Vus'umuzi Phakathi | When the keel splinters: Dancing the death drill and the perils of artistic power

Civilian: We want water!
Government Official: That's a good plea at an inappropriate time… don’t worry, there is water here. I’ll ask someone to bring you a glass since you’re thirsty.

We stepped onto a vessel stitched together from wood, salt, bone, and breath. Its compass fixed on one definitive direction: memory. We as the audience were eager passengers drawn into a voyage where the destination is already known: a wreck.

The ship sails under a name lifted from history, the SS Mendi, a troopship that sank off the Isle of Wight in 1917, pulling more than 600 nameless black South African men into the Atlantic, while they served an empire that did not value their lives.

To restage this story in 2025, to invite us once more to sail into its currents, is no small ambition. It demands a seaworthy production with a steady-handed captain at the helm to steer through history’s tempests.

I myself boarded with an expectation that this here vessel was not simply a reproduction of that catastrophe, that it was to carry it, to unfold it into a wider map of colonial power, apartheid’s storms, and the restless waters of evocation. This was my expectation.

Dancing the Death Drill, Artistic Director James Ngcobo’s second 2025 production at the Joburg Theatre, promised much: an adaptation of Fred Khumalo’s celebrated text by Palesa Mazamisa and Jamaes Ngcobo, a score composed by the renowned Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year, Msaki, and choreography pulsed by acclaimed Standard Bank Young Artist Luyanda Sidiya.

Civilians, theatre regulars, government officials, ministers, and scores of military personnel still in their uniforms pressed through the doors.

The foyer buzzed with chatter, the promise of a marquee event was in the air, and even before the curtain call, the night had the sheen of state ceremony. Tickets had run out. The presence of political power was palpable.

A government official stepped onto the stage to welcome the audience, his remarks reminding us that this was both a cultural and civic affair. He acknowledged the ministers in the audience, extended the obligatory thanks, and prepared to yield the deck to the performers.

But then, from the audience, a lone voice rang out: “We want water!”

What we heard was a plea, stark against the mast of the city’s fragile infrastructure, its shortages, its failures.

The words landed with force, and almost immediately, a murmur of agreement spread across the auditorium. Some echoed the call, turning the space briefly into a chorus of dissent, and for a moment, art and politics collided in their rawest form.

The government official, caught off-guard, answered with the poise of someone used to managing public interruptions.

“This is a good plea at an inappropriate time,” he said. Fleeting waves of contest rose. He continued, “Don’t worry, there is water here. I’ll ask someone to bring you a glass since you’re thirsty.”

A ripple of uneased chuckles washed the room into stillness.

But the question lingered, cresting and breaking again like a restless tide even after the final curtain…

That single exchange exposed what theatre often disguises: that every stage is political, every audience an assembly of citizens, and every production is rigged to the prevailing windsof the world outside its doors.

Alas, despite all these elements, the destination of Dancing the Death Drill was an unknown heart wrenching one: a raucous wreck.

The Production Itself

Let me be clear, the shipwright’s craft of Dancing the Death Drill was impressive.

The music rose and fell in distinct tides: haunted by the drowning that opened our voyage and returned like a ghost wave later in the crossing, hardened into a militant cadence during the death drill, then breaking open into jubilant winds in the love story.

The choreography answered each shift with the discipline of a drilled crew, bodies heaving like decks under storm, then loosening into sailcloth when tenderness was allowed.

The lighting steered close to the score, flaring like lanterns in a gale when fervor surged, dimming to the hush of a cabin lamp when the music turned inward. In these elements, the vessel held strong, each department pulling in unison, the rigging taut, the course clear.

But theatre is the sum of all its parts.

What faltered, and fatally so, was the narrative. Story is the keel that steadies a vessel, and here it splintered.

Fred Khumalo’s novel casts Pitso Motaung as its protagonist, a coloured man of fiction, as its anchor point, a choice that already diverts attention from the historical truth of six hundred nameless black men who drowned on the Mendi.

On stage, without knowledge of the book or its liberties, the audience was left at sea. The production lurched between interrogation scenes and fractured flashes of the sinking, the timeline tacking so sharply that no compass could hold.

Only in the second act did the story attempt a straighter course, but by then the waters were muddied. Adaptations are never easy voyages, yet here the narrative chart was so unclear that audiences were left adrift, unable to name what destination had been reached, what story had been told, when the final curtain dropped.

The acting, too, was adrift. The play leaned less on its lead than on three narrators, who at first seemed to promise a firm hand on the tiller.

Thokozani Nzima, took his place beside an anchor, his presence rooting the story in the sea. Opposite him, Sibusiso Mkhize embodied a lamppost, a figure of the city whose wit and comic relief lit the stage in flashes.

Between them, Lerato Gwebu entered as wind itself, threading the two worlds together with her current.

It was a striking beginning, suggestingthat the voyage would be steered from sea and shore alike, by gravity and by levity, by earth and by air. Yet as the journey wore on, this trinity frayed.

Their energy, once taut like rope pulled firm against the mast, slackened. The promise of dual worlds dissolved into confusion, the symbolism left undeveloped, the comic relief tipping at times into pantomime.

It goes without saying that of the three, Nzima remained the steadiest hand. His prowess surfaced most fully when he shifted from narrator into character, taking on Jerry with a depth and conviction that revealed his range.

Where others strained, he carried weight without excess, anchoring scenes that might otherwise have drifted.

On the other hand, Mkhize's lamppost cast more shadow than light, with an excess of spark. His performance was a malfunctioning bulb, flickering, flaring too often, too brightly, until the glare dulled its own glow. Yet when his voice was finally unleashed in the closing moments, the night turned.

