2024 Caine Prize for African Writing finalist and South African writer, Nadia Davids, says her latest play, Hold Still, first came to her when she was living in London in 2015: ‘Brexit was on the horizon, and Europe’s migrant crisis had begun. There was a constant stream of horrific news stories depicting families fleeing their homes. I wanted to explore how ordinary people responded to a humanitarian crisis and how family histories shape us. I also wanted to consider what happens when the crisis reaches our own homes.’
First Draft is our interview column, featuring authors and other prominent figures on books, reading, and writing.
Our questions are italicized.
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?
My parents loved and placed huge importance on reading, so I had terrific access to a wide range of literature and free reign to read as much as I wanted. My mother routinely allowed me to skip out on chores if she saw I was lost in a book; she saw reading—then and now—as to a close to a sacred activity. In my early reading years there was predictably Enid Blyton (girls boarding schools featured strongly), the Narnia and Anne of Green Gables series, Little Women, lots of global mythology, children’s writers from the previous century like Francis Hodgson Burnett, Lewis Carrol. Finding texts that reflected my own experience, and context came much later in my life. The pleasure of reading was a core part of my journey to becoming a writer, but I believe my family and community—a world full of wonderful storytellers as well as code and language switchers—shaped my gravitation toward theatre. I learned early on how to listen to the rhythm of conversation, to engage with telling exchanges, shifts in accent and intention, and to understand the shape and structure of a well-told story. I was also exposed to a combination of Bible stories during the school day (Anglican Church schools are common in South Africa) and Qur’anic literature after school because I was sent to madrassa for religious instruction. Encountering two sets of stories about similarly named people from different sources was an early lesson in how difference and similarity can run parallel.
Were you ever part of any student plays growing up?
Oh yes! As a child, performance and reading were my preferred modes of imaginative play. I am an eighties kid, the product of the last of those analogue years—no screens, minimal television—so I staged lots of plays with my sister and the neighbourhood kids. In my final year of high school, in 1995, I took my first play to the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. It was a devised work using South African poetry, projected photographs, dance and narration to chart the country’s transition from Apartheid to democracy. I would not dare approach anything on that scale today…the audacity of youth! As an adult, when I write about a political landscape, its usually within the context of intimate relationships.
What’s the last thing you read and disagreed with?
The New York Times 100 best books of the 21st Century. I found the absence of African writers staggering.
The pleasure of reading was a core part of my journey to becoming a writer, but I believe my family and community—a world full of wonderful storytellers as well as code and language switchers—shaped my gravitation toward theatre.
What’s the last thing you read that changed your mind about something?
An interview with a climate change activist who suggested that there was sound reason to be hopeful about the possibility of planetary repair and that the best way forward was through optimism not despair. It did not change my mind about anything, but it did help to reorientate my approach a little. It is easy to slip into political despondency, but that is an unhelpful state. Action, solidarity, imaginative hope, and the determination to dream that something better is possible—these are not naïve insistences but important political strategies.
What is your writing process: edit as you write or draft first, then edit?
My process changed (very unexpectedly) with my latest longform project. Usually, regardless of the genre (play, short story, essay), I make a start knowing what the opening and closing images are and what happens between those two points that surprises me. But with this project I was stuck at the beginning for the longest stretch, had no notion of how it would end, and I edited as I wrote—a seismic shift in method. It was really disorientating at the time but a vital reminder that a creative process cannot be neatly ordered, it can only be welcomed and accepted on its own terms.
What is the process for writing your most recent play, Hold Still?
I had the idea for Hold Still many years before I was ready to write it. It was a complex story, and I needed to think it through carefully. Once I made a start, it was written in a month. In my opinion, the first draft of a play should be written over a short period, to maintain the intensity which is necessary for the form. The editing process can take months, and the rehearsal process can often reveal what is working or what is needed, but that first draft needs a quick pen, a sense of anticipation, a clock ticking, a propulsion towards something.
The play is a portrait of a long-term marriage and of as a family shaped by intergenerational trauma in the midst of a contemporary crisis. What inspired this story?
Hold Still is set in London which was a big departure for me—I am usually wholly concerned with my own country. The play centres around Rosa and Ben Feigel, a progressive, dynamic, inter-racial North London couple. Rosa is the daughter of Black South African exiles and Ben is secular Jewish, the son of a man who escaped on Kindertransport. Their teenage son Oliver—full of a political conviction his parents have encouraged—decides to hide a vulnerable person, his best friend, Imran, an asylum-seeking teenager who has overstayed on his visa, in their home. When Ben and Rosa find out, they realize they are faced with just two options: turn the child over to the authorities knowing that he will be sent back to the dangers of his country or help him to hide. A bitter argument erupts between the Feigels about the morality of the law, the limits of empathy, what we will do to protect those we love and what we might sacrifice for strangers.
