There are people in prison today. The Island addresses itself to any corner of the world where the human spirit is being oppressed, where people sit in jail because of their fight for human dignity, for freedom. The play's reception recently in Paris and Stockholm, and now at London's Royal National Theatre, has been a surprise for Kani, who heads the Market Theatre. You expect someone to say, well, this was good and some to say not so good. But this has been amazing.
Artists are thermometers.
They reflect our lives, like mirrors. When you have a depression, people run to musicals. Kani points to Ngema's The Zulu , whose run at the Market has been extended to April due to public demand. So, too, the harrowing Umdlwembe , the story of a woman who was kidnapped and raped while the war between the ANC and IFP raged in Alexandra in the early '90s. It played to packed houses.