Hi, I'm Jessye Lapenn, Chargé d'Affaires for the
U.S. Mission in South Africa, and the host of our
video series, Meet the AlumnU.S.
Today, I'm at the iconic Market Theatre in Joburg, and I'm going to
chat with the Market's CEO, Ismail Mahomed, also an
alumni of the U.S. government's International
Visitor Leadership Program, or the IVLP.
Come on, let's go see him.
Ismail, tell me how you got interested in theatre first of all?
I grew up in Lenasia, in the south of Johannesburg, in what is a
very conservative Indian community with no music,
theatre or dance education as part of the curriculum,
but I grew up at a very interesting time. I was in
matric in 1976, when television was being
introduced in South Africa when Soweto was going up in
flames, when theatre was still segregated at that
particular time, the desegregation of theatre
only happened in 1978, two years after The Market
Theatre opened, but through informal programing within
the community, particularly youth programing, we engaged
with poetry, music, theatre and dance. I was teaching in
the eighties, during the years of the education
boycotts when the entire educational system had
almost come to a standstill. Children were outside on the
streets, and as teachers we felt that we needed to
engage them meaningfully. I ended up taking students to
the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, and of
course when The Market Theatre opened in '76,
that was a wonderful way for me to bring young people to
the theatre, to have post-performance
discussions, and to just understand, that learning
went beyond a classroom environment, and that
theatre held an enormous power, to bring young people
together. The fact that we lived in separate
communities, but when we walked into this particular
space, we engaged with people of color, we could
sit right next to them, and we could laugh and cry at
the same thing, and there was an enormous amount t of
magic to that. For me, that was where the new country
was going to be born, in the darkness of this particular
auditorium, when actors were on stage, and that for me was the entry point into The Arts.
One of the benefits of the IVLP program,
was being able to go to an institution
like La Mama, and to see a theatre that was deeply
rooted in New York, that had a social consciousness, but
also had a simplicity about it, one that we could
emulate in our country, particularly in communities
where we needed to start off theatres.
1995, the U.S. Mission selected you to participate in the
International Visitor Leadership Program, the IVLP.
What was that like? It was mind-blowing in the
sense that, for the first time, I really was engaging
with the world that I had read about, a world that we
talked about at school, a world who's politics we
even questioned sometimes, but I think the key factor
for me around that particular exchange program,
was the value of person-to-person engagement
that I had, and I think the power of any kind of
cultural exchange, or academic exchange, is the
people-to-people relationship that you build.
What would be your advice to the next and the next
generation of exchange visitors, whether on the
IVLP, or the other U.S. government sponsored
programs? The advice I would give to anyone going on an
exchange program is, do some research about the country
you are visiting, do some research about the
organizations you would like to see, but have a
completely open mind, about what you are going to
experience. Understand the things that you want to
challenge, and be courageous enough to have those
conversations, because there are going to be people on
the other side, who will want to engage with you, who
may agree with you on some things, but disagree with
you on other aspects, but keep a completely open mind.
As the CEO of The Market Theatre now, how do you
think about the future of this institution, the
theatre of struggle which has been so important
as a locus of desegregation, and also a driver of
discussion? Our specific focus is around young people
because we believe that if we can reach out to the
young people, we will reach out to their parents, if we
reach out to the parents, we reach out to an entire
community, and that's the way we're moving forward.
We've engaged an artistic residency group, one that is
incredibly socially engaged and has done an enormous
amount of work in the Hillbrow area, knows it very
very intimately, and is socially conscious. The
other is an arts-driven group, that has really good,
strong artistic output, and we feel the merger between
of the two of them will be the right kind of
partnership that we need, to drive that institution into success.