15+ questions for Marthinus Basson

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15+ questions for Marthinus Basson

He is considered one of South Africa's most versatile theatre personalities. Today LAUREEN ROSSOUW puts her questions to the brilliant actor, director, designer and translator Marthinus Basson.

© STIAN BAM
© STIAN BAM

HE was a laatlammetjie, grew up on a farm near Darling and spent two years at Paarl Boys' High and one year at Stellenbosch University's Drama School. After that, Marthinus Basson worked for The Space Theatre, Capab's drama department, Pacofs and later a flock of small companies such as Pieter-Dirk Uys's Syrkel, Dawie Malan's Leaping Priests, Chris Pretorius's Glass Theatre, as well as his own three companies, Vleis, Rys en Aartappels, TEATERteater and now upon retirement after 17 years as lecturer at Stellenbosch University, RaminiDam.

1. Describe youself in a hashtag?

#kindofhopefulbutnotreallybecausetheendisnigh

2. What app do you use most on your phone?

WhatsApp for all communication and Instagram because I find folk dance and folk art, rare music and musical instruments there. And I can proudly say I recently became an honorary member of the American Pride movement's flourishing and pride in identity. And not because, strangely enough, I have markers in my DNA from the North American Pima Indians, the Karitiâna Indians of the Amazon, a group of which there are only 320 left, as well as the Aztecs of the Andes, but because I like so many of their videos ...

3. What's next to your bed? 

I have not slept on a bed for most of my adult life, but on a couch or the floor or under a table or over the arms of a chair – with books and glasses on it, a pile of films I haven't watched yet and YouTube's art, politics or pimples or an opera, ballet or performance on my Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera, Paris Opera Ballet or Medici TV apps to get me through the night. And water for thirst and Tabard for the mosquitoes, of course. 

4. What are you currently reading?

At the moment I'm floating between Yuval Noah Harari's Homo Deus (he and David Attenborough are actually the only people I really respect), as well as Evelyn Waugh's venomous Black Mischief on audiobook when I'm slogging on my computer, Botho Strauss's comedy Bekannte Gesichter, gemischte Gefühle (Familiar faces, mixed feelings) which I want to translate for a possible production, and the magnificent photographer Sally Mann's memoir Hold Still, which is as moving, insightful and challenging as her photographs.

5. The best book you've read recently? And why?

Die Galeie van Jorik by D.J. Opperman, (facsimile and transcription of the original documents of Joernaal van Jorik) without a doubt. For six years as a raw player I was a member of the Cape Performing Arts Board (Capab) Youth Theatre Company which travelled nine months a year through the greater Cape Province to perform matric prescribed works at schools. This Opperman volume was prescribed almost every year – poignant and moving epic poems that look so clearly at the rise and fall of the Afrikaner. And this already in 1948, just when the National Party came into power. A true signpost for our time. Die Galeie is so informative in terms of comments and amendments, and how fantastic that one poet sought and used advice and feedback from the other. It is so absent in our industry.

6. What do you listen to when you are alone?

I have a wide musical taste, from early jazz like Bessie Smith and Alberta Hunter. I'm also crazy about ethnic music recorded by anthropologists in the previous century, but with great pleasure I waltz through Etta, Ella, Elvis, Fats, Aretha, Joni Mitchell, Nina Hagen, Laurie Anderson and Einstürzende Neubauten. However, Bach has remained boss of them all since my childhood. Also a crowd of Haydn, Vivaldi, Stravinsky, Mahler, Brahms, Schubert and many more. If I have to single out three as my favourites: Bach, Pärt and Eminem. Despite several attempts, inner struggle and self-examination, I just can't get into Wagner. Stupid and pompous. Yes. 

7. Name five things in your tote bag.

There is always a text, a book, stationery, an iPad and chewing gum.

8. Your favourite toy as a child?

Without a doubt my playmate Ghal Mentoor, who taught me everything.

9. If you could choose another career, what would it be?

If I had the talent I would be a painter or better yet, a curator or night watchman in the British Museum.

10. What are you afraid of?

Everything. And nothing.

11. What do you regret?

That I had never inquired enough about my parents and their family. What a loss. And never said thank you enough. They were exceptional in their simplicity and acceptance of me.

