Nomad heart by Ian Roberts: an inter-review

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Title: Nomad heart: Adventures on and off the set
Author: Ian Roberts
Publisher: Jonathan Ball
ISBN: 9781776193547

I first met Ian at Rhodes University. He was a year ahead of me and an older student. I never spoke to him during those years, as I was extraordinarily shy, but I became aware of his trajectory after graduation. I saw many of the Troupe Theatre’s plays at the Space Theatre while I was failing my honours spectacularly at UCT, a year after my older brother’s suicide. But it was only in 1999 that something prompted me to send the third draft of a screenplay I’d been compelled to write to Ian’s agent. Bless Ian forever. He got in touch with me immediately and said my writing was powerful and that the film should be made. Our commitment to writing and our constant search for truth in life and in art forged a deep friendship. I’ve always been honoured to call this man – who is the epitome of authenticity – a very dear friend. Ian later directed two of my stage plays which went to Grahamstown. He brought them to life viscerally in a way no one else could have. A year or so ago, I was pleased when Ian sent me extracts of his self-named “Anekdote” – anecdotes of his life in theatre and film. I was even more delighted when I heard that Jonathan Ball was going to publish them in a memoir, called Nomad heart.

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Ian’s transition from stage to screen was made through his humility in taking on any work on a film set, from set-building to painting, and putting his hand to anything he was asked to do. This willingness to learn led to the incongruity of a man with the most English heritage one could ask for playing a role as an Afrikaner with a brei in Dokter Con se Overberg. The rest, as they say, is history.
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I read Nomad heart from cover to cover within two days. It’s an unflinching, searingly honest account of Ian’s childhood on an Eastern Cape farm in the ’60s, and his subsequent journey of becoming an actor via a career in farming, photography, sales and a number of other diversions along the way. After a stint at Rhodes in the drama department, he bumped into Richard Grant (later known as Richard E Grant), who was bemoaning the paucity of the talent of the current actor in a production he was working on. Ian’s “red-haired Irishman”, a part of him that acts without Ian’s volition, confronted Richard and said he would perform the role. That boldness brought him into the Troupe Theatre Company, which performed at the Space Theatre in Cape Town in the early ’80s. While acting in a production there, his talent was recognised by the already iconic Manie van Rensburg, one of South Africa’s most respected directors in the ’80s and ’90s. Ian’s transition from stage to screen was made through his humility in taking on any work on a film set, from set-building to painting, and putting his hand to anything he was asked to do. This willingness to learn led to the incongruity of a man with the most English heritage one could ask for playing a role as an Afrikaner with a brei in Dokter Con se Overberg. The rest, as they say, is history.

The book is written in Ian’s colourful style and is filled with anecdotes, many of them humorous, some of them heart-breaking. Certain images stand out: a group of young boys crammed onto a small scooter, one sitting on top of a bag of pecan nuts and another in the carrier rack, speeding along a dirt track, racing a train; the same group of boys camping in the Eastern Cape bush, with a baboon as their companion, all of them drinking sweet tea from steel mugs; Ian, as Sloet Steencamp in Arende, racing against a British officer alongside a prison fence, the officer on the outside, and Sloet on the inside; an attack on him and his family on a smallholding which brought them close to death; and so much more. Ian writes with a clarity and perspicacity born out of uncompromising honesty.

It would be a cliché to say that Ian is one of a kind, but I do believe that there is no one else quite like him. The memoir is a page-turning read, not least because Ian’s writing style is fluid and captivating, and also because the events he describes are so unusual, and again one of a kind. Anyone who loves theatre, television or film from this century and the last, should read this book. It’s an entertaining education about the performance industry, as well as a guide to living an authentic life and following your own uncompromising path in a troubled world. I enjoyed every page and recommend it most highly.

Q and A:

Nature versus nurture: Ian, you grew up in the farmlands of the Eastern Cape on your parents’ citrus farm in the foothills of the Katberg Mountains. You come from a large and tight-knit family with an English heritage that stretches back to the original British 1820 Settlers. However, unlike any child brought up in Britain, you were allowed to run wild in the bush with your hunter-gatherer friends, as you called the three sons of the farmworkers who were your best friends. You were mostly left to your own devices and spoke Xhosa from an early age. For you, it was normal to go camping with your friends without supervision for days in the bush. This was an unusual upbringing for a young white boy in South Africa at that time. How did growing up so close to nature, where you were most at peace and were able to live freely and mostly without supervision, influence the person you are today?

