He's not a traditional, concept-driven director... He wants to know what we are, for us to be the people who do the play, to use raw materials we bring, rather than applying materials to us. It was unsettling, but became so liberating, like flying, soaring, sinking into some amazing Jacuzzi.

A moving highlight of the evening was the presentation of "Life-Time Achievement Awards" to no less than 15 stalwarts of our SA stages: Lilian Dube, Smal Ndaba, Phyllis Klotz, John Kani, Winston Ntshona, Fiona Fraser, Wilna Snyman, Michael McCabe, Neels Hansen, Joyce Levinsohn, Nomhla Nkonyeni, Dale Cutts, (who is recovering from a recent stroke), returned exile, Zakes Mokae, and a posthumous award to Dolly Rathebe, which was accepted by her son.

Interview with the actors being directed by Mokae in Road to Mecca.

"Doing a Fugard play with Zakes Mokae is nirvana... other people can talk academically about Fugard, but Zakes developed Fugard's works with Fugard... Mokae is a real actors' director....His approach is organic."

About Road to Mecca.

Zakes is such a jolly fellow and has such deep personal insights into the play and its relevance in contemporary times, that it felt right to plan a 2003 production.
 

Nevada Shakespeare Company brings this vibrant character to life under Zakes Mokae's thoughtful direction. In fact, the outstanding performance just about overcomes some major flaws in the over-indulgent playwriting, creating a satisfying evening of theater...

There's a chaotic sense of two women at major crossroads in their lives, which director Zakes Mokae weaves together beautifully. Their impatience and excitement around each other when Elsa first arrives feels natural and brings out the potential in Fugard's writing...

Luckily, the fluid direction saves the play and makes you look at all that is beautiful about life, even in the midst of all that's perilous in the world around us. More importantly, you leave wanting to learn more about Helen Martins, the sculptures she made, and why creativity can often invoke fear and scorn rather than praise and enlightenment...

 
Photo by Ginger Mikkelsen
 

About the play Blood Knot.

Zach and Morris escape into their game-playing and live in their dreams. But, they ruefully admit, white South Africans "don't like our playing games with their whiteness"; and, they observe, if they ever want to arrest you, "all they need for evidence is a man's dream's."

"No, no, I'm more into directing now," says Mokae during a recent rehearsal. "I leave acting to the actors. I've been acting for too long. It makes sense for me now to move from acting to directing."

He hedges a bit, saying if a good role comes along he'll probably do it. But he seems to have been bitten by the directing bug. "It's about sharing ideas when you direct," Mokae says. "I like to work with actors. Being an actor myself makes it easy."

What isn't easy is the hard work that goes into preparing for a role. Mokae likes to do a lot of table readings and pre-rehearsal work before blocking the action and getting the play on its feet. With the proper preparation, "when they ask you questions in rehearsals, you're able to give them an answer that is satisfactory to them," Mokae says. "It's fun but it's a lot of work."

Part of Dust Devil in Italian.  Just under 10 minutes.

Mokae directing Bryan Harnetiaux´s play National Pastimes.

Mokae is quoted as saying: "It has something to say.. It's about a guy who achieved what he wanted to achieve. For me, apart from the politics, it was interesting because baseball people really get involved in the sport."

photo by Ken White.

There are good actors here [Southern Nevada ]. But we need a theater here and we need it badly," Mokae says.

To that end, he is trying to establish what he calls the Theater Lab, in which there would be not only performances of a variety of material, but also workshops in writing, acting and all aspects of technical theater that he sees as a way to get younger people involved in the arts.

It requires a building for starters, which can be built or an existing building renovated into a theater. Mokae has been scouting for a location and seeking money to get the company started. He figures it will take $250,000 to run the company for the first year.

"It just needs to be pushed a little," he says. "It can be done."

Tlhotlhalamaje has spent more days than he can remember on Eloff Street. When he was coming up with Hugh Masekela, Zakes Mokae and a host of other South African performers, he spent endless nights in jam sessions at the Dorkay House, South Africa's answer to Harlem's Apollo Theater.
 

"In another strong performance in an exceptional cast, actor Zakes Mokae commands attention with an intense conviction to character when ranting about a mythical man who'll bring him riches, his dream of owning his own plantation and an episode in which he confesses to killing a man who made fun of his birth name."

