As part of his creative process, Athol Fugard - one of the co-creators of The Island, alongside John Kani and Winston Ntshona - found inspiration from Polish theorist Jerzy Grotowski. Grotowski was a firm believer that "theatre [should be] stripped of 'nonessentials' (costumes, props lights, musics, even the playwright)...and left with the one absolutely necessary element: the living actor in [face]-to-face communion with the spectator."
This notion could be considered one of the foundational tenets of devised theatre and - perhaps most importantly - one of the foundational tenets of The Island. As we re-create (rather than re-stage) this production for our own audiences, costume designer Raquel Adorno and scenic designer Yeaji Kim adopt a similar approach, favoring simplicity; symbolism; and design elements that are gestural, atmospheric, and functional.
Check out this behind-the-scenes look at Raquel and Yeaji's designs, the history, and the cultural context transporting audiences to The Island.
Raquel: Growing up in the 1980s, when Apartheid was still around, and then in the 90s, as it was being abolished, I spent my Sunday mornings watching the news on PBS with my dad; my father was an activist and educator who followed the world news closely. He never shielded me from the horrors of the news.
Quite the contrary, he taught me that the only way to change the world was to open your eyes and see what was happening around you. He taught me not to look away from what made me uncomfortable and - as a direct result of that exposure - I used photography, documentaries, news reports, and articles from South Africa during Apartheid as the inspiration for the design of The Island.
Gabby: And these photos were so interesting. For example, throughout most of Nelson Mandela's sentence on Robben Island, prisoners had to wear shorts. South Africa is a part of both the Afrikaner and Dutch-German tradition, but it's also part of the English tradition, and so - in a very European way - shorts are what children wear. For many years, any photo of any of the prisoners, especially images of Nelson Mandela, never showed the prisoners' legs because the Apartheid government knew that there would be violence in the streets if people knew that these prisoners were being degraded and debased as boys.
Raquel: Right, exactly. We spent a lot of time looking at photos of Nelson Mandela during his time there, and documentary footage depicting the stories of other prisoners. Looking at these source images was hugely helpful, and we hope to recreate these uniforms as accurately as possible, while taking some liberties with color and fabrics to accommodate the athleticism of this production and overall mise en scène.
An important part of this play is John and Winston's production of Antigone, so that adds an additional layer to the costuming decisions. What does John's Creon look like? What does Winston's Antigone wear? What would these two men have access to that they could fashion into costumes? How would the history of this land inform what a ruler looks like, and what a princess might look like?
As part of my research process, I watched quite a few documentaries about Robben Island, and the imprisonment and deaths of the Xhosa chiefs haunted me.
Gabby: For context, Robben Island - throughout history, but especially during colonial history - was many different things. It was a leper colony, and it also was the prisoner of war camp for Xhosa chiefs who fought the settler invaders. So, as Raquel says, our attempt to speak to that history is represented in the costuming of John and Winston's Antigone and Creon. Antigone's their approximation of what royalty looks like. What I love about Raquel's designs - and just how thoughtful she is, when approaching dramaturgy in general - is that, when John and Winston perform Antigone at the end of the play, their version of royalty is not Greek royalty and it's not European royalty. It is Xhosa royalty. They use their blankets, they use their cups, and they transform the bits of rags in mopheads into a Xhosa princess and a Xhosa chief, rather than how we might imagine a princess and king. And by doing so, we're put us in conversation with the folks who have been imprisoned on that island before we meet John and Winston.
Raquel: That's the goal for the designs of Antigone and for Creon: evoke this persecuted royalty as a sign of both remembrance and respect.
Yeaji: When Gabby and I discuss this production, she always stresses that it's not a prison play. It's not about the prison. It's about the relationship between these two characters; the love and care. So, to highlight that bond, we wanted to create a room where you watch them - their movement, their actions, and their words - rather than a literal depiction of a cell on Robben Island. We were looking to create something that conveyed the sense that these two men are at the edge of the world, they're totally isolated.