The idea for Hold Still first came to me when I was living in London in 2015. Brexit was on the horizon and Europe’s migrant crisis (prompted, in part, by the Syrian civil war) had begun. There was a constant stream of horrific news stories depicting families fleeing their homes, making dangerous crossings into Europe, arriving at informal camps and detention centres, navigating a bewildering legal system, facing deportation, and, only very occasionally, being offered asylum or sanctuary. I wanted to explore how ordinary people—not politicians or powerful leaders—responded to a humanitarian crisis and how family histories shape us. I also wanted to consider what happens when the crisis reaches our own homes.
In my opinion, the first draft of a play should be written over a short period, to maintain the intensity which is necessary for the form.
And what’s one thing about the reactions to the play that surprised you?
I have always been surprised and deeply gratified at how diverse my audiences are. It is quite rare in South Africa to look out and see a racially and culturally diverse gathering that is also intergenerational. So often, our cultural spaces—and thus our audiences—reflect Apartheid histories of segregation. It is also hugely affirming to hear from audience members that the characters sound, think and feel authentic to them. Plays are an astonishingly intimate way of experiencing art and time: we pay to sit in the dark with a group of strangers, and together, we are bound by an unspoken social contract to be (mostly) silent. We collectively agree to suspend disbelief as we watch other human beings pretend to go through all sorts of things and feelings. We watch actors speak, shout, weep, laugh, rage—and sometimes we feel those things along with them. It is an extraordinarily strange way to spend a couple of hours. It is also one of the most ancient ways to spend a couple of hours. Liveness and live performance are inherently risky, and so the possibility of a ‘surprise’ is always lurking, even the most well-rehearsed show is subject to the human. Something can go wrong—lines can be forgotten, a cue can be missed, or a light can fuse. Conversely, something deep and unexpected might connect and flow from character to actor to audience, creating meaning together. That feeling of being moved by a work of art can be as surprising as something going ‘wrong’. In part, that possibility of surprise is what makes theatre so potent.
You are also a playwright whose works have been performed on stage internationally. What’s something you’ve noticed about how your works are received in South Africa compared to outside South Africa?
With At Her Feet, there was often shock that a centuries-old Muslim community existed in South Africa and that its history was intertwined with the beginnings of colonialism, due to the Dutch East India Company’s enslavement. Another play, What Remains, invited a similar response. I think Western theatres nurture a specific idea of what South African theatre is and should be and it is often not what people in South Africa are excited about. But there are strong South African theatre-makers coming up who I think will continue to push and dismantle and challenge those expectations.
What’s the greatest play ever written?
Such a good question! I am not sure: some of the best plays I have seen were not written but devised or workshopped; the written text was minimal because those plays integrated dance, physical theatre and movement. Having said that, I am about to do a deep dive into one of the oldest known plays: Euripides’ The Trojan Women and its various adaptations (among them, works by Anne Carson and Jean-Paul Satre). Like so many, I am utterly overwhelmed and horrified by the indescribable pain, violence and trauma of war that daily fill our screens and minds. I am turning, in part, to ancient texts to try and understand the human spiral into war-cruelty. Euripides’ play, first performed in 415 BCE, about the siege and fall of Troy includes these devastating, eternal lines from Hecuba, King Priam’s widow and the chorus:
Hecuba: Alas! Alas! Alas! Ilion is ablaze; the fire consumes the citadel, the roofs of our city, the tops of the walls!
Chorus: Like smoke blown to heaven on the wings of the wind, our country, our conquered country, perishes. Its palaces are overrun by the fierce flames and the murderous spear.
Hecuba: O land that reared my children!
Your plays are known for tackling political topics. What makes theatre a useful vehicle for discussing political issues?
The immediacy of theatre is so helpful in the staging of political ideas. Live performance contains the urgency of the present—the story unfolds in real-time—but it also takes us back to one of the oldest forms of communal sharing and entertaining—telling stories long into the night, telling stories to hold off the darkness. Additionally, theatre evokes the old public square; a place for dissenting ideas, argument, communality, humour, confrontation—all the shades of life. I read once that plays were ‘time carved out of words’, and I think about that often. A playwright has a limited amount of time to tell a story, and you have to stay interesting and interested during that time. But you also have to make sure you do not slip into didacticism: no-one wants to sit through a lecture masquerading as play.
