Dark Noon: the reimagining of American history that provoked acclaim – and walkouts – comes to Australia
When Dark Noon opened in the US, there were walk-outs. The show, in which seven South African performers tell the story of America in 105 minutes, has earned rave reviews internationally since its premiere in Denmark in 2019, but for American audiences in South Carolina and New York, it proved divisive.
“Some felt recognised; some felt that the story just ran over them, like a train coming from the past,” says the show’s co-director, Tue Biering.
In Charleston, South Carolina – once a major trade hub for the transatlantic slave trade – the show particularly touched a nerve: “In Charleston it was scary,” says Dark Noon’s co-creator, South African choreographer and performer Nhlanhla Mahlangu. “There were people who really hated it and who believed that it’s not even a work of art … There were people who walked out of the theatre.”
Perhaps it was the moment in which audience members, pulled on stage to take part in a scene, suddenly find themselves unwitting participants in a slave auction. Or perhaps it was the whiteface worn by the performers – six of them black – for much of the show.
“I get that question a lot: if blackfacing is so bad, what makes you think whitefacing is so good?” says Mahlangu.
He always gives the same answer: “Black people can’t be racist, because racism is an institution that is supported by military power, by parliament, by law – and black people have no capacity to do that. Black people can offend white people and bruise their hearts – and then after offending them, they go back to their shacks and their poverty.”
Dark Noon – which is premiering in Australia at the Sydney festival in January – adds a second big twist to the American story: it tells it through the prism of the western movie genre; hence the show’s title, a play on the 1952 western High Noon. Starting on a stage covered with red dirt, the cast builds America before the audience’s eyes, erecting a ramshackle town made from theatre flats.
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Within this shambolic set, the performers – wearing clownish makeup, wigs and costumes – whiz through American history in a series of absurd and occasionally nightmarish scenes, with live footage screened on onstage monitors.
If history is a story written by the victors about the vanquished, Dark Noon is an epic tale of colonisation told by those who know precisely what it is to be colonised.
“A lot of African history has been written by the colonisers, and they’ve written it in order to justify racism, apartheid, colonialism, capitalism,” says Mahlangu. “We are just changing the gaze so that European society has access to a situation where they look at themselves [through someone else’s eyes].”
Biering, who spearheaded Dark Noon through his Danish experimental theatre company Fix and Foxy, explains: “In Europe, we have an intense discussion about migration from the Middle East and from Africa, and I wanted to reverse that conversation and have a conversation about European migration.”
Europe had its own exodus, after all: in the 19th century, millions fled famine, religious persecution and political crises in search of not only a better life but any life at all – in America.
When it came to telling this tale, cowboy westerns felt like the right fit, says Biering: firstly because of the familiar stereotypes and narrative tropes; secondly, because of the way the genre both reflects and shapes a common colonial narrative about “civilisation” taming the “savage land”.
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But something unexpected happened when he began to devise the work alongside Mahlangu and their group of artists: Dark Noon became infused with the story of contemporary South Africa.
“I grew up during apartheid, during the state of emergency. So there were stones being thrown and real guns being shot in the streets,” Mahlangu says. “We used to love [westerns] because there was a lot of action … because we didn’t understand English, we couldn’t wait for people to start shooting each other and riding their horses.”
As an adult, he has a different perspective: the genre was part of a deliberate colonial strategy. “To maintain power, you need to keep presenting content that shows the white man as a hero so that the black people can aspire to be great servants.”
As they developed Dark Noon, the performers were encouraged to excavate their relationship with westerns growing up in the turbulent transition from apartheid to democracy. “It was very much about saying, ‘Who was the sheriff in your life? How were guns present in your life? How was violence present?’” says Biering.
The work was difficult but cathartic, says Mahlangu: “If I am going to play a circus master who is selling slaves at the slave market, what’s the other story I’m telling? Am I also telling the story of when I got a whipping from my uncle, who was an alcoholic? If there’s a rape scene, what other things are we addressing here?
“We’re 30 years old into a democracy [in South Africa], and we are still drunk from the Nelson Mandela euphoria. There’s a lot of fundamental things that were badly negotiated for the people of South Africa. So the wounds are still wet. And for us performing Dark Noon, it’s a healing process.”
Mahlangu is curious how Dark Noon will be received in Australia, which has its own history of colonialism, slavery and racism. But whatever the reaction, it is incidental to the most important aspect of the work – which is simply performing it. “[Our ancestors] died for our freedom to get on the plane and perform Dark Noon and get paid a salary,” he says. “How do we use our bodies as vessels for them to say the things they were forbidden to say?”
Dark Noon is at Sydney Town Hall 9-23 January as part of Sydney festival
