By Athol Fugard
Wayland Baptist University
October 2000

Antonin Artaud once wrote, "In the true theatre, a play disturbs the senses' repose, frees the repressed unconscious, incites a kind of virtual revolt, and imposes on the assembled collectivity an attitude that is both difficult and heroic." I agree, and it is around this notion that I directed Athol Fugard's short comedic play, "The Drummer." My goal for the production was multi faceted. First, I hoped to create within the audience this "virtual revolt," that would plant the seed for social change, and I wanted the audience and the actor to experience a cathartic connection that left both parties cleansed on some level. The first part would come out of the audience's reaction to the show's message, and the latter would be the manner in which they received that message.

To begin, Fugard supplies merely an outline of the play. We know that a "bum" enters as if she has just awakened. She begins to rummage through the garbage pile "looking for something useful to that days survival." After some time searching, she finds one drumstick. A little later, she finds another. A few sirens pass. She begins to experiment with her sticks upon a trashcan. Her experimentation leads to a larger "drum" performance. She finds "some item from the rubbish" with which to adorn herself, and leaves the stage. "She has discovered it [the city] is full of drums...and she has got drumsticks." The author supplies the director with nothing more of real substance. There are no words spoken in this play.

Therefore, in directing this piece, I accepted the "script" as what it is, an outline, and I used the initial rehearsals as an open forum for creating the rest of the play's action bound only by one thing, there could be no spoken language. In order to accomplish this, the actor and I improvised for weeks. The idea was to create a catalogue of "bits." When we discovered something we liked, we rehearsed it until it could be recalled easily. I wanted to form an atmosphere of spontaneity within the piece. By drawing from the catalogue of bits, each night's performance was unique.

In order for my goals, as discussed briefly above, to be realized, certain elements had to be in place. First and foremost, the message of the show had to be transmitted to the audience clearly. At the surface, the show raises questions about where we are as a society by depicting a member of the most unfortunate group of citizens, the homeless. This is the most concrete, but by no means the most important, theme of the show. The audience is confronted with the sight of a human being finding what she needs for survival in a pile of garbage. The comedy allowed the audience to find themselves laughing at this image. More abstractly, however, the Bum represents society itself. Society has degraded to the point that we have reverted on some level to the primal. It is this coupled with the blatant disrespect for various American icons found within the garbage heap that I hoped would anger the audience into introspection. After finding the initial drumstick, I had the actor rummage around until she found an American flag that had been stuffed into one of the rubbish bins. We decided to extend the irony of a homeless person showing unabashed patriotism throughout the show. With this thought in mind, I sprinkled American icons throughout the trash heap. It was my unrepentant hope that the audience would be so offended by this apparent disregard for the icons that they would be forced into pondering the motivation behind such actions.

By the end of the piece, the drummer located two drumsticks. She began to slowly tap a rhythm on the top of a trashcan. The rhythm crescendoed until the actor was fully engrossed in a chaos of percussion. All comedy ended at this point. From this point to the end, my purpose was to drive home the violent images that existed beneath the comedy all along. It was frightening at times to watch this actor completely lose herself in the role. There were times in rehearsal that I had to stop her physically. Watching this take place was the single most moving experience I have ever had in the theatre. Literally, before the audience's eyes, the core of that actor was exposed. There were no masks or blocks between the actor and the audience. What was displayed was pure humanity in its most primal form.

Photos by Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton