Award-winning young writer, director and actor Alex McCarthy will present his latest work, The White Man’s Guide to Sacrifice at the Baxter this month. He talks about the production.
The title sounds self-explanatory, but please tell us what is it about?
Essentially the play is about two young, upwardly mobile white males who have just been accepted into the Lamborghini club. With the club’s connections they’ll be fast-tracked up the corporate ladder into the arms of luxury. Now the club is coming over for a party in three days and the young white males must impress. However, they find a cow in their apartment. Terror, panic, cow poo. Unable to force the cow down the stairs, and too terrified that the club will dismiss them if they find out that there is a cow in their apartment, the boys are left with few options. As strange business-card-wielding entrepreneurs and high powered personal assistants become involved, it becomes clear that the men must either sacrifice their place in the club, or seal it in the blood of an innocent animal.
What inspired you to write it?
The White Man’s Guide to Sacrifice was inspired by a little known fact – cows can’t walk down stairs. I thought it would make a fantastic farce about white privilege. I have been interested in white conscientisation since my final year in university last year. White hegemonies, and the cultures surrounding them are incredibly interesting to me, since I often find myself imbedded in them. I thought the scenario presented by the cow, the stairs and the vast quantities of dung that the cow would produce would be a great way to put corporate hegemonic culture under pressure in a hilarious way.
You and Mdu Kweyama are the Baxter’s artists-in-residence for 2015. What has this entailed?
What this entails is that the Baxter Theatre Centre and the Rolf-Stephan Nussbaum Foundation have given me a year free from the conventional pressures of being an arts graduate. Traditionally, newly graduated theatre-makers often struggle to make ends meet. The residency alleviated this pressure, with the objective of allowing me to keep playing and exploring in playwrighting. Because of it, I have been able to spend the time pursuing ideas that I would never have attempted before and tried to grapple with text in ways that I haven’t considered before. Essentially, I have experimented a lot, and learnt a lot by doing so. The residency also gave me the opportunity to experience the running and operation of a major theatre like the Baxter, allowing me to witness the true grit it takes to sustain quality. In terms of products, I have written many performance texts throughout the year. When and where they will pop up is still mostly to be decided.
You graduated from UCT last year, with several awards under your belt. Tell us about this?
As part of the final year of theatre-making training at UCT, one of the major projects is to produce a brand new play for the National Arts Festival student programme in Grahamstown. I was lucky enough to go through my university career with a fabulous bunch of people so under the guidance of Mark Fleishman and Clare Stopford, we created a piece called Uhm... which was work-shopped through an improvisation process, co-written by Callum Tilbury and I. The balance between writing and work-shopping was tricky but incredibly rewarding and the play won an award for best writing at the student festival. Every year, a theatre-making graduate is rewarded the Mavis Taylor Floating Trophy. It was a great honour for me to receive this trophy especially since my class-mates are such formidable young people.
You’re a member of the Papercut Collective, tell us more.
At the end of last year those classmates, the creators of Uhm… and I felt an urgent need to stay together as some form of creative support group and creative collective. We formed The Papercut Collective made up of Jason Jacobs, Koleka Patuma, Kathleen Stephens, Callum Tilbury, Sive Gubanxa (who is also in the show) and I.
This maybe a strange question, but are you related to theatre-maker/scriptwriter/ actor/director Neil McCarthy – or is the surname a strange coincidence?
I am indeed son to actor, director and academic Clare Stopford and Neil McCarthy, as above. Both are also incredible mentors.
What was the last live show you saw, and how did you find it?
The last performance I saw was Sizwe Banzi is Dead at the Baxter. It was an electrifying experience. It was incredible to see a performance that re-introduced me to the spirit and living issues experienced by most South Africans in the deep dark days of apartheid. The commitment, confidence and generosity by the actors was simply striking.
What do you do to relax?
I either surf the internet for news sources, read or I indulge in a spot of digital gaming. I also love a good mountain to run on and a good bar to shout at friends in.
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