Meter

Issue date: 3/1/07 Section: Arts & Culture

TSU students Aaron Rosebud (left), and Tony Insignares (right), appear in the Department of Communication's version of Sizwe Bansi is Dead. (Tricia Kelley)

Sizwe Bansi is Dead is a two-part play that focuses on the everyday struggles of black men set in apartheid South Africa.

Blacks struggled for human dignity, faced frustration, race relations and the African oppression that abides by the apartheid system, which started with the Daniel François Malan Administration in 1948.

The Dutch colonizers of South Africa set up a system of separateness, a policy of segregation with political and economic discrimination that denied the majority Africans their basic human rights and means
of survival.

Blacks who lived in the South Africa apartheid system had to carry a validated passbook that had to be shown each time the white authorities required them.

In TSU's version of the play, Sizwe Bansi, portrayed by Tony Isiginares, wrestles with the idea of assuming a dead man's identity,
Robert Zwelinzima.

Bansi finds himself at a point in his life, where he has no job to survive and therefore, has no way to provide for his wife and four children.

One of the remarkable parts in this play begins with the character, Styles, portrayed by Nnaemeka 'Chuck' Mosieri. Mosieri, a senior theater major from London, creates a one-man play for an hour that was extraordinary.

Mosieri plays several characters so the audience would actually feel how blacks were treated; but then on the other hand, he plays a white man, as if an overseer, that abids over the black man, who they
disliked. His performance is refreshing to see as he puts on an outstanding display of acting talent.

In the second part of the play, Bansi talks with his friend Buntu, portrayed by Aaron Rosebud, about assuming another man's identity. Insignares, a senior theater major from Nashville, is an overpowering
actor, but in this play his facial expressions took away from his acting abilities.

Rosebud, a senior was outstanding and energetic throughout his skit. His African language was very believable, sensual and passionate.

This play was creatively amusing but yet kept one on the edge of their seats. The acting abilities were outstanding for this play.

But at moments, the stage lightning was out of focus, because several actors would walk and act at the end of the stage in the dark, which was not suppose to happen

Dancers portrayed an overall flavor of African village life in two separate sessions.

Sizwe Bansi is Dead was first performed on Oct. 8, 1972, at The Space, Cape Town, South Africa and was directed by Athol Fugard. This play was on last performed on TSU campus in the Tennessee Performing Arts
Center Cox in the Lewis Theatre. Patrick Idoye, professor of commnications and theater, directed it.

Madelyn Ragland