Ian: When we are young, we have not yet acquired philosophical ways of reacting to the world we find ourselves in. Yet, and for some inexplicable reason, we hunter-gatherers chose to keep moving away from our homes. We all had stable homes that we could run to if needed – and maybe this enabled us to keep moving. To this day, I like moving. I always say that the hardest part of leaving home is closing your front door behind you. A heavyweight astrologer once told me that a Cancerian – I was born on the 4th of July – is a home-builder. “Okay,” I said, “so why do I love to travel?” They answered, “That’s why you need to build a home – so that you can leave it.” Even though I might go through restrictions like being a father and so on, my children soon learn about “living freely without supervision”, as you succinctly put it. So, the influence of those early years is that I pass on the vibe to the young ones.

The baboon, Kees: At one point, you and the hunter-gatherers made friends with a farmworker, Gildoda, who had a tame baboon named Kees. As you describe the story, Kees took a great liking to you and joined the four of you on camping trips. You describe it as a normal course of events, but it’s quite something to have a tame baboon as your camping companion. What happened to Kees in the end?

Ian: Kees was a female, and they normally don’t become aggressive and dangerous like the males. I got back home after I’d had another long sojourn at St Andrew’s Boarding School, looking forward to having Kees along on our next camping trip. But she was not at Gildoda’s house. I asked where she was. Gildoda’s answer was very matter of fact: Kees had become too much trouble, so she had been killed and eaten. Another day in the salt mines. We missed her very much.

Growing up aware of violence in nature and in people: Even as a young child, you witnessed violence around you. You describe a vicious fight involving a farmworker who sliced open his partner one night, for example. You also witnessed violent fights among the workers on other occasions. In your family history, your forefathers had close encounters with death, as they’d been placed as buffers on the frontier between the Xhosas and the Cape Colony. You quote Carl Jung, who said he could smell blood in the air when he landed in certain countries. You, too, said you could sense violence in the area in which you grew up. How do you think that awareness shaped you as a young boy?

Ian: In response to the violence that I witnessed and felt as a small boy, I became wary. I am still wary to this day. Once, when directing Honeytown, a TV series in Joburg, one of the runners was a bright, good-looking young Joburg guy. His parents had obviously given him an expensive education. He used to go to Hillbrow to do drug deals with the Nigerians. I had a chat with him and told him to be careful, that these people were dangerous. He didn’t care to listen, and one day he failed to turn up on set. He had vanished. His desperate parents found his body in a morgue somewhere. He failed to become wary. In Africa, this is a failing that can lead to dire consequences. Actors should make it their business to study people. This can help them maintain objectivity with strangers, and this will keep them one step ahead of the shoeshine.

Losing Christopher: You describe the loss of your cousin in front of your eyes when you were 12. Watching a bulldozer moving sand from the Kat River banks, your cousin, Christopher, ran towards the sand being dumped and was enveloped by it. You say this changed you forever. Losing someone close to you does change a person forever, especially when you are very young. You went back to the site of the accident many years later to try to make peace with that tragedy. Do you think that experiencing death at such an early age made you a more spiritual person, knowing that life is so ephemeral?

Ian: That was the first (but not the last) time that I felt there is no real purpose to life. I felt that it would actually be better to be dead, although I was unaware of it at the time. My later crazed “death wish” activities with Rob Pollock in Port Elizabeth (read about them in the book) had their roots in the same rage of helplessness that I felt at the time of Christopher’s death. The solo depths of depression I experienced at Rhodes University in the ’70s were the beginnings of my spiritual quest to be able to look into the mirror and say, “You’re okay.”

My divorce from Michelle sent me into another quagmire of the soul, and you (and I will ever be thankful to you for that, crikey Moses!) played a large part in my discovering the spiritual realisation that once you have ploughed through the depths and risen Phoenix-like back up again, you won’t ever need to go back there again.

The army – ceiling and booze bottles: You write about your experiences in the army, which you had to endure like all young white men before the advent of democracy. The most amusing story is when your staff sergeant stood on a marmalade sandwich, which led him to explore the hidden stash of bottles in the ceiling in your barracks. Do you think that humour helped you deal with events where your freedom was totally compromised, as it was in the army?

Ian: Ten years of boarding school (St Andrew’s Prep and College) prepared me for the army. At 1 Signal Regiment in Voortrekkerhoogte, I saw boys of 18 crying for their mommies. Me, I’d already done that when I was seven years old. Humour played a large part in keeping us content in the barracks. It is like music. It transcends boundaries between people. Thank heavens for humour, and especially for that lively beast, South African humour.

