THE STORY: A bus transporting a group of international Red Cross workers through the township of Soweto, on a fact-finding tour, is bombed and many of its passengers killed. In the ensuing chaos one survivor, Lydia De Jager, a white woman in her forties, escapes and is sheltered by Simon Kgoathe (a Sowetan in his late forties, early fifties). This single compassionate act may doom him—a fact he quickly realizes. Any hope of utilizing his meager options are thwarted firstly, by Lydia’s fear and her recklessness; then by his discovery that she is a South African, by events outside and, finally by the intrusion of a young black man, Sipho, who may or may not be a government informer and who is also urgently in need of Simon’s help. As Simon tries desperately to survive in the increasingly dehumanized environment of a country without hope and a township seething with rage, he strives also to hold onto his humanity. Isolated in what is, for Lydia, both a fragile haven and a frightening cage, these two people, so vastly different in character and experience, struggle through mistrust and prejudice towards a tenuous understanding. As the night progresses, Simon’s main hope of survival becomes his secret underground “cubby-hole.” But, from Sipho’s entrance, events spin out of control and the play is propelled towards a powerful and moving conclusion.
This powerful drama set in the black South Africa township of Soweto, on the edge of change, centers on the fate of a black man and a white woman thrown together by force of circumstance.
“Her writing is beautiful, compassionate and philosophical, and her play works extraordinarily well…” —Stanford Daily.
“Ross develops an exchange between the two characters that is at once compelling and somewhat comic.” —Bay Reporter.
