Valley Song Book

I liked the conflicts set up in this play, though I feel like I've seen the old traditional man vs. young girl with a dream scenario several times before (Fiddler on the Roof, for instance). However, where Fugard's words got really beautiful for me was the devotion to the valley in which this play is set. I think that in South Africa there is something more poignant about a (black, colored, asia) man's devotion to and identification with a piece of land than we get with say white American farmers, because that South African could be kicked off his land at any time with no real political or judicial recourse open to him. Therefore the bond to the land is much more emotive for a black, colored, or Asian in aparteid South Africa because the bond is so fragile which is one of the central themes of this play.

The other element at work here that was very compelling to me was the dual casting of Buks and the Author, who are played by a single actor switching between the roles as the scenario demands it. This complicates our notions of the stage as a place of actors and off stage as the place of writers, and by extension complicates our notions of the separation between stage and reality or actors and spectators.