Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Tin Bucket Drum: Questions with Neil Coppen
- Selection of images from various performances
- Tin Bucket Drum: the play script
- Note on staging
- Scene 1 A celebration
- Scene 2 The journey
- Scene 3 Mkhulu's welcome
- Scene 4 A child is born
- Scene 5 Awakening
- Scene 6 Sermon
- Scene 7 Silent confinement
- Scene 8 Mkhulu's story
- Scene 9 Integration
- Scene 10 Problem child
- Scene 11 Legacy
- Scene 12 Rehabilitation
- Scene 13 Community service
- Scene 14 Revolution
- Scene 15 Lullaby
Scene 16 - Rebirth
from Tin Bucket Drum: the play script
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Tin Bucket Drum: Questions with Neil Coppen
- Selection of images from various performances
- Tin Bucket Drum: the play script
- Note on staging
- Scene 1 A celebration
- Scene 2 The journey
- Scene 3 Mkhulu's welcome
- Scene 4 A child is born
- Scene 5 Awakening
- Scene 6 Sermon
- Scene 7 Silent confinement
- Scene 8 Mkhulu's story
- Scene 9 Integration
- Scene 10 Problem child
- Scene 11 Legacy
- Scene 12 Rehabilitation
- Scene 13 Community service
- Scene 14 Revolution
- Scene 15 Lullaby
Summary
NARRATOR begins to tie the cloth around her and rises to meet the audience. Music underscores.
NARRATOR: It was said that later that afternoon the Drummer Girl's spirit left the town dancing … dancing from out of her mother's arms to where the ancestors and Mkhulu were waiting to receive her. Dancing over table tops … roof tops. High above the town and into the stars. [Pause.] The rain came every year after that and it wasn't long before the mines and tin bucket factory re-opened. The Censor was never seen again. It was said that he was chased from the town by the people's drumming, a drumming that would never again be silenced. [Pause.] The Little Drummer Girl was never forgotten. To this day it is still a tradition for the children of the town to cover its trees with tin buckets. They do this so that during the first rains they may hear the Drummer Girl dancing past their windows. You may hear her too if you listen carefully …
PERCUSSIONIST begins to play the same beat on the djembe that accompanied the narrator's chant in the prologue. NARRATOR resumes the position she started with.
NARRATOR: She is coming … she is coming.
She is drumming, she is drumming.
‘Is it time?’
‘Nearly time.’
‘Is it time?
‘Nearly time’
‘Look’, one of the elders cries.
‘She comes! She comes!’
Ears … eyes … hearts to the skies.
Listen.
Listen.
Listen to her drums!
Drums roll furiously.
NARRATOR: Thunder rolls.
Lightning flashes: tin bucket blue.
As she rolls her drumsticks across the heavens.
Rain falling, softly, slowly,
Pitter-patter, pitter-patter.
Then pouring.
Tin bucket drums pounding,
Finally she is here.
The child has returned.
Drumming climaxes. Lights fade.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Tin Bucket Drum , pp. 46 - 47Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2016