The Chaeli Campaign explores how we can truly say what we mean
|||The commissioned work, No fun ction alL anguage, looks at how we communicate effectively, writes Theresa Smith
WHY the weird spelling, is the first question I ask when I get hold of director Jayne Batzofin about her next production, No fun ction alL anguage.
“The title came from the Chaeli Campaign, they already had the name,” she explained.
“When people can’t speak, when they don’t have the ability to make their mouths make the right sounds, that’s the term used to describe the concept.
“The idea was that it is not just people with the problem of no functional language who cannot communicate. Very abled-bodied people also struggle to communicate. So, the show is about the spaces in between the words, those points where words fail us, those moments when we don’t have the right words to express what we mean. This is why there are gaps in the title. If you read it, it puts you off kilter; it makes you look at it in a different way,” she said.
“This is not a play about ‘ag shame, people can’t speak’, it’s about everyone.”
Batzofin was approached by the Chaeli Campaign specifically to create a production aimed at the 16-plus audience concentrating on how do we say what we mean, or express what we feel?
The Chaeli Campaign are an award-winning NPO who provide services to children with disability and are actively working towards creating a more inclusive theatrical landscape, on and off the stage.
Batzofin has been following a workshop process with performers Christelle Dreyer (Unmute Dance Project), Iman Isaacs (Full Stops on Your Face), Daniel Richards (Salt) and Andile Vellem (artistic director of Unmute Dance Company).
“It’s the first time I’m collaborating with Andile Vellem. I love his work. Iman has started learning sign language so that’s been super rad and Daniel Richards is great. Christelle Dreyer is my wheelchair-bound dancer, but she can move better out of it than I can. At the audition, she just blew my mind, my jaw dropped because I didn’t know what to expect.
“This is what the show is, why I am working with such an inclusive team. It’s about breaking conceptions about how people communicate. The Chaeli Campaign is all about inclusivity so it was important to have a team (for the show) that is inclusive at its core.”
The production does not follow a linear narrative, but works through chapter titles like Vowels and Consonants “to make us think of words” or Confessions or Sticks and Bones “about how words have power to hurt if we allow them to”.
They also touch on issues such as the (un)connectedness social media and those moments where words fail us.
“We’re unpacking the chapters through movement and choreography because dance is a medium which transcends language, most of the time.”
They are working with musician Dave Knowles who is co-creating a live performance with them. He will live-loop and beatbox as well as play the guitar and flute during the performance.
“I am a bit cautious about this because I don’t know if the audience wouldn’t rather watch Dave, but it’s why I wanted a live musician too; because teenagers connect so easily with music. We want to entice them into theatre.
“If they see the incredible movers like Christelle and Andile, maybe they will start to rethink how they see a deaf person. I didn’t want the theme to touch on disability, I deliberately want to change people’s mindsets, even if it’s just for a moment when they think, ‘oh, I didn’t realise someone in a wheelchair could do that’.
“It’s not like I have to change the choreography because she’s in the wheelchair, she has her own vocabulary, she dances with everyone and it’s amazing to have some of my own walls broken down because I think maybe she can’t and she’ll say: ‘Don’t tell me what I can’t do.’”
Batzofin thinks the work might even be able to cater to the 14-plus market, but she first needs some feedback from parents about whether 14-year-olds would be able to handle the raw and violent themes. The play does deal with traumatic memories in some of the themes so she feels it is better to err on the side of caution at first.
No fun ction alL anguage is on at the Masque Theatre in Muizenberg from March 8 to 19.