In Memoriam

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2007-07-16

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Flynn’s career spanned more than forty years and he was celebrated as much for his serious theatrical roles as for his comedy. His role as Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman garnered him every available Best Actor Award for that year. In all, Bill won 13 Best Actor Awards. He also won the Dublin Critics Award as well as a Golden Entertainer Award. Bill won a Best Screenplay Award for writing Saturday Night at the Palace. One of his most well-loved characters was Tjokkie in the hit comedies Heel Against the Head and Running Riot. He was also a talented singer and sang everything from comedy opera to rock ’n roll. After his years with Vinnie and the Viscounts, his next band, The Rock Rebels, developed a committed group of followers.

It seems surreal to be writing an obituary for a man who was so vibrant that his character and unique personality have become a South African archetype. It was with a deep sense of sadness that I asked a number of people in the theatre and film world to pay their respects to Bill in their own words. Here are their tributes:

Lynette Marais, Director of the Grahamstown National Arts Festival: “What a shock to hear of Bill's sudden death. He was a real professional with such commitment to his work. He was not only a great comedian but a superb dramatic actor and a great ensemble performer. I was always sad that he never played more serious roles, as he was such a fine actor. I remember when he played Biff in Death of a Salesman and then, some twenty odd years later in 2000, he played Willy Loman in the same play. What a wonderful performance. Bill will go down as one of the greats in the history of South African theatre and we will all miss him enormously.”

Themi Venturas, Director of the Catalina and the Kwasuka Theatres in Durban: “I only ever worked with Bill on a few occasions, but he inspired me as an actor and as a human being. His eternal laugh and wit will echo in our minds for years. Bill lives on in my memories as the actor who immortalised Fugard’s Shorty in People are Living There and Johnny in Hello and Goodbye. His lifelong collaborations with Paul Slab also produced characters that will remain with us. Who will forget Tjokkie? The most wonderful thing about Bill was his humility and humanity. No matter how much experience he had, no matter how many years he’d clocked in on the boards, no matter how famous he became, he remained ‘Bill’ who was always approachable and helpful to younger, less experienced actors and other industry professionals. I will remember him always with warmth and fondness.”

Neil McCarthy, writer, producer and actor (currently in the SABC3 drama Jozi H):“It was a big shock to hear about Bill's passing. My fondest memories of him are of two events that took place a long while ago, but then I suppose that is testimony to how deep his roots in the performance culture of our country are. The first took place when I was still at school in Cape Town and just discovering my love of theatre. I used to find a massive thrill in going to see plays at the original Space Theatre, a strange black box on a first-floor venue off Long Street. There it was that I saw my first real South African play, which was People are Living There, starring Bill Flynn and Yvonne Bryceland. It was a revelation in so many ways, but Bill's performance as Shorty was one of the most profound. A simple man made transcendental in the great Everyman tradition. It was one of the nights that decided the future of my life.

“My other great Billy moment was a number of years later when the SABC was going through one of its bewildering growth spurts and changes of direction. It was during a directors’ course and Bobby Heaney was being trained using Bill and Bo Petersen in a strange play, which has deservedly been entirely forgotten, about a young couple encountering an incomprehensible foreign waiter. Bobby was using me and Nicky Ribelo at the time in a companion piece about Russian Roulette. It was the first encounter I’d had with Bill’s great persona of the generalised foreigner. His performance as the bewildered, extravagant, linguistically tortured simpleton, of which he gave so many different versions subsequently, had me laughing so much that I feared for my health. I had to bite on my hand to stop my mirth interrupting the shooting process. I had to leave the studio to take gulps of air and then rush back in, in case I missed any more of it. It was a piece that was never seen outside the studio, but I still think of it as one of the greatest pieces of comic invention I’ve ever seen.”

James Whyle, writer on series such as Snitch and Isidingo, and actor in the seminal '80s films A Place of Weeping and The Stick, said that although he didn’t know Bill very well, he always “thought he was a great talent. He was a romantic lead up there with Gerard Depardieu, and you always wanted him to get the girl.”

