Re: The Coat By Athol Fugard
Nayra Wellinghoff
A man is sentenced to prison for political crimes. All he has to send back to his wife is his coat. The play was based on improvisations. The first performance was directed by Fugard in Port Elizabeth in 1966. The names of the characters are taken from other roles that the actors had played (Lavrenti and Aniko from Brechts The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Marie from Woyzeck, Jingi from La Mandragola and Haemon from Antigone.
Fugard says "Then we asked [the actress] what do you do with the coat now you've got it. The wife, the actress playing the wife, said "Well I'm in my house. I've now heard about my husband. I know I'm not going to see him for five years, I've got his coat in my hands, Ill hang it up first, first of all, then go on working. I want to think about him. And the coat".
Nonetheless, content is still important and we still want to play and experiment with the time we have left. After our supervised session with Sarah, we knew we wanted to add in formalized choreography using the coat, although very much aware now that stillness does not translate indolence but instead gives the words time to breathe. We wanted any added movement to be an aesthetically pleasing enhancement that reinstated our red thread. From the beginning of the devising process, we have all discussed our desire to integrate puppetry. With puppetry being such a broad art, we had to get our head wholly around the play text before we could pursue with it. I feel this week was the optimal time to introduce puppetry; we now have a strong base and both the time and inclination to experiment.
I believe the inclusion of puppetry, thus far, is aesthetically beautiful and moving. It captivates me as an observer, however still fully fits within the epic genre as you can see the coat is not, at this time, real but purely symbolic. This is continuously established through the coat never being touched by the improvising actor, but only manipulated by the observing ensemble and at once suddenly disregarded and manhandled once the improvised scene ends.
Red Thread. When I first heard this term in a lecture I was presented with the image of a pretty red thread weaved through a luxe white piece of fabric, initially connoting elegance and delicacy. Little did I know those two words were quite the opposite and would be imperative in the grand scheme of the devising process. Incipiently, I misunderstood the concept of the red thread. I considered this expression to be symbolic of the main plot and thus only naturally established what I thought was a solid red thread; presenting the struggle of Aniko and her emotional and physical journey to selling the coat.
[1] Fugard, A. (2016). Athol Fugard Quotes at QuoteTab. [online] QuoteTab. Available at: -athol-fugard/the-act-of-witnessing-is-important-to-me-somebodys-got-to-tell-the-truth-you-k#UxlTRApWAAk6wVEC.97 [Accessed 25. Oct. 2016].
Cape Town: A. A. Balkema, 1971. First edition. Fugard, a white South African, led the Serpent Players, black South Africans performing European works -- until "The Coat," a play that evolved from improvisations of the players telling their own story. "Based on an incident at one of the many political trials involving the Serpent Players, The Coat dramatized the choices facing a woman whose husband, convicted of anti-apartheid political activity, left her only a coat and instructions to use it." (Loren Kruger, Post-Imperial Brecht, 2004). Minor rubbing to tips otherwise near fine in stiff paperwraps. Scarce, especially in nice condition. BASED ON A POLITICAL TRIAL INCIDENT.
Item #26110
A workshopped "acting exercise" about a prisoner and his coat, based on a real incident during the trial of members of the company in 1966, when Fugard was approached by a man who had been sentenced to ten years hard labour, requesting him to take his coat back to his wife as a memento. In the play the family debate the future of the coat, eventually deciding to place it on a hanger and keep it until the old man returns home.
The Coat was derived from improvisation, taking a story idea from Gogol's short story The Overcoat coupled with a real-life incident experienced by a New Brighton man, and developed using Brechtian techniques such as subtitles, alienation and metacommentary.
the Serpent Players used Brecht's elucidation of gestic acting, dis-illusion, and social critique, as well as their own experience of the satiric comic routines of urban African vaudeville, to explore the theatrical force of Brecht's techniques, as well as the immediate political relevance of a play about land distribution. Their work on the Caucasian Chalk Circle and, a year later, on Antigone[20] led directly to the creation, in 1966, of what is still [2004] South Africa's most distinctive Lehrstück [learning play]:The Coat. Based on an incident at one of the many political trials involving the Serpent Players, The Coat dramatized the choices facing a woman whose husband, convicted of anti-apartheid political activity, left her only a coat and instructions to use it.[33]
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