Singing Masaki’s Nali ’Themba, he transformed the deck into a vessel of shared longing. In that instant, the production revealed what it might have been had song been its compass all along.

His voice gathered us as passengers, willing and rapt, helping us remember why we had embarked on this voyage in the first place. It was a glimpse of power too long withheld, a reminder that the strongest current of the evening came from the music that carried it.

The supporting cast fared no better. Too many slipped into caricature in one moment, then shrank into hesitation the next. Lines fell flat, gestures overstated, timing misjudged. Above all, the cast seemed under-rehearsed, as if summoned aboard without the drills that would ready them for storm or calm; energies pulled in opposite directions, and the ensemble work loosened like rope left slack on deck.

And at the helm, Clint Brink, playing Pitso Motaung proved the weakest hand. In his attempt to fill the role with force, he strained into overacting: wrenching downbeats into melodrama, over-inflating high notes into bluster. He did not inhabit the character so much as gesture toward it, his effort visible in every exaggerated turn.

Around them, the sails of music, choreography, and light held heir course with admirable steadiness. But without story as steady keel and the cast as a disciplined crew, the vessel drifted far from its charted path.

The shortcomings of this production was a betrayal of potential. Audiences deserved more. The story deserved more. And crucially, the resources invested in this state-owned theatre should have yielded more.

Every production carries the right to succeed or fail. Theatre, after all, is an experiment each time: part alchemy, part accident, part aspiration. But in a professional industry, there must be thresholds, minimum standards that ensure even failure carries artistic value. A bad production can still fail nobly, fail daringly, fail in the pursuit of something ambitious. Such failure contributes to the growth of the artform.

But this is not, at its heart, an autopsy of one play.

To linger on Dancing the Death Drill alone would be to miss the larger point.

Far from an isolated case, this production reveals a deeper structuralmalaise in the way power and responsibility are managed in our theatre industry. And the cause, I argue, is tied to how Artistic Directors hold the helm.

The Artistic Director

An Artistic Director is, by definition, the captain of the ship. They guide the institution’s vision, ensure the standard of its productions, and contribute directly to its artistic output. To direct, therefore, is part of their contract. But the question is not whether they should direct, it is rather how much, and what kind of productions, they should direct.

If every large-scale, high-budget, flagship production is entrusted to the Artistic Director, the result is stagnation. One person’s aesthetic becomes the default national stage. No matter how skilled, they are still only one artist, with one vision, one style, one imagination. Over time, variety is lost. The industry narrows rather than expands.

This practice, far from being unique, has become standard across the country. In Johannesburg, in Cape Town, in Pretoria, we see Artistic Directors repeatedly taking the helm of the most resourced productions. The result is an industry where freshness is starved, younger voices stunted, and risk suffocated.

Considerthis: if an Artistic Director holds a ten-year tenure, they equally hold the opportunity to introduce ten new voices, ten new visions, ten new styles. To introduce them as capable to direct flagship productions.

If we are to critique Artistic Directors, we must shift the criteria. Their tenure should not be measured only by the plays they directed or the tickets they sold. It should be measured also by the industry they grew.

Did they platform new voices? Did they mentor young directors? Did they deliberately cultivate women, Black, queer, or working-class creators? Did they invest in technicians, costume designers, stage managers, and dramaturgs? Did they scout from universities, township festivals, community theatres? Did they even visit these spaces?

A true Artistic Director extends beyond the role of directing; they are a platform-builder. Their legacy should rest less on the productions they staged and more on the careers they seeded, the aesthetics they nurtured, and the risks they enabled.

What endures is not the tally of shows they signedoff on, but the diversity and strength of the industry when they step down.

And here lies the paradox: one cannot fulfil this duty while monopolising the biggest productions. To centre oneself too often is to decentre others. To grow one’s own oeuvre at the expense of others is not leadership, it is gatekeeping.
Much like political power, artistic power must be handed over with care.

Delegation is an act of cultivation, a way of tending to growth, it is by no means an act of abdication. An Artistic Director who consistently directs the flagship shows is, in effect, saying: only I can be trusted with this scale. That is not leadership, it is hoarding.

What would it look like if, instead, Artistic Directors acted as curators and mentors, ensuring that big productions were spread across a pool of directors at different stages of their careers? Imagine a system where an emerging director who has proven themselves with a two-hander is given the chance to helm a 30-cast ensemble. Imagine the growth. Imagine the variety.

Which brings me back to that voice from the audience: “We want water!” The government official missed the point. Theatre has always been the place where inappropriate truths are spoken, where pleas break through the protocols of power.

And perhaps the metaphor stretches further: theatre itself is a resource. Who gets access to it? Who distributes it? Who hoards it? And what happens when the scuttlebutt is monopolised by the captain, while crew members thirst for the chance to drink?

For all its missteps, Dancing the Death Drill remains a voyage worth boarding. If nothing else, it showcases the sheer calibre of the Standard Bank Young Artist recipients whose craft gave this vessel its most luminous sails.

The quartet iComplete filled the air with voices that seemed to rise straight from the deep, layering harmony upon harmony until the very timbers of the theatre hummed.

Nebo Mafabatho’s soundscape was a restless tide, shaping atmosphere with precision and care. And the dancers, bodies moving like currents, like waves, like the pull of undertow, gave the stage its pulse. These were the elements that carried the night, even as the narrative’ keel failed to hold. For their work alone, this production earns its passage.

Dancing the Death Drill runs at the Joburg Theatre until September 28.