Ian Roberts, actor, performer, director and writer, was devastated when he heard the news of Bill’s sudden death. He spoke to me while driving to the Eastern Cape about the time he and Bill worked together on a feature film. “When we were working on Kalahari Harry, a film directed by Dirk de Villiers, I had one of the best nights of my life with him. I played Harry and Bill played the comic relief in the film. Other actors had turned down the role because we were all working on a shoestring budget. We’d all agreed to work with Dirk on this film for a reduced rate so that the film could be made. But this shows you where Bill’s heart was. His heart was in the product and not with the money.

“In Kalahari Harry there was one scene where I was disguised as a woman to escape from someone on our trail. Bill had to play along with me as we both had to pretend we were someone else. It was such fun. That night we were staying at a hotel in Tamboerskloof and at the time I’d given up drinking so that I could concentrate on the role. But at about eight o’ clock in the evening we decided to go into the room where the band was playing to have a little listen to them. Well, we eventually left there at eight o’ clock the following morning. I think we were drunk for a few days after that, because we’d had such a fantastic party. In fact, at some point we went on to the stage and joined the band. We just took the microphones and began to sing as loudly as we could. That was what I loved about him: he had a fantastic attitude.

“In my experience you get three types of actors: those who give schooled performances where technique is everything; those who are in the middle with a bit of technique and a bit of an unschooled approach, and then those like Bill and me that are a bit unruly and approach the work with complete freedom to break boundaries. That is what I loved about him and it is very rare in actors. There was a secret Irish terrorist in him with regard to how he approached a role and how he approached life.

“It’s ironic that the show he was in recently had been cancelled because of monetary problems, as Bill’s heart would have been broken by that. He never did things only for the money. He did them largely for the sake of creating something – his heart was really in the work. The pay cheque is usually what performers want from the viewers, but as far as Bill was concerned his pay cheque was the laughter and enjoyment of the audiences.

“As far as I’m concerned, Bill hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s just gone off the stage for a moment. I read something Laurens van der Post wrote a while ago. He spoke of when William Plomer died and he received a telegram from one of the Japanese generals that they’d both come to know during the war. The general said he couldn’t be at the funeral but he thanked Van der Post for letting him know. He said he would be going to the mountain of his ancestors and he would play his Japanese guitar and help William’s soul on its flight. That is what I will be doing as I return to the Eastern Cape now. I will take my guitar and go up a mountain and help dear Bill’s soul on its flight.”

Robert Greig, former Sunday Independent arts editor and critic: “Bill Flynn’s death comes with the harsh surprise of a sudden wound. Bill helped people recognise themselves and others. His art helps us recognise life. He helped invent South Africans. His comedy, which took place at the shimmering borderline with pathos, was a point of entry into the experience of others living at the same time and same place. His art shone a light on uniqueness. Bill’s gift was to create characters whose uncertainty was laid bare, and the laying bare was both comic and tragic.

“So much for the art; what made Flynn exceptional was consistency between the man and performer. The admirable in one was admirable in the other; the ethics of human relations that he practised with those around him were in his performances. They involved great respect for others and much sweet innocence. Such qualities may have rested on inner hesitancy or pain and explain a manic, compulsive element in the comedy. If that was an engine, it was invisible and private; as an engine absorbs fuel, his performances absorbed his psychology. What matters is what we experienced: a man whose talent was in creating human beings of wrenching nakedness.

"Flynn was one of an extraordinary generation of graduates of the University of Cape Town’s drama school. These were, in fact, the first South African actors. Being South African, or any nationality, is not an achievement but a condition: this generation explored it where others hadn’t. Instead, previous generations had often seemed Edwardian English actors in provincial exile. Flynn particularly eschewed actor-y affectations: no gin and tonic in hand, or over-enunciated “English” vowels. He, like most of his generation, didn’t call people “darling”. Flynn’s generation uttered the phrase “commercial theatre” with some derision.

“Bill’s acting style was based on colloquial styles of being, not inherited, borrowed or stolen. When Fugard’s plays started appearing – and Flynn was one of his major creators – the gap between the spoken line and audience response closed – a gap in which translation took place, closed. The theatrical experience became what it should be and never had been before: immediate.

