A fresh eye on the far side of struggle theatre

Only one year out of drama school, Cape Town playwright and director Amy Jephta is finding enough space and support to make interesting new work. Marianne Thamm speaks to her

Three new plays in less than nine months is an achievement by anyone's measure. Even more so in a country such as South Africa, where there is virtually no formal financial or institutional support for making and producing theatre.

Fresh out of drama school with a degree in theatre and performance from the University of Cape Town, Amy Jephta, 22, has ignored all potential obstacles.

Her efforts have not gone unnoticed and she was selected earlier this year as the first recipient of the Gordon Institute of Performing and Creative Arts (Gipca), the Baxter Theatre and the Theatre Admin Arts Collective bursary for emerging directors.

Gipca was launched in 2008 with a R50-million grant from the Donald Gordon Foundation. It is an initiative that attempts to create spaces for artists to collaborate. Jephta was mentored by veteran director Clare Stopford.

"Look, there is more work in the industry than people think," she says. "You are always told in drama school that you're not going to make a living and you're probably not going to get a job. They keep telling you you're going to have a hard time so get ready for it."

But nothing comes from nothing, as the saying goes, and Jephta, the daughter of two Mitchell's Plain police officers, found that if you actively go out and "do", people will come and you will find help.

"I have found that there are lots of people who are willing to give you their help and time and money because you are young and I think people are looking for new voices."

Her third play, Pornography, which she also directs, opens at the Intimate Theatre at UCT's Hiddingh Campus on Tuesday. The play stars Charlie Keegan and Taryn Nightingale and is about a relationship more than it is about pornography.

Her previous two plays, Interiors and Kitchen, were "self-funded, self-motivated".

Megan Choritz, a prolific blogger and theatregoer known for her uncompromising assessment of local work, had this to say about Interiors , which played in Cape Town for a too-short a run in February:

"Amy has written a delicious little script. It's cute, wacky and it has an original take on a well-worn theme: the path from boy-meets-girl to 'WTF is he/she on about?'. It has a kind of Juno quality about it (especially with the choice of music) and I have no doubt it is the kind of play that will have huge appeal for a young, fresh theatre audience. This is good. Very good."

Jephta says that although the lives of her parents - and grandparents, who once lived in District Six - were framed by the backdrop of the country's politics, she feels no need to reflect this.

"I don't enjoy writing social or political issues and I don't like issue-based theatre. I don't like theatre about apartheid and the struggle. I like to tell stories that are a bit taboo and taking them from a comedic viewpoint."

She says artists of her generation have "outgrown those stories" and have new perspectives to offer.

"My themes are more based on things that I know and see.

"At first I intended that Pornography be a comedy, like a sort of satire on the sex industry in SA and why it doesn't exist and if it does exist why it is underground. But it ended up being more of a relationship study between two people and porn became a device more than a theme."

Acting, for her, is not an option - as she prefers "being safely stowed away behind my computer screen", she noted on her blog, opinionbiatch.blogspot.com

Early inspiration, she says, came from ground-breaking Irish-born playwright Samuel Beckett, the hugely influential British playwright Harold Pinter and Beat poets Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.

"I found some of the writing of the Beat poets quite revolutionary, even today. I am still finding my own voice, still developing my own style and I think I'm starting to find out what it is."

Although she says she is not a control freak, she's reluctant to hand her texts over to someone else to direct at this stage.

"I write with a director's head. I know what I am intending as I write.

"My scripts end up being very sparse. I don't write stage directions or anything or settings, because I know what that is in my head."