There was a short, ginger-blonde, slightly plump boy in primary school who also suffered the indignity of an unfortunate surname.\u00a0He was continually picked on and never given any credence. Needless to say, he spent most of his school breaks alone.<\/p>\n
He once told me he wanted to become an astronaut \u2013 a pretty far-out idea in ’80s isolated South Africa. I’m glad that although I thought he was being somewhat ambitious, I was more encouraging than derisive.\u00a0I could’ve tried harder to befriend him though, he was an amiable enough guy, although given the way he was bullied, understandably reclusive.
\nGod, the awfulness of children. I sometimes wonder what happened to him, if he managed to shrug off the psychological effect of being the appointed grade dunce and became a confident, successful adult.<\/p>\n
I also wonder, if we had had the Xboxes and Playstations loaded with violent games, the appallingly easy access to brutality and pornography available through an internet connection, and cyber-bullying on Facebook, whether he might have retreated into warped chat rooms and, fueled by predatory supporters and the glorification of violence, been tempted to take violent revenge upon his young tormentors.<\/p>\n
Since the internet generation has come of age there’s certainly a significant number of such incidents, the Columbine killings being the most well-known.\u00a0We have our home-grown teen killers too, with school stabbings occurring on a weekly basis in Cape Town alone.<\/p>\n
More sensationally, six years ago a matriculant went on the rampage at Nic Diederichs Technical High School in Krugersdorp, killing a 16-year-old fellow pupil and injuring another, as well as stabbing two gardeners with a 60cm-long sword.<\/p>\n
This attack appears to form the basis of Kate Liquorish’s play Foursight<\/em><\/a>, which explores what may have motivated the school boy to become a murderer. Using the child’s mother, a teacher, his friend, and a narcissistic matric girl who was acquainted with him and girlfriend to one of his tormentor’s, we are given insight into just what it might feel like to be misunderstood and bullied.<\/p>\n Liquorish is a consummate actor, a fact she proved superbly in the demanding play My Name is Rachel Corrie<\/em>, and comfortably plays the four characters in this play, particularly the disaffected teenager Dwayne, and the self-involved high school girl. Her different accents do slip a bit though and could do with more work.<\/p>\n She draws us in, but attention started to slip toward the last quarter of the play as the character switches become predictable. We’ve seen this technique before, there’s nothing new here in the presentation of the story. Neither the structure nor the storyline hold much in the way of surprise.<\/p>\n Director Kyla Davis takes no wrong steps, but treads a path too well-worn, placing too much of the load on Liquorish’s ability to spin a story which tell us pretty much what we already know or suspect. The empathy Liquorish manages to create for someone who slashed his school mates with a sword is the most surprising element of the work. It is almost, but not quite enough.<\/p>\n Foursight<\/em> needs something else to give it oomph. It lulls us too much and requires a bit of staccato. Perhaps brief bursts of images of the violence that was enacted, like a movement caught in a strobe-light \u2013 similar to the one flash of our off-stage character we see right at the beginning. Yes. More of that.<\/p>\n The trick is to accomplish this without making us endure blackouts. It can be done though, and would elevate this play significantly.<\/p>\n Both these theatre-makers are young and more than able, they’re just not being very brave.<\/p>\n Foursight is on at the City Hall during the Cape Town Fringe until 4 October, check the programme<\/a> for details.<\/p>\n — Steve Kretzmann<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There was a short, ginger-blonde, slightly plump boy in primary school who also suffered the indignity of an unfortunate surname.\u00a0He was continually picked on and never given any credence. Needless … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[410,442],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}