Seven Guitars takes place in 1948, when three musicians are trying to make their way from Pittsburgh to Chicago to cut another record. But for their leader, Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton, the sands of a lifetime have run out.

The seven characters - the musicians, their women and a mysterious neighbor - speak in an eloquent poetic vernacular of the backyard where they come together. The words that Wilson has given them carry both the resonance of their heritage and the cadence of the blues, tangled up in the longing of the spirit. These are people who have done without for too long, and now their needs must be considered. The dialogue is at once simple and profound.

Keith David makes an edgy Barton; Zakes Mokae a mesmerizing presence as Hedley, the Bible-chanting, visionary figure of doom. When they sink more fully into their roles, they will be Tony Award nominees for sure.

A short reference "Yourgrau's play about the making of a black South African terrorist was raw but unforgettable in Eric Simonson's epic staging, brought to Broadway by Chicago's Steppenwolf troupe. K.Todd Freeman glowed in the title role, Zakes Mokae excelled as several elders...".

A review of The Song of Jacob Zulu.

For the most part the characters lack depth, are more types than individuals, and the brief scenes that recount Jacob's growing involvement with rebellion are little more than illustrative moments. These limitations would be fatal to a realistic political play, but that was never what playwright Tug Yourgrau intended to write. He wanted a musical chorus of some kind and that happily is what he got when Ladysmith Black Mambazo joined Yourgrau and director Eric Simonson to create the work at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre in 1992... In a few cases--notably Zakes Mokae, who plays Jacob's austere but loving father, the man who betrays him, and a strange tramp-prophet who tries to persuade him to return to his family---individual actors stand out from the company, but for the most part they provide the setting for Freeman's Jacob and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

 

Are you still working with Zakes Mokae?

Oh, yes. He called me from Los Angeles a few days ago and left a message on my machine. Zakes is very much part of my life. I've just spoken of celebrating, and your question gives me a chance to share with you one of the greatest celebrations I've ever had. Some twenty-nine years ago, after an apprenticeship, I found my voice and realized what sort of theatre I wanted to do with a play called The Blood Knot. It involves two characters, two brothers, one light-skinned, one dark-skinned. Nobody wanted to do that play except me and an actor called Zakes Mokae. Neither of us had much theatre experience, but we sorted out the traffic, we learned the lines, we got together a few props, and we did that play in an attic space in downtown Johannesburg. That was the start of it for Zakes and myself. And I had this extraordinary experience, three or four years ago, of being on a Broadway stage: the same play, the same Zakes Mokae. In a business like theatre, which is not known for the longevity of its relationships, the amount of love that prevails among its practitioners, that really was something. But then again, you see, so typical of South Africa and its capacity to serve up paradoxes. Yes, Zakes Mokae is and will always be a part of my life.

Nongogo also gave Zakes Mokae his first real chance at acting. He was to become an influence, especially when he played with Athol in the ground-breaking The Blood Knot.

Immediately, however, he had to decide whether to direct or to play Boesman. In South Africa he had encompassed both, but in London the strain might be too great. He chose to direct Zakes Mokae, who had taken over the role from James Earl Jones in the Off-Broadway production, would be Boesman, freshly challenged by Athol's direction. Besides, Zakes's blackness, and his performance potentially so different from Athol's, would in turn challenge the white actress, Yvonne Bryceland, a magnificent Lena in the South African production.

When the play opened in Johannesburg, after its New York premiere, Joseph Lelyveld compared the two Sams--Zakes Mokae in New York and John Kani in Johannesburg. "Mr. Mokae's Sam was a large and complex presence on the stage, self-liberated and expansive. Mr. Kani's Sam is taut and inward, strained when he laughs and never, it seems, unmindful of the tense racial context." I will have to take Lelyveld's description of Kani on faith, but his account of Mokae's performance is accurate enough--and yet not complete. The slightly chubby Mokae, who danced with such grace at the beginning of the play, moved with the same precision at the end, but with leaden reluctance in his steps. "Little man you're crying," the song says, and Vaughan is singing for both Sam and Hally.

Yet at the same time Pogrund introduced him to a remarkably talented group of people in Sophiatown, including Lewis Nkosi, Bloke Modisane, Can Themba, Ken Gampu, and, most important of all, an untrained bit-part film actor, Zakes Mokae. Fugard cast Mokae as a township thug in No-Good Friday, and then wrote the role of Blackie, Queenie's crippled and violent hanger-on in Nongogo, especially for him, and this, Fugard said, "was the start of one of the really rich working relationships of my life" (Benson "Keeping" 78).

Fugard and Mokae actually met through the nonracial artists' equity association, the Union of South African Artists--or Union Artists, as it became when it acquired Dorkay House, the ex-clothing factory where township talent was presented before mainly white audiences in Johannesburg during the late 1950s. Johannesburg-born and bred, Mokae had attended St. Peter's Anglican school in Rosettenville, where he came to know the Superintendent, Father Trevor Huddleston, on whom Father Higgins in No-Good Friday was modeled, and who had formed a jazz band to which Mokae, an accomplished tenor saxophonist, belonged as a founder member (Hugh Masekela was another).

Cast and production details various Mokae plays.

An interview of Leelai Demoz, who worked with Mokae on The Song of Jacob Zulu.

""I learned a lot from [Mokae] and he liked what I did as an actor."

Mokae on singer Gladys Knight "It's the way she handles a tune, some people rush into a tune, she takes her time."

Includes a cartoon of Mokae by Al Hirschfeld.

The South Africa Development Fund is a charitable foundation committed to social change in South Africa. It works with community-based organizations to provide financial and technical support to communities disadvantaged by decades of apartheid policies.

Mokae is a member of the US Advisory Board.

One of South Africa's most famous black actors, Mokae's quiet strength, charm and resilient good humor have animated the searing theatrical productions (The Blood Knot, Boesman and Lena) of his white countryman, Athol Fugard with whom he founded the radical theater group, the Rehearsal Room in the 1950s.

After essaying the politically volatile role of Father Kani in Cry Freedom (1987), Zakes Mokae found it necessary to move to America permanently.

Director Zakes Mokae creates wonderful pacing that carries the viewer through Troy's stumbles and starts. He always remains true to the emotional core of the work, letting the shared emotions communicate the essence of the story, without resorting to theatricality. Mokae also draws fine performances from Martha Watson, Leain Vashon, Steven McKenzy, Cameron Miller and AnSherae Devine.

With James Earl Jones and Zakes Mokae.

Mokae's astrological analysis, in French.

Links on the films

A teaching resource, looking at how the film can help.

"Zakes Mokae, the cabbie, tells Ben du Toit to help ´if it makes you feel good.´ Is white guilt the motivating factor behind du Toit's actions? Or is the cabbie being unfair?"

and "Zakes Mokae (cabbie) says ´Hope's a white word.´ If so, why do so many, like Nelson Mandela, struggle for so long?"

On the film, plus down the page, and worth looking for, details of Mokae. I have used some of the information from this on the site:

In a career that has spanned four decades, Mokae has courageously portrayed characters and presented theatrical productions internationally that have examined apartheid, including starring in the features A Dry White Season and Sir Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom. His American stage appearances include the Broadway productions The Song of Jacob Zulu, which brought him a 1993 Tony nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play, Master Harold... and the Boys for which he won the 1982 Tony Award, later recreating his work for the PBS production, and A Lesson From Aloes. His off-Broadway and regional productions include starring roles in An Attempt at Flying, The Cherry Orchard, Fingernails Blue as Flowers, Boesman and Lena, The Last Days of British Honduras and Trial of Vessey.

The most impressive performance though goes to Zakes Mokae. He has a truly awesome presence, one that convinces that he has no qualms about torturing political prisoners on a regular basis, and that he really could capture your soul and use it for his own bidding.

One of Craven's most experimental projects, a mainly successful attempt to fuse political realism with surrealistic horror. Certainly the best zombie movie in years for traditionalists who prefer the subtler non-flesh eating type. Harking back to the creepy atmosphere of early zombie classics like White Zombie and I Walked With A Zombie.

Richard Stanley's direction is intense and subtle, juggling the staples of a horror film with an examination of a country and people who have been scarred by racism, war and sexism. His female protagonist in fleeing from an abusive relationship is seeking liberation in the wasteland whereas the black policeman (a wonderful performance from Zakes Mokae) is a character already dead, destroyed by the destruction of his family in a pointless war. In any shortlist of the best South African films of the last decade Dust Devil deserves a place at the top.

Watch trailers from Zakes Mokae films.