S’il vous plait, Theatre
Venue: Beethoven Room
Next performance: Beethoven Room, Thursday, July 3, 20:00
Review and interview
By ‘Maleruo Leponesa
S’il vous plait is a play acted by Mistress Mae (her stage name). She engages her audience by using them as characters playing as her multiple partners while she relates her own life experiences in love and romance with different partners. Her use of body language is appealing, and she engages different emotions all in one play.
The audience sees a powerful, controlling woman who prides herself on always getting what she wants. She displays her multiple personalities with various men, and her ability to seduce men is evident. Her use of music, which relates her experiences in the form of a song, brings further life to the production while keeping her audience entertained. Her random and surprising selection of so-called partners — from the audience — adds sparks to her creative play. She even displays her charming techniques of mixing cocktails, which she eventually shares with random audience members while engaging and says, “Well, I am a hostess, and I must make sure that my guests feel welcome.” The choice of props also marks a significant level of creativity.
In a question about the mastermind behind this brilliant piece, how was everything brought into the melting pot, and how was it brought here to the National Arts Festival in Makhanda? Mistress Mae says, “I am the birth giver. I am the mother, you could say. I have a very deep creative energy. It is an erotic energy, I suppose you could say. And I believe this is the energy from which all art stems. And so, I thought the time was right to share my eroticism, my creativity, with the very, very humble people of Makhanda and the Eastern Cape and South Africa in general.”