12. What do you find sexy?

Red hair. Everywhere. Especially in the sun when light dances insanely in it. So endlessly beautiful.

13. Who is your celebrity crush?

David Attenborough. For his scope and exceptional contribution to our knowledge and understanding of nature. For his selflessness. For his humanity. And his humility. He doesn't need red hair.

14. If you had to play a romantic role in a movie opposite anyone, who would you choose?

Lord, what a silly thought … Harari? But he is gay and, of course, that can create problems. On his 100th birthday, I will descend with Attenborough in a deep-sea diving bell, just like my childhood hero Fritz Deelman wanted to descend into the deepest of depths, and declare my love to him while strange, glowing fish swim around us ...

15. Which painter would you choose to paint your portrait? (Local or international.)

Lucian Freud or Diego Velázquez, but fortunately they are dead and such a thing will not be possible.

16. Is there a character in a play you overidentify with?

The useless handyman with so-called ideas in Eugéne Ionesco's The Chairs.

17. Who else would you like to collaborate with?

With most of the people I have worked with for a long or a short time. It doesn't get better than that.

18. If you could work in another country for a while, which would it be?

Certainly Germany where theatre is well supported, financially and by attendance; where there are still companies and where theatre is still an important part of the social debate.

19. Your favourite theatre in the world?

The best work I have seen was by Die Münchner Kammerspiele company under the guidance of director Dieter Dorn. If you talk about the theatre as a building, the best for the actor as well as the audience is the University of the Free State's Wynand Mouton Theatre. Ideal on all levels.

20. And the play you love the most?

Heiner Müller's Anatomy Titus/Fall of Rome. Challenging, difficult, exciting, simultaneously old and new and comprehensive. Informative. Also his Quartett.

21. Your favourite international actors?

Living: Kate Blanchett, Emma Thompson, Gary Oldman, Edward Norton. Deceased: Maggie Smith, Bibi Andersson, Erland Josephson, Klaus-Maria Brandauer.

22. What does your ideal day look like? 

Up early, at the office at six, working on pieces all day with good, inspiring colleagues, playing to an audience at night, then a nightcap in the foyer with colleagues and a friend or two. Bantering with the bartenders, then going home at something after one and doing it all over again, seven days a week. As it was in my 20 years at Capab ...

23. If you could invite three people to dinner, living or deceased, who would you choose? And what will you eat?

My mother, my father and Wilna Snyman. And we will eat sweet and sour liver the way my mother always made it, with a little brandy decanted before by my father. Wilna will bring the pudding. I will wash the dishes.

24. If you go back in history, what time would you like to live in? And why?

The Roman Empire is incredibly exciting to me because it was so vast and sophisticated in many ways, and so horrific in terms of human behaviour. Much like one sees with Trump in power in America. Crazy, smug, too much, too shiny, too stinky. But if I just think about dentists, I'm glad I'm alive now and instantly have as little desire to live in the past as I do to live in America now.

25. Your favourite smell?

Freshly baked bread in the veld in Darling where I grew up, during the spring.

26. The quality you like most in others?

A good conversation partner, preferably far away from my field of interest.

27. Your pet hate?

Ridiculous rules created to protect lazy people and marks that need to be bumped up because, ag shame ...

28. What are you a sucker for?

I can't say no and then I have to do a lot of little dances to get out of situations I didn't really want to be a part of. Oi.

29. What would you say to your younger self?

As I say to a mopish, self-obsessed generation these days: Don't waste 10 years of your life on the fact that you're gay. This is definitely the smallest part of living and your positioning as a person who hopefully wants to live a full life and maybe even be able to make a contribution on a greater niveau.

30. Your fave quotes? 

There is, of course, the most beautiful single-sentence paragraph ever from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, his description of the Indians returning after an attack on a settlement, but it's hopelessly too long to quote. So, I will suffice with my motto from the Romanian/French absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco's Macbett: “When hope fades, everything changes." Very good advice.

31. What are you looking forward to?

I am at my happiest in a rehearsal space with a good team of actors and technicians, and a challenging text with which we can toil and plough and plant and harvest together – so hopefully a lot more of that, if possible.

♦ VWB ♦


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