When you research photos of Robben Island, you'll see it's a flat island. It's quiet and peaceful, in its own way, but escape is impossible because of the currents and sea turmoil. So, in our set, we made sure the walls aren't incredibly high because the walls aren't the only barrier. We wanted everything to be more simplistic, more gestural. The whole stage is the island, so to speak, and there's a wall in the back with a window opening. The wall represents Apartheid and racism, generally speaking, and the window gives a sense of what's beyond this island, the future, but it's small - there's no hope. It's despair.
The labor is really the central action in this play. Prisoners had to work in the quarry for years and years - it's incredibly tiresome - so labor is a really important element to this show and the design. We have a joke, actually, that it's the third character in the show. This giant slab is our focal point and, depending on how it tilts (forward or backwards), it can become a burden or it can give you agency.
When the audience walks in and sees the stone slab, it'll be in a flat position like a table. That's the representation of the cell. Around the cell, outside and around, represents what they do: the outdoor labor with the sand.
When we go back inside the prison, in the scene transitions, the slab will be tilting backwards to give a roof and we'll return to the sense of the physical cell. In the later part of the production, when John and Winston put on Antigone, the stone slab will tilt so they can lean against it; this is an opportunity to show their agency in portraying the characters of Creon and Antigone.
And finally, at the end, we'll go back to the flat position where we started the show. Throughout the rehearsal process, we're going to play and use movement to explore how the central action can interact with this mechanism.
I'm super excited, and I'm looking forward to what we'll create together.
Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona’s The Island is on stage at Court Theatre from November 11 – December 4, 2022 → Get Tickets.
Source: Berner, Robert L. “Athol Fugard and the Theatre of Improvisation.” Books Abroad 50, no. 1 (1976): 81–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/40130109.
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Check out these resources and classroom activities to prepare students to see The Island! We're thrilled to offer them as a complement to our Student Matinee program, and we hope they enrich your experience of this production.
We'd love to hear what you think of our Learning Guides! Please complete this brief survey to share your feedback.
| Questions, comments, or concerns? Please contact Kate Wiseman, Education Programs Manager, at katevwiseman@uchicago.edu |
In this activity, students will have the opportunity to select three discussion questions they find intriguing and discuss each in a small group. If desired, a written response to one discussion question of each student’s choice may be incorporated.
This Chalk Talk will help students begin thinking about some of the themes and ideas explored in The Island.
These vocabulary activities will help students develop a deep understanding of the word "colonialism." They may be used together or separately.
These texts and resources explore the history behind The Island, its dramaturgy, and design. Take a look and learn more!
In The Island, John and Winston are rehearsing a 2-man version of Antigone. Check out this background on Antigone or the 2-minute video summary of the play below:
How do you predict the themes and plot of Antigone may play into the story and themes of The Island?
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John and Winston are political prisoners on South Africa’s infamous Robben Island, spending their days toiling at grueling, futile tasks in the prison’s quarry. At night, they secretly rehearse a two-man version of Antigone and find solace and strength in their burgeoning friendship. The Island is at once a sobering glimpse into the social, physical, and psychological wounds of Apartheid; a lesson in the complex work of liberation; and a testament to the transformative power of theatre.
In The Island, John and Winston are rehearsing a 2-man version of Antigone. Check out this background on Antigone or the 2-minute video summary of the play below:
How do you predict the themes and plot of Antigone may play into the story and themes of The Island?
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Arguably one of the most collaborative and exciting ways to create a piece of art, devised work is based on the real-life experiences, feelings, ideas, and reactions of the artists. It's personal. It's immediate. And it's how The Island came to be.
