CREATING Secret Valley of the Great Kings, a new theatre production premiering at the Playhouse Loft Theatre in September, has been something of a labour of love for Menzi Mkhwane.
Set in Africa during the 1400s, it tells the story of a young girl named Kgotso, who leaves her homeland in search of a new home for her newborn son.

When she arrives at her destination, a strange oracle tells her the destiny of her child; a revelation that threatens to change her entire life and possibly even the future of the continent.

“I started working on it a year ago,” Mkhwane, who has been juggling writing duties with his appearance in Greg Homann and Ralph Lawson’s A Voice I Cannot Silence, based on the life and work of Alan Paton, at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.

“Initially, I had planned to stage a work in Grahamstown, but I didn’t get enough funding to go ahead. Then one day I was at my dad’s [celebrated South African actor Bheki Mkhwane] house and he advised me to read and do research on African conflict. I went back and wrote for three months, coming up with the concept we now have.

“The play speaks to the violence and civil wars in Africa, married with a storytelling parable. When I started, I had a naive approach. I thought I was writing a play with black and white issues, but I soon found that things were a lot more complex and that there are a lot of grey areas.”

Mkhwane, who began his theatrical journey as a student at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) drama department, has appeared in a host of plays and television shows, both at home and abroad.

He was in a production of Oliver Twist, which was translated into Dutch and directed by Jolanda Van der Spoel from Holland. The show ran for three months from October 2010 to January 2011 in Holland.

On his return to South Africa, he performed a two-hander with his father, Belly of the Beast, directed by German-based director and writer Rob Klarmanwhich, and staged at the Playhouse Loft Theatre.

“Following this experience, I worked on my own play alongside Sabelo Ndlovu titled Pockets of Knowledge in 2011, which was nominated for best new South African script at the Durban Theatre Awards,” he said.

“In 2012, we created another piece together called Looking into the Abyss. This production was invited to the Musho Theatre Festival and won the audience award. Later the same year I was cast as a vulture in the internationally acclaimed Horn of Sorrow, written by Nicholas Ellenbogen and produced by Sue Clarence.”

Mkhwane also appeared in Zabalaza on Mzansi Magic; appeared in Bheki Mkhwane’s Have We Been Heard; and wrote and performed in Last Cow Standing, which was nominated for best new South African script and best solo performance in the Durban Theatre Awards. The script went on to win a writing award at the Imbewu script readings at the first Cape Town Fringe Festival.

Mkhwane is also appearing in a new South African film, The Mime Artist, which will be screened on M-Net and screened at film festivals around the world.

“I was also privileged to collaborate with internationally acclaimed writer and theatre-maker Neil Coppen and a team of other writers in the Fuleni Project, where we wrote and staged a theatre piece informing community members in Zululand about the dangers of having a mine near living areas,” he said.

Looking ahead, he will be rejoining his cast-mates, Lawson and Clare Mortimer, in A Voice I Cannot Silence, which is being staged at the Hilton Arts Festival in September. The play highlights the invaluable contribution made by the author of Cry, The Beloved Country who was, in the words of Douglas Livingstone, a “lighthouse in the South African twilight” during the dark decades leading up to the country’s constitutional democracy.

Paton’s internationally recognised gifts of lyric verse, evocative prose and vibrant storytelling are combined to create a richly dramatic portrait. The play focuses on his years as principal of Diepkloof Reformatory, the “toughest black borstal in the Southern Hemisphere”. Here he introduced daring reforms that brought him into conflict with the architect of apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd.

His position as president of the Liberal Party led to harassment and a 10-year period during which his passport was taken away by the apartheid government. It also deals with his indomitable belief in and daunting struggle for human rights, and the complexities of his personal relationships.

“Everything I have done so far has spearheaded not only my acting experience but, most importantly, my writing as I am not only acting but developing my writing of plays, short stories, essays and novels,” said Mkhwane.

NEED TO KNOW
SECRET Valley of the Great Kings will be staged at the Playhouse Loft Theatre in Durban from September 2 to 6 at 7.30 pm. Tickets are R80 (R40 students and R20 high school pupils) at Computicket. After each show there will be a chance to speak to the cast and its writer-director about the play. “We will be unpacking some of the issues that relate to violence against foreign nationals,” said Menzi Mkhwane. “We will also be having schools and tertiary institutions coming over for matinees and will conduct post show discussions about the content, structure and production process of the play.”