THEATRE: Stanfield’s savvy play turns racism into entertainment
When actress Chantal Stanfield discovered that a word used by a family member of her soon-to-be Jewish husband was on par with the k-word, she was devastated and couldn’t let it go. So she used the experience to write a play. From Koe’siestes to Kneidlach is a savvy piece of writing. When she details the racism she experienced, she goes quiet and then tackles the elephant in the room in serious fashion, but soon flips to the bright side and tells of her winning solution to a devastating dilemma. Stanfield wrote the one-woman play about a coloured ("some are comfortable with the word and others not", she says) Cape Flats woman who marries a member of Joburg’s tight-knit Jewish community, based on her experience. Everything that happened to her is given a context. When she deals with racist comments she shows how they are loaded on many different levels. She fell in love with a young man and discovered that he was a member of a suburban family for which the happiness of each individua...
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