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07/06/2017 12:01 AMHalf-way around the world, two teenagers in a South African high school both loved performing in shows. Neither imagined that, years later, they both would be attending the Yale School of Drama as actors.
That’s exactly what happened for Marié Botha, who is entering her third year at the school, and Kineta Kunutu, who is entering her second year of the three-year program in acting.
The young women grew up knowing of the other, but were not classmates. (Botha, who is two years older, was a friend of Kunutu’s sister.)
Botha first moved to the United States to study theater at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Kunutu followed several years later to study with the American Musical Dramatic Academy in Los Angeles. Botha was accepted first to the School of Drama and the following year Yale said yes to Kunutu.
Now they are performing in Mies Julie, a South African adaptation of the August Strindberg classic, at the Yale Summer Cabaret, which will run from July 14 to July 23 at the Yale Cabaret, 217 Park Street, New Haven. The play, adapted by South African Yaël Farber and directed by Rory Pelsue, is set in South Africa. Botha plays the title role and Kunudu plays Christine, now envisioned as the servant-nanny of Botha’s white, entitled character.
They recall seeing each other on stage in high school.
“I have such a vivid memory of Marié doing this monologue [from the play Picasso’s Women],” says Kunutu. “I thought, ‘She’s amazing. I want to be like her.’”
Says Botha: “I remember a performance—I’m not sure which piece now—but I especially remember her voice and the depth of emotion she was able to reach, and I was in awe of her.”
The young women lost touch but Kunutu, upon hearing of Botha’s re-location to the United States, was reassured to know “that someone from South Africa went to the states to pursue acting. The South African acting industry is really small and I wanted, too, the opportunity to be trained on a world-stage level, and America had the schools that could do that.”
“I always wanted to be a film and television actress,” says Botha. “I love South Africa to bits but the industry is super young still. America is the place to be for what I want to do.”
“I never really thought I wanted to go to Yale,” says Kunutu, “but then I heard Marie got in and I thought, ‘Oh, this is really a great school.’ And it wasn’t until I had my audition and callback but I had this feeling of ‘home’ and that I wanted to be here.”
The adaptation of Miss Julie fits in with the theme of the Summer Cabaret series this year which is called “Canon Balle,” which takes fresh and bold approaches of some of the classics of the theatrical canon. Among the works are an all-male Antony and Cleopatra; Lear, an adaptation of King Lear, is told from the point of view of the play’s offspring.
The South African adaptation is set in 2012, 18 years after Apartheid was abolished. “The sad thing is that racism is such a huge deal in the world and it just sucks because our generation—they one Kineta and I are in—is working tirelessly to end that,” says Botha. “Our parents and grandparents are still very much living in the past.”
The cast for the show is made up entirely of actors who were born in Africa, which just might be a first for a cabaret-based production of such lineage. The other two actors are James Udom from Nigeria who plays John, and Amandla Jahava from Kenya, who plays the ancestor Ukhokho.
“I feel the time is now to have these political discussions,” says Kunutu. “Being in American now for five years, these conversations have been from an American perspective. So I’m really excited to do this story and have some African voices sharing that perspective.”
“It truly is coming from each and every one of our roots,” says Botha. “It’s such a visceral and important piece of theater to bring out in the world, especially for Africa, just to show the culture and bring bits of who we are as foreigners to the Yale School of Drama is amazing that we get that platform to jump off on and tell the story.”
For more information, visit summercabaret17.org.