I have always been surprised and deeply gratified at how diverse my audiences are. It is quite rare in South Africa to look out and see a racially and culturally diverse gathering that is also intergenerational.
This year, it’ll be 30 years since the end of Apartheid in South Africa. What has this moment meant for you creatively?
The more established our democracy, the more interested I am in the histories that predate my own experience. My focus as a young person during the transition from Apartheid fascism to democracy was very much on building towards a collective equitable future. I was always deeply invested in excavating our political past, but I think I was trying to understand the present moment intellectually. I was not feeling my way through the past. These days, I am much more concerned with structures of feeling, with processes of mourning what was lost under and through Apartheid brutality, with the grief that surrounds those histories and the political optimism that sustained those who fought for freedom. There is so much unacknowledged sadness and unsung courage. But perhaps one of the gifts of decades-long freedom is the space to feel ones’ way through the layers of loss.
And which three books (plays especially) about South Africa should be on everyone’s bookshelf?
The Island, by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, is one of South Africa’s most famous and beloved plays—and rightly so. I saw a performance of it in 1995 with the original cast; I was a teenager, and it transformed my understanding of theatre. In the play, two men, political activists, are imprisoned on ‘the island’ (an unnamed Robben Island). The prisoners spend their days performing futile, humiliating physical labour and their nights dreaming about freedom and rehearsing for a performance of Sophocles’ Antigone in front of the other prisoners. The play is a dazzling syncretic merging of various theatrical forms, from South African workshop theatre to Polish theatre theorist Jerzy Grotowski’s stripped-down Poor Theatre, to a classical Greek play about war, resistance, ancestry, dignity and land to create a singular work.
My next pick is Surfacing: On Being Black and Feminist in South Africa, edited by Gabeba Baderoon and Desiree Lewis. It is a riveting, rich collection of writing from some of the finest, most radical and interesting Black feminist scholars writing, thinking and creating change in South Africa today. Poets, theorists, activists, assemble in this book to reflect on girlhood, representation, divinity and intellectual life- it’s wonderful!
Rustm Kozain’s poetry collection, This Carting Life is another great book. It is an exquisite collection from one of the continent’s best poets.
Njabulo Ndebele’s Rediscovery of the Ordinary: Essays on South African Literature and Culture is my final pick. Professor Ndebele’s scholarship and creative writing is ground-breaking and unmatched.
What is your favourite topic to write or read about these days?
I am so interested in novels and short stories that revolve around theatre. I have only just discovered a whole genre called ‘theatre-fiction’. I recently finished Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts and plan to read Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost next.
I am much more concerned with structures of feeling, with processes of mourning what was lost under and through Apartheid brutality, with the grief that surrounds those histories and the political optimism that sustained those who fought for freedom.
What are you currently working on?
I have finished a new play, and I am about to go into edits on my new novel.
Question from Sarah Ladipo Manyika: When was the last time you failed or faced rejection as a writer and how did you cope with it and what did you learn from the experience?
Rejection as a writer—as I have come to understand—is part of the ebb and flow of the writing life. I have had a couple of bruising setbacks in the past year as well as a few heartening successes. Accepting that market-forces, schedules, collaborators’ desires, publishers or producer’s interests are completely out of my control is so freeing. A friend told me years ago that my primary concern about my writing life should be… my writing. I wish I had taken on their wisdom sooner! Community matters too—having other writers to share in both the sadness of a disappointment or the joy of good fortune is so important. There is a generosity and grace when writers come together to support each other that is both bolstering and inspiring and Sarah Ladipo Manyika models exactly that grace and care. I know I am not alone in experiencing her kindness and support.
Bonus: Please suggest a question for a future author’s First Draft
If you could choose another art form to create in (other than writing), what would it be and why?
Which South African writer should we interview next?
So many! One is impossible, I will narrow it down to four (for now): Barbara Boswell, Hedley Twidle, Sisonke Msimang, and Professor Njabulo Ndebele. Boswell has just published an electric new novel The Comrade’s Wife. Twidle and Msimang are among the country’s best essayists—thoughtful, insightful, razor-sharp in their observations, and remarkable stylists, while Professor Ndebele is a global treasure⎈
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