Reza de Wet

De Wet is aware that they play created certain confusions for audiences. South African audiences have tended to expect theatre resembling literature, to become timid and unimaginative, said de Wet. Such responses would be expected of audiences wanting to see characters and stories but being offered instead a theatre of infectious atmospheres. “Unfortunately there is no time for ‘peeping-tom theatre – as Artaud described it – its really dying on its feet!”

“I feel that Chekhov intended elements that are still not explored in productions and understandings of his plays," said de Wet. In his conversations and correspondences with Meyerhold and Gogol – also renowned Russian theatre practitioners – Chekhov proposed a radical vision for theatre performance that is not character-driven, but focused on the actor's presence, atmosphere, and the ritual and musical pattern of the play.

ON THE LAKE virtually revolves around the one absent character: Kostia, whose suicide ten years before still leaves indelible marks on the women of the play. The yearnings, regrets and memories of Kostia haunt them – particularly Nina, whose dreams of art and freedom, once centred on Kostia’s revolutionary theatre, are now jaded amidst her disillusionment. Instead, the play’s “heroine” spends most of the play listening to the other characters’ complaints, entreaties and manipulations – another entity standing on the margins of events.

As the play's director as well as playwright, de Wet's investigations were even more significantly revealed in the acting. Grethe Fox's Polina was like a wind-up doll, exploding in grievances until the energy winded down – then violently gushing out again. Her wailing reminded one of incantation, a ritual of mourning; and her character's deep grieving arose not so much from the believability of circumstances or from the words she spoke, but from some doomed spirit of loss that was at once pathetic and moving.

Puppetry and the clown figure, closely relating to the grotesque, featured prominently in Meyerhold's theatre – and, as de Wet's research showed, Chekhov was extremely sympathetic to Meyerhold's approach. At one stage, Fox rehearsed with arms tied in splints, and Annelisa Weiland with her hair bands tied around her fingers, as if her Arkadina was a marionette. De Wet wanted to bring about a meeting of Chekhov and Meyerhold's work, appropriating elements of vaudeville, commedia d’ell arte and the “fairground booth” (the title of Meyerhold's famous essay on theatre), and Japanese Noh theatre, and to search for a theatre performance text.

A feature film based on 'Diepe Grond' (African Gothic) was adapted for the screen and produced by Damon Shalit and directed by Gabriel Bologna in 2012. In 2013, the film was screened in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa, where Reza De Wet lived, to commemorate the anniversary of her death.

She died on 27 January 2012 from leukaemia at her home.

Reza de Wet born in a small town (Senekal) in the Free State, South Africa is considered one of South Africa's great female playwrights. After graduating from University of Cape Town drama school she worked extensively as an actress, had a master's degree in English Literature and lectured in the drama department of Rhodes University in Grahamstown. She was a prolific, and socially conscious writer who had written 12 plays in 15 years (five in English and seven in Afrikaans). She won nine awards for her scripts (five Vita Awards, three Fleur du Cap Awards and a Dalro Award) as well as every prestigious literary award (a CNA Prize, a Rapport Prize and twice the Herzog Prize) and productions of her plays have won more than 40 theatre awards. Yelena won the Vita Award for Best Script (1998–99) while Drie Susters Twee (Three Sisters), was named Best Production for the same year.

She has won more theatre and literary awards than any other South African playwright, including the prestigious Herzog Prize for drama(1994), the highest honour in Afrikaans literature. In Open Space, an anthology of new African plays, she is the only woman represented and one of two South African dramatists. Aside from chipping away at the societal mores of Apartheid and racism, stylistically, her stories masterfully weaved Biblical myths, tribal and Afrikaner folktales, magical realism, and stream-of-consciousness storytelling in such a poignant and wholeheartedly original way, as to completely reinvent the psychological-thriller format.

In 1985 when playwright Reza de Wet unleashed her creative vision, fully formed and perfectly pitched, on an unsuspecting and quite impotent South-African theatre scene, she presented a subtle but radical alternative to the agitprop and comfortable entertainment seen on South African stages at that time. Right from the beginning of what had become a sustained and prolific career, she proved to be able to unnerve and amuse in equal measure while tapping into a dark and richly subversive vein, mining both gold and puss from a festering Afrikaner psyche.

Censorship was the order of the day. In 1985, one of the great Afrikaans playwrights, Bartho Smit, had effectively been silenced and the work of another important playwright, Pieter Fourie, was constantly being emasculated. For a time, he was reduced to writing farces.

African Gothic (Diepe Grond, 1985) understandably sparked off intense debate. Using a technique of literary model or reference that has served Reza de Wet well over the years, (an entire thesis could be constructed around her use of fairy tales, Christian myth and references to the works of Poe, the Bröntes and obviously Chekov) African Gothic was a knowing subversion of a popular Afrikaans children's story set on an idyllic farm; a South African Eden where the parents were good and responsible, the children safe and sound, the black nanny a second mother and friend, the workers smiling and happy and a benevolent God ever-watchful and at home in Heaven.

South Africa in the 1980s was a very different place from the country of today.

Reza de Wet (11 May 1952 – 27 January 2012) was a South African playwright.