The spirit of Dollar Brand: When you went to a concert by Dollar Brand (aka Abdullah Ibrahim) in the New Brighton township, you say you experienced peace in a new way. I love Dollar Brand’s music. My brother used to play his records all the time. What do you think that special quality was with which he infused the crowd during an especially volatile time in the township in the ’70s?

Ian: Yeah, the man is one of the true talents. Dollar, in those days, was an extremely dramatic performer. That night in New Brighton, the crowd was bedonnerd and unruly, sort of dangerous, especially for us two whiteys who shouldn’t have been there. He began by coming on stage and, ignoring the rumble, putting lit incense sticks in the cracks in the wooden floor. Then he left. He came back onstage with a soprano saxophone, stood in front of the microphone with the sax to his lips, but did nothing till the place quieted down. Then he blew a magnificent riff. From that moment on, he had his audience riveted. He brought performer’s genius to that hall, as well as very good music.

Years later, I met him in a restaurant in Rosebank, Joburg. I told him I’d been at the concert in St Stephen’s Hall in New Brighton in 1973. He remembered the concert very clearly. I said how magnificent the show was. He said that someone had told him about the crazy honkeys who had braved destruction to attend that concert. He was very pleased to finally meet me, but who really blew him away was Michelle, whose acting he really loved. Bless his nose. He now lives on a farm he bought in the Kalahari.

Sloet was the vein of gold: You mention that the role of Sloet Steenkamp in Arende was a vein of gold in your career. Your good friend, whom you write about a great deal, Richard E Grant, also talks about the role that changed his life as Withnail in Withnail and I. I know it’s a hypothetical question, but how do you think your life would’ve turned out if you hadn’t been given this role?

Ian: They say that if one door closes, then another one always opens, and maybe if I hadn’t played Sloet Steenkamp, I would have played something else. But I doubt that another project would have had the same pedigree and credentials. Arende was like a coming together of previous works (experience) and talents across the board that was and remains extremely rare. So, I would have just carried on searching, as we all do. But I would not have been the same actor/person that Arende turned me into. And I wouldn’t have met Michelle and got married!

Royalties of Sloet: It’s a skande that actors aren’t paid royalties for their roles in South Africa. Arende was translated into many languages and screened around the world, and if you’d been paid royalties, you would have been rich like your fellow American actors. Has this changed, or is there any way this situation can be changed?

Ian: A sad example of how the government has compromised excellence in the arts in South Africa (what a dire legacy!) was when actors were not paid on completion of the TV series Behind the badge in Joburg. My agent, Moonyeen Lee, was suing the production company to get money for her actors (including me), but the case was defeated because the clause in SABC contracts that forbade the broadcasting of shows until all actors had been paid, had been removed from the contracts in parliament. This was achieved under the watch of the president of the South African Guild of Actors. This was one of the biggest financial blows to South African actors ever. SABC still owes me R70 000. When American actors I have worked with learn of my body of work, they wonder why I still bother acting. I should certainly, in their opinions, be stinking rich!

Jealousy: You talk about how you were sometimes treated badly for no reason at all, and your good friend told you that people were jealous of you because they couldn’t put a label on you. I’ve experienced this throughout my life, too, and I think this comes from being one’s own person and not needing to be part of a gang/crowd/group to find one’s identity. You talk, too, about the syndrome of some people resenting others who do better than they do, which is prevalent in South Africa. I know this behaviour as the crabs-in-a-bucket syndrome. If you put crabs into a bucket, you never need to put a lid on them to stop them getting out. The majority will pull down any crab who dares to climb higher than the group. Is this something that can be fixed in our country, or do you think this is the reason why some people will never allow others to succeed?

Ian: This thing of people being uncomfortable with the fact that they can’t quite compartmentalise a person – the box that keeps getting broken out of – leads, in the long run, to creative people shutting themselves down and being content not to challenge boundaries. Jealousy leads to attack, and all attack comes from fear. So, jealousy is fear. That is the battle. One first has to comprehend these things, and then the challenge is to rise above it all and do your thing. Very, very often, the biggest critics go nowhere, and yet we need them for their views, especially when we smell them out to be wrong!

If money wasn’t an object, what would you like to do next in your life?

Ian: Make a movie!

Also read:

Radio Kalahari Orkes: "Bokker backtracks"

Inter-review with Stephen "Spling" Aspeling about his book, The essence of dreams: An anthology of film reviews

The hidden by Fiona Snyckers: an inter-review

BookBedonnerd!: The road to elsewhere by Darryl David: an inter-review

In the shadow of the Springs I saw by Barbara Adair: an inter-review

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