{"id":4123,"date":"2020-06-30T13:01:17","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T12:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=4123"},"modified":"2020-07-01T15:42:37","modified_gmt":"2020-07-01T14:42:37","slug":"woolworths-in-your-earbuds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=4123","title":{"rendered":"Woolworths in your earbuds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Since its\ninception, Juliet Jenkin\u2019s choral play, Woolworths, <\/em>has been staged in\nvenues across the country. This year\u2019s Virtual National Arts Festival marks the\nplay\u2019s debut in its new format as an audio drama. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you haven\u2019t\nalready heard of Woolworths<\/em>, it\u2019s a fast-paced 50-minute study of\ncontemporary middle-class South African whiteness, cleverly masked as satire. A\nchorus of seven takes the form of Karens, Gregs, after-work golfers, SUV\nmotorists, K-Way puffer enthusiasts, rhino-saving warriors, and just about\nevery other kind of white stereotype encountered in SA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a\nsignificant part of Woolworths<\/em>\u2019 staged performance making use of the\npunchy choreography of its chorus, how does the play serve as an audio drama?    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The script,\nwhich resists a coherent narrative, is swift and sharp \u2013 a series of biting,\nwitty, cringe-worthy missives fired off in quick succession \u2013 and is peppered\nwith pervasive verbal fragments: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Ja no, well, hey.\u2019
\u2018This place is going to the dogs, I tell you.\u2019
\u2018Don\u2019t worry, they don\u2019t bite.\u2019
\u2018I fucking love rhinos.\u2019
\u2018Uhm, sorry. Can I just\u2026thank you!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, Woolworth<\/em>s\ntranslates seamlessly into an audio-only work. The chorus maintains a wonderful\ncadence, a collection of voices and personalities dancing around your head, sometimes\nscreaming hysterically, and other times whispering and whining pitifully.\nPerhaps the most intriguing effect of the audio drama format, however, is the\nway it enables us to hear and endure these caricatures of South African\nwhiteness, without ever seeing them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result is\nthat amidst the chuckling and the flinching, Woolworths <\/em>draws attention\nto the kind of whiteness that thrives on obscurity and hides in plain sight. In\nmany cases, the privilege of being present, but not having to be all that\nvisible (think gated communities, anonymous Twitter trolls, high-beamed SUVs with\ntinted windows etc) allows whiteness to avoid a certain accountability to\nitself and to others, as well as escape a general rootedness in reality. Here\u2019s\na deceptively simple scene from about halfway through the play: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSorry, excuse\nme, but your Landrover is parked on my head.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSorry, I can\u2019t\nhelp you now, because I\u2019m not actually here. So ja, if you could, like, not\nlook directly at me, that\u2019d be awesome. If people could acknowledge me, but not\nactually look at me, if they could look at me through a screen, if they could\nflip through me in magazines\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woolworths<\/em> takes the absurdity, the arrogance, the guilt, and the covert violence of everyday whiteness and hangs it out to dry in its razor-wired, jasmine-scented entirety. While the staged version of the play gives us a physical performance to hang these things on (and, possibly, leave them hanging there after we exit the theatre) the audio drama asks audiences to traverse a more nebulous, enduring psychological landscape, all while seated in the relative comfort (or discomfort) of one\u2019s own home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listen to Woolworths\n<\/em>here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Production\ncredits:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writer and Director<\/strong>: Juliet Jenkin
Performers<\/strong>: Alice De Beer, Wynand Ferreira, Alicia McCormick, Kaylee McIlroy, Francesco Nassimbeni, Tazm\u00e9 Pillay and Johann Vermaak.
Sound Production<\/strong>: Pete O\u2019 Donoghue<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since its inception, Juliet Jenkin\u2019s choral play, Woolworths, has been staged in venues across the country. This year\u2019s Virtual National Arts Festival marks the play\u2019s debut in its new format … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[975,1002,974],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4123"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4156,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4123\/revisions\/4156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}