Ottawa Peace Calendar* September 1987
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Ottawa Peace Calendar * September 1987 |
An Interview with Mark Foss
Mark Foss is an Ottawa Freelancer
Separate Development, a play about South Africa which runs September 9 - September 26 at the Great Canadian Theatre Company, is designed to raise political rather than artistic questions.
Last February, after TREE Theatre presented a staged reading of the play, the audience asked the author—local writer Séan Corbett—about the South African situation. "They wanted to know, for example, if the pass laws were still in effect," says fifty-six year old Corbett. That's the kind of response Corbett is hoping to generate during the play's run this month.
Separate Development was not originally intended as a serious play, or even a play about apartheid. Corbett was seeking a readily understood conflict and South Africa came to mind. When he attempted to inject his usual element of farce into the writing, he found it didn't work.
"I couldn't play the farcical scene, Corbett explains. "When I write farcically, the (underlying) intention is very serious, but I couldn't maintain that kind of control." Separate Development became instead an intense drama about racial tensions in a South African fish plant.
Structured as a flashback, the play opens with the white boss of the plant wrapped in trawl-fishing line with hooks embedded in his skin. The play then backtracks to explore the roots of the struggle.
"I don't see the struggle in South Africa being terribly different from the Central American struggle or, in a much more refined way, than the struggle here in Canada," he says.
For Corbett, the struggle lies between the powerless and the powerful; workers, whether middle class or blue collar, versus the dynamics of the economic system. In Separate Development, the three non-white characters—two blacks and one coloured—have varying degrees of power, but are ultimately subservient to the white boss, an immigrant from England.
Corbett researched the South African situation by speaking to South Africans living in Canada, reading fiction and plays by native authors as well as studying government yearbooks, African National Congress literature, and history books.
Keeping up with developments is difficult since apparent improvements to the system are couched in contradiction. "Laws are being rescinded to meet foreign demands," Corbett says. "The pass laws were rescinded but only in the sense that everyone carries a pass now, not just colored and blacks." And while blacks and whites can now marry, they cannot live in the same house.
The playwright has been interested in social issues most of his life. In fact, the Corbett family emigrated from the U.S. to Nova Scotia in 1969 because of growing militarism in the States. Armed with a Master of Fine Arts in art history and painting, Corbett tried to continue teaching in the Maritimes but found he was overqualified.
The family turned to farming for the next twelve years until Corbett had a heart attack. While recovering, he discovered a new talent: writing. He has won various awards for his short fiction and plays. Since moving to Ottawa about eighteen months ago with his family, he has devoted most of his time to writing. The GCTC production is,the first full production of Separate Development.
Converted June 17, 2002 - Lg
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