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Daniel Dercksen shares a few thoughts with Alice Krige, who delivers a powerful performance in Skin.
When Alice Krige left Upington to study acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London in the late 1970's, she never thought that it would almost take 30 years before she would return to her roots to play a South African character.
In Skin, which was co-produced with Margaret Matheson (Bard Entertainments, UK) and Genevieve Hofmeyr (Moonlighting Films, RSA), Krige delivers a powerful performance Sannie Laing, a white Afrikaans shopkeeper in a remote area of the Eastern Transvaal who lovingly brought her black daughter up as her 'white' little girl.
"In 2007, after 27 years of continuous work as an actress, I played South Africans for the first time - three in the course of the year," says Krige, who will also be seen in the upcoming StringCeaser and Shingetsu later this year.
StringCeaser was written and directed by Krige's husband, Paul Schoolman, and produced by Krige.
Telling the little known story of the adolescence of the emperor Julius Caesar - in the contemporary setting of three modern prisons, Pollsmoor Prison, South Africa; Cardiff Prison, Wales, and Drumheller Penitentiary, Alberta, Canada - the actors are a mix of about three hundred prisoners, a wonderful group of South African actors from Cape Town, Johannesburg and Gugulethu, and a few internationally acclaimed actors, John Kani and Sir Derek Jacobi.
Krige teamed up with her director-husband and co-wrote and co-produced Shingetsu, playing the role of a"doctors without borders" surgeon who encounters an ex-special forces operative with whom she has had some dealings in the Bosnian conflict.
"Of the three roles, Sannie was the only one which is a telling of an actual person's life," says Krige. "I have played actual people several times in my life - some of whom were still alive, or whose relatives were still alive. It always feels like a great and very particular responsibility."
It was fortunate that Krige landed the role of Sannie in Skin.
"According to Tony Fabian, the director, my name was on the initial list of possible actresses, but when it came to actually making an offer to someone, the producers went after a famous American actress - in an attempt to help secure the film financing. The film was proving, as most movies of this nature do, very difficult to finance. Fortunately for me, she turned it down - her reason being that she could never play a woman as downtrodden and subjugated by her husband as Sannie was," says Krige.
This was one aspect of the character and the film that resonated with Krige.
"This was one aspect of Sannie's story, within in the broader story of Sandra's life, moved me. Sannie was in many ways trapped by the expectations and strictures of the society into which she was born - in the same way that Sandra was. Had Sannie left Abram because of his rejection of Sandra when she chose to go with Petrus, she would have had no where to go - Sannie would have been rejected by her own community, divorce was not really an option in a remote rural district in South Africa in the fifties. She had no skills other than home making. She would not have seen her sons again. She would most likely not have been able to go and live with Sandra…Sannnie's marriage was destroyed by force of circumstance, rather in the way that Sandra's marriage to Petrus faced enormous odds. The plight of this woman, this family moved me deeply, especially if one considers that we heard about Sandra because Abram hoped that turning the scrutiny of the press onto Sandra's position would help her - many families of whom we've never heard probably wrestled with the same problem."
Krige was attracted to the role because of her empathy with Sannie, "that was rural South Africa in the fifties, and was probably much the same in the rural areas of the US, in fact many parts of the world, and there are probably many places still today where women are in a similar position - with little freedom of choice."
Another element in the story that interested Krige was that "it is first and foremost the story of a family, and families can be deeply challenging. They are the ground where all of us derive our genetic makeup, where most of us are shaped to become who we are, and, particularly to me as an actor, as such are endlessly interesting."
Krige was also touched by the story of the love between a mother and child, "a love so strong that ultimately it was able to transcend the wounds and damage inflicted by an oppressive social system."
Krige found that her South African heritage informed her performance in Skin.
"It was fascinating, a great delight and relief, to be working within my own deep cultural references - after years of portraying characters of different nationalities to my own," says Krige.
"I think the fact that I lived in Upington from 1954 to 1962 - a small, rural Afrikaans community - was very helpful for me in relation to playing Sannie."
"For me, its strength and validity is that Skin a movie about the ability of people to survive and transcend the damage inflicted by oppressive societies and systems; it speaks to people where ever there is racial, ethnic, or religious division or discrimination."
Krige hopes that local audiences will respond to the "story of an individual who, in spite of having considerable hurt inflicted upon her, still is in search of and open to communication, forgiveness and a positive outcome."
South Africans did respond well to Skin, with the film knocking Julie and Julia out of number one at the Nouveau Box Office and is now in first after its opening weekend.
After early success in the theatre winning The Society of West End Theatres' Best Newcomer and the Plays and Players' Best Newcomer awards for her performance of Raina in Arms and the Man, she decided to focus her career working with the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company.
During her two seasons with the RSC between 1982 and 1983, Alice performed in such productions as King Lear, Edward Bond's Lear, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew and Cyrano de Bergerac.
She then returned to work in film and television, where she appeared in a diverse range such as the four time Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire and Star Trek: First Contact, for which she won a 1997 Saturn Award for her portrayal of the Borg Queen.
Most recently she had a recurring guest role in the HBO series Deadwood and was seen in the horror thriller Silent Hