ’90s. At the
hearings, perpetrators of human rights violations faced their victims and, in exchange for possible amnesty,
gave detailed accounts of their deeds. Farber sets the action of Molora at what might have been a typical
hearing. Clytemnestra, the queen who has murdered her king, Agamemnon, faces her daughter Electra, who
witnessed the act as a child and has long plotted revenge with her brother Orestes. Brutal torture methods
employed by Clytemnestra to extract information on Orestes’ whereabouts, such as the notorious “wet bag”
technique used by the apartheid regime, are re-enacted in the testimony. This dramatic confrontation
between victim and perpetrator was re-enacted thousands of times across South Africa during the course of
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, while the country held its collective breath and watched events
unfold.
In Molora, the ancient Greek context is radically reinvented according to a deeply traditional, rural Xhosa
aesthetic. Farber chose to collaborate with the Ngqoko Cultural Group, who are trained in the ancient art of
split-tone singing. The group also uses traditional musical instruments. This soundscape lends a haunting,
deeply emotive texture to the work.
But unlike the original Oresteia Trilogy, in which the cycle of revenge is fulfilled, Farber has modified the
story to break the cycle of violence, reflecting South Africa’s own transformation in the 1990s.
PRODUCTION INFORMATION
Adapted and directed by: Yael Farber
Assistant Director: Damon Krometis
Lighting Supervisor: Declan Randall
Choreography Assistant: Yana Sakelaris
Executive Producer, Farber Foundry: Thomas Kriegsmann
Production Manager: Catherine Bloch
SA Coordinator: Leigh Colombick
Stage Manager: Motlalepule Makhate
Reworking of classic trilogy opts for what may be a very South African ending
YAEL Farber’s gripping and effective meditation on cycles of revenge, MoLoRa, has finally come to Joburg
four years after its premiere in Grahamstown. Soon it will embark on an international tour that will take it
to the Barbican in London, the Netherlands and the US.
Farber serves as an artistic ambassador of sorts for Africa — her universally significant work is not
embellished with Africanism; it is essentially African, even archetypically so. She is simultaneously
concerned with classical narratives: SeZaR was African Shakespeare; MoLoRa is Aeschylus’s Oresteian
trilogy; she is now working on an adaptation of King Lear set in the Middle East.
The three protagonists at the centre of MoLoRa (molora means ‘ash’ in Sotho) are exceptionally competent.
Sandile Matsheni as Orestes manages a clear, stylised male anger; Jabulile Tshabalala as Elektra is as
bloodthirsty when hysterically vengeful as she is pitiful when clawing at her mother for affection; Dorothy
Ann Gould as Klytemnestra achieves a fragility and humanity that accentuate , instead of opposing, her
brutality.
It is thanks largely to Gould’s success that MoLoRa can depart convincingly from Aeschylus, and Orestes
can choose to spare his mother’s life. Her pleading with him to not become “like me” — empty, violent,
black-hearted — is partly what stays his hand. That being said, the real star of MoLoRa is the chorus. The
play would lack the dazzling artistic vision it achieves if it weren’t for the six women and one man who
surround it. Tsolwana Mpayipheli, the one man, co-founded the Ngqoko Cultural Group in Lady Frere in
1980, and now directs it.
Nofenishala Mvotyo inherited the calling to become a diviner, and is a sought-after praise singer.
Nogcinile Yekani plays all traditional Xhosa bows. Nokhaya Mvotyo is a widower with four children and five
grandchildren, as well as a bow player, overtone singer, and beat dancer. Nopasile Mvotyo is the eldest —
she plays umnibhe (mouth bow), uhadi (percussion bow), and is an overtone singer. Nosomething Ntese is
the group’s jester and a master musician. Tandiwe Lungisa plays bows and jew’s-harp. Together, they
would make Aeschylus long to have been born in the Eastern Cape.
Their solemn presence, formal purity, and mystical engagement with the action on stage makes them
central as well as peripheral. Indeed, their hinting at what the Furies will do to Orestes as revenge for
matricide combines with Gould’s Klytemnestra to change the course of the classical narrative.
The dramatic tension of MoLoRa is created by the seemingly inexorable movement of the son exiled, and
thus saved, by his sister, towards revenging with her his father who was killed by his mother. But the
original cruelty was the father’s: Agamemnon killed Klytemnestra’s baby, then raped and later married
her. Will Orestes become like Agamemnon? Will the cycle of revenge be perpetuated by the slaying of the
mother by her son?
In ancient Greece, Aeschylus answered yes; in Farber’s vision, the answer is no. Her director’s notes
pointing to Palestine, religious fundamentalism, and other revenge cycles, suggests that she thinks South
Africa’s greatest export might be the ability — like that of the chorus — to practise mercy as if it were a
musical instrument.