“The talents of Bill’s generation included Jana Cilliers, Grethe Fox, Janice Honeyman, Paul Slabolepszy, Booby Heaney, Sue Kiel, and Richard E Grant. Most were born in or around 1949, had never known any other government but the Nationalists, and their focus was both local and international. Their imaginations were ignited by off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway, rather than the West End or Broadway. They were formally educated and had intellects: with this came a certain social conscience absent in their predecessors. Their graduation coincided with the emergence of the Space Theatre in Long Street, run by Brian Ashbury and Yvonne Bryceland. It coincided with the emergence of probably the first major South African playwright, Athol Fugard. The establishment reacted to this generation and their theatre with interesting criticisms, using terms like ‘lack of technique’ and ‘self-indulgent’. In fact, Bill and his generation were more concerned with what was being done than with how. ‘Self-indulgent’ was a projection. The focus on technique seemed a colonial obsession that involved the inattention to substance that characterises the commercial theatre.

With time, the Space degenerated and many of the generation moved to the urgency of Johannesburg from the retirement village somnolence of Cape Town. New alternative theatres started in Johannesburg and many of this generation became founding members of The Company based at the new Market theatre. The Market was the stepchild of The Space.

“I began as a theatre critic in Cape Town when the UCT Drama School was coming into its own, nurtured by the complementary talents of Mavis Taylor and Robert Mohr. To write about this generation was unavoidable; I had followed the cultural flow to Johannesburg. Critics and performers are seldom friends, but between us was sibling affection: we each knew where the other came from and what we stood for. There were rows, obviously, but never with Bill. Affection apart, between us was also a certain distance. We didn’t go to the same parties, but it was the kind of relationship where you could pick up a phone to say ‘Howzit?’ without any hidden agendas.

"Bill on and off stage merged: the bulky rotund presence; the eyes steady, the slight upward look giving him innocence, wonder and bewilderment; the postal clerk’s moustache; the uncanny noting and reproducing of phrases, cadences and gestures that evoked a milieu and state of being; a sinuous grace in movement, also providing comic contrast to the man’s bulk and the proletarian appearance.

“He was not a pretty-boy actor: he played with and against his physical attributes. He was self-effacing, not proclaiming his own personality or imposing it upon his roles, nor touting for audience admiration and love: he had too much integrity for that. He discovered the personality of the character he was playing. He stayed within the role and within the cast. The audience observed rather than being called upon to watch. Most of all, Bill understood how silence, stillness and space properly deployed gave urgency to speech and movement. The loud, busy or declamatory performance thrusts audiences away. Silence, stillness and the creation of space draw the audience in, and Flynn was adept in using this.

“If there is one word that for me sums up Bill’s acting at its best, it is 'nakedness'. His performances were X-rays of his characters’ emotional configurations. He stayed with them, showed his characters as they were to themselves. There is a great integrity in such performances, a cleanness: Bill didn’t build into his performances what he hoped the audience might feel or think. He didn’t second-guess them: his energy was in creating character in the context of a work; he made the only reasonable assumption an actor can make, which is that the audience will be there. Any other assumption either insults the audience or involves whoring.

“Bill’s characters were unselfconscious: their comedy – and tragedy - lay in the difference between how the audience saw them and how they saw themselves. They come with great innocence – the innocence of a child discovering the otherness of the world. This sweetness characterised Bill as man and actor. The qualities that resonated in his performances made him an endearing person. To write about Bill is to risk burying talent in words, or muffling the necessary pain of loss. But actors die more finally than other artists; their records are in memories and perhaps words, not tangible objects. So to write about Bill Flynn is an act of homage to a man whose mechanisms of creation were intricate and seemed to have intricate personal sources, but never seemed to confuse the process of creating with the creation.”

There is not much more left to say about this great performer and gentle man. Perhaps we should leave the last word to Bill Flynn himself, words he wrote on his website that seem to be almost a fitting epitaph: "Hope to see you at one of my shows soon. Until then … keep the Gees and Gooi Mielies!!!"