Matthew Hahn

South Africa has a long and storied tradition of political theatre, which punched well above its weight during the apartheid era – Athol Fugard is perhaps the key name – and it's great to see that tradition continuing with fascinating projects like this one. The Robben Island Shakespeare builds on a remarkable footnote from the notorious prison island: a copy of Shakespeare's Complete Works that was held by political internee Sonny Venkatrathnam. To disguise it from the warders, he covered it in pictures of Hindu deities cut out from Diwali cards, and told the prison authorities that it was a ‘Hindu bible’.

For years, this book was passed around the prisoners, who would discuss their favourite passages during the secretive ‘Robben Island University’ sessions in the limestone quarry or the hard labour yard. When Venkatrathnam was released, he had the prisoners – including Nelson Mandela, Saths Cooper, Eddie Daniels and many others, underline and sign their favourite quotations.

The American dramatist Matthew Hahn came across this story in a Mandela biography, and set about interviewing eight of the surviving prisoners about the importance of this Shakespeare volume. This play dramatises their thoughts about their time on the Island and intersperses them with the key speeches from Shakespeare that the prisoners found most meaningful.

It's a combination that works incredibly well. The testament of the internees is always essential reading, but what's amazing is how powerful the Shakespeare becomes in this context. The following passage from As You Like It seems transformed when spoken by prisoners who lived in freezing, unheated conditions, in tiny cells that were so wet in parts of the year that they would literally wash their faces with the water dripping down the walls.

Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chidings of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
‘This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.’

Or this, from The Tempest:

For I am all the subjects that you have,
Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me
In this hard rock, while you do keep from me
The rest o' the island.

Crucially, the play takes these themes forward and considers the way this extraordinary struggle has been betrayed by the corruption and cronyism of contemporary South African leaders.

As far as I can tell, The Robben Island Shakespeare has never been properly ‘performed’, but staged readings of it have taken place in South Africa, the UK and the US several times since it was first written in 2009. This volume comes with some excellent introductory materials, including some notes from Venkatrathnam himself, and a foreword from the South African actor John Kani who talks movingly about the importance of Shakespeare to a generation of black South Africans who grew up reading him as part of a forcibly Anglocentric education.

It was thought that Shakespeare would instil the values of a superior English literature; instead, a whole people took lessons on leadership from Henry IV, and on dealing with tyranny from Julius Caesar. Here you can see how those lessons were forged, under intense and lasting pressure, into something genuinely transformative.… (plus d'informations)