SPOLETO BUZZ BLOG

Hi there. You don’t know me, but I was sitting in a few rows front of you Tuesday night during the opening performance of Amajuba: Like Doves We Rise at Emmett Robinson Theatre. That was some show wasn’t it? Those five people really had the audience under a spell with their stories of living in Apartheid-era South Africa as children, didn’t they? Well, I guess that is until your cellphone began to ring. You remember, don’t you? It was right about when actress Bongeka Mpongwana was recreating a traumatic scene from her childhood when three gang thugs had her pinned to the ground with an automatic pistol shoved down her throat. (Yes, I know – you probably didn’t read the part of the program that explained how these were real stories from the actors’ youths in South Africa, what with worrying about what incredibly important phone calls you might receive during the show.) So when your cellphone started ringing – we could all hear it quite well over the sounds of Mpongwana pleading for her life, about to be raped onstage a few feet away – everyone in the audience all began looking around in disbelief, wondering just what sort of world-class asshole could possibly be so shameless and disrespectful. Congratulations on completely destroying Tuesday night’s opening performance. These five actors traveled with their company from another continent to perform for you. Their stories were about growing up abandoned, eating ants and insects for want of any other food throughout their childhood, suffering rape and torture, the joy of actually having indoor plumbing, watching everyone they know die at the hand of another human being. And here you are, living in the wealthiest nation in history, with everything you could possibly want, and you can’t even be bothered to turn off your cellphone before they tell you their story. Whoever you are, you definitely win the Biggest Jerkoff of Spoleto award this year. Congratulations.