Pieces of Me, playing at the Baxter Studio until July 27, is not a production that needs explaining. This one-woman show does not need a review translating words or unpacking little cultural nuances to reveal the beauty and the pain. It is real. It is what happened. We witnessed it.
We should not be surprised as we see Bo Peterson telling different stories as she inhabits the different skins of her family members. This is what apartheid did. It made people strangers to each other based on the tone of their skin or the curl in their hair. Inevitably, it tore families apart.
In one especially brutal scene she is her own grandmother sitting in the distance watching and longing to hold the grandchildren who are “lucky” enough to be living on the other side of the fence, passing as white people.
It should not really surprise us, but it does. We are shocked by the story, as if we are hearing it for the first time.
It is especially shocking because they are Bo’s own stories. The coloured aunties she brings to life are her aunties. They are the family she didn’t know about before she heard, at the age of 19, that her father was not a white orphan, a role he had played so convincingly all her life. He was a fair-skinned coloured guy who, with the support of his mother, had escaped the indignity and the limitations of being a brown person under apartheid.
But he was never really 100% part of the world he inhabited. He would often wait in the car or sit somewhere quietly, reading or listening to the radio, in those moments when everyone else was running on the beach, rolling on the grass, being their uninhibited and uninhabited selves.
We can only imagine how he had to watch himself in every moment, terrified that something might reveal itself. A turn of phrase or a scrap of a childhood memory might slip out somehow and threaten his life, his love and the family that was “illegal” in the apartheid state.
We can only guess at the terror he felt when his children were being born that they might come out revealing his blackness. Somehow, they didn’t. So the show went on …
Bo is Daddy’s Girl in another way, she can inhabit someone else’s skin so intensely and so authentically that you really wouldn’t know that it is not her own.
What began as a solo show has been expanded, with her cousin, the musician Christopher Petersen, joining her on stage.
In addition to his skill as a bass player in the fields of pop, jazz and ballroom, Christopher is known for his work guiding the next generation of musicians. He helped to establish the Jazz Yard Academy in Bonteheuwel, an initiative aimed at uplifting young people through music. He also played a key role for a number of years in selecting and preparing South African teen musicians for the World’s Children’s Prize Foundation.
Bookings via Webtickets.
Even if Pieces Of Me doesn’t need an explanation, it demands interrogation, begs for attempts at a deeper understanding. We love the idea of panel discussions after upcoming shows be facilitated by the following luminaries:
Tuesday July 16: Jonathan Jansen, Author and Distinguished Professor of Education at Stellenbosch University
Thursday July 18: Nadia Kammies, Author and Occupational Therapist
Tuesday July 23: actress Quanita Adams
Thursday July 25: Laurie Nathan, Professor of Mediation at the University of Notre Dame in the US
There will also be a performance at the Homecoming Centre on July 20, with proceeds going to District Six Museum.
Bookings via Webtickets.