Ratladi and the weight of seeing

Between the presidential living room and the wasteland, director Calvin Ratladi finds Robert Mugabe's ghost and the aching split in our soil

- Keith Bain

The first thing I noticed about Calvin Ratladi were his eyes. Huge pools of something warm and comforting. We met on the stairs leading up to Rhodes Theatre in Makhanda where the play he directed for this year's National Arts Festival was about to premiere.

Instead of the jangle of pre-show nerves, what I saw in his eyes was calm, patience — an artist's quiet expectation minutes before the public sees a work for the first time.

And below the eyes, an openhearted smile.

For those few moments - “hello”, “great to meet you”, “break a leg” - Ratladi, who is this year's Standard Bank Young Artist for Theatre, looked at me with such intensity it was as if we were old friends.

His eyes were, I thought, those of someone with a talent for baring his soul, someone familiar with the sensation of opening himself up in front of an audience. It was weird then to later hear him tell me that he avoids looking at people for too long.

“Usually, I don’t look at people when I speak to them,” he told me during an interview a few days later. “I hardly look at people at all, because when I do, I start seeing beyond...”

Although his words trailed off, I understood what he meant, knew that what he was alluding to was a gift, a sensitivity that has doubtlessly fuelled his artistic vision. “I've always known about this,” he says.

His ability to see below the surface, see “beyond” what exists in the physical realm, is precisely what catches you off guard in his new play, Breakfast with Mugabe, which — after its debut run in Makhanda — opens this week at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg.