MILK & HONEY REVISITED

Performed by Alfred Motlhapi and Billy Langa, with musical direction and additional choreography by Nhlanhla Mahlangu, Milk & Honey Revisited is an experimental expansion of the award-winning 2013 Market Theatre Laboratory play Milk & Honey. The play was the guest performance for Season 7 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea and was also performed at The Centre in November 2019 as part of the For Once programme.

Through expanding on the closing solo performance of the original 2013 play, the Khayelihle Dom Gumede-directed Milk & Honey Revisited merges physical and musical performance with spoken word in order to further explore the central question of land and identity in contemporary South Africa.

A play in recognition of the 100 years that had passed since the implementation of the 1913 Land Act, Milk & Honey told the story of a young and successful man who had lost his way, leaving ancestry and spirituality behind, and with no rootedness to the land in which he was born. In Milk & Honey Revisited, extracts of this original tale are unearthed and expanded upon, in particular the closing solo originally performed by Motlhapi, now reworked as a duet through the collaborative inputs of Langa.

Milk & Honey Revisited is a play that comes to life through its use of song and dance – Tswana traditional dance merges with contemporary interpretative movement as well as striking duets – but it also prizes language. The writing is rich and immersive, while the shifting narrative point of view held by Motlhapi and Langa lends the play a distinctly folktale-like quality.

Equal parts conceptual and experimental, Milk & Honey Revisited frequently breaks away from its own structure in order to analyse the various scenes and components that comprise it – “It’s a lovely scene! Land, gender, it’s all there!” they say to each other. Or, “It’s Dadaism, we are on the cutting edge, man! If you want theatre with a capital ‘T’ go to fukken Montecasino!” In this way, the revisiting of Milk & Honey happens in real-time as Motlhapi and Langa regularly break character to analyse and unpack the scenes they’ve just performed.

Milk & Honey Revisited is a decidedly self-aware performance that embraces play and collaboration in order to both build upon and reconsider the original play. The choreography is key, too. At times it is slight, a tentative and delicate balance and twirl, dancing as if on a knife’s edge. Other times, it is deliberately absurd, channeling and challenging notions of futility and embodied history. Finally, there is the dance with the sand – a vital scene. It is a dance that gestures towards or yearns for a rootedness in the land, in one’s own identity, full of twisting, turning and falling, working all the while to seek out a place in the world.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

PERFORMERS | Alfred Mothlapi & Billy Langa
WRITER & DIRECTOR | Khayelihle Dominique Gumede
CHOREOGRAPHERS | Nhlanhla Mahlangu & Alfred Mothlapi in collaboration with Billy Edward Langa
MUSIC DIRECTOR | Nhlanhla Mahlangu