According to the Kennedy Center, devising is "the process of collaboratively creating a new work without a pre-existing script wherein the collaborators are also the performers. In the standard theatre model, a single playwright writes the text and then a director casts actors and selects designers to interpret that text, resulting in a theatre production. With devised theatre, however, the collective artists begin without a script. A devised piece of theatre can literally start with anything: a painting, a song, a real-life event, a novel to adapt, etc."
The article, Devised Theatre: Ten Tips for a Truly Creative Collaboration, offers additional explanation: "From actors to technicians, everyone is involved in the creative process...It’s both an exhilarating and terrifying way to work. [It poses] the challenge of creating a show from scratch, but with this freedom comes a significant catch: there’s no [source] script; no safety net."
This was the process used by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona as they created The Island within the span of fourteen days.
Says Fugard, "[It was] totally collaborative work, you know, the three of us getting together and after a process - four, five, six weeks later - there was a play...I've actually found that actors and their comments and their reactions to moments have helped me see possibilities that weren't there in mind. They weren't there originally, and have actually led to some additional text being written....There were little moments that the two actors enriched for me and helped me develop and fill out." This is devising in its essence.
As a theatre artist, Fugard "was determined to achieve 'a more immediate and direct relationship with [the] audience'" and, for him, devising was a way to do so. Grounding productions in reality makes them more resonant, more moving, for both the performers and the audience alike. And Director and Associate Artistic Director Gabrielle Randle-Bent intends to do the same. "In order for this production to be as alive, as relevant, and as engaging as I know it can be, we have to make it together," she says. "[The Island] is something that should be re-made through the creative process, rather than re-staged; to try to be faithful to the text is actually a kind of infidelity. You have to make it alive for your moment, for the relationship between the two men you’re working with, and for the political stance they’re taking in their society today."
We're looking forward to what Gabby, Ronald L. Conner, Kai A. Ealy, and the rest of the team create. See the final product by attending The Island, onstage at Court from November 11 - December 4 → Get Tickets
Source: Berner, Robert L. “Athol Fugard and the Theatre of Improvisation.” Books Abroad 50, no. 1 (1976): 81–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/40130109.
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The title of The Island is once simple and specific. The island in question is Robben Island, a centuries-old detainment center used for political prisoners (most famously, Nelson Mandela) in Apartheid-era South Africa. It is a physical manifestation of state-sanctioned cruelty, existing at the edge of the world where only birds can come and go as they please.
Here, we share a brief history of Robben Island and its role in the Apartheid system to provide context for Gabrielle Randle-Bent's solo directorial debut at Court, The Island, onstage from November 11 - December 4.
Apartheid refers to the institutionalized system of racial segregation in South Africa that lasted from 1948 until the early 1990s. Under Apartheid, South Africa's majority Black population was unjustly ruled by a white minority. Black citizens had their rights stripped away; were socially and legally treated as second-class citizens; and were subject to near-constant police harassment, arrests, and surveillance. For more information about Apartheid in South Africa, check out this article from the History Channel.
Robben Island is an island located approximately 5 miles off of mainland South Africa. The island itself is small, with an approximate area of 5 square miles. The name, "Robben Island", comes from the Dutch word for "seals" ("zeehonden"), as seals were once common in the surrounding waters.
Originally a Dutch settlement and later a British penal colony, Robben Island served many purposes throughout its history. Between the 17th to the 20th century, it had been (most famously) used as a prison, a hospital for those deemed "socially unfit" or "socially undesirable", and a military base. In The Island, the audience is transported to Robben Island under Apartheid, when it was used by the white minority ruling-class - the Afrikaners - as a maximum-security prison to house, isolate, and punish political dissidents. This is where we meet John and Winston.
Apartheid ended in the early 1990s, and the last prisoners on Robben Island were released in 1991. After that time, it continued to serve as a medium-security prison until 1996. In 1997, it was declared a national monument and was transformed into a museum that still welcomes visitors today. Oftentimes, tours to Robben Island feature tour guides who were either former prisoners on Robben Island themselves or former guards. In 1999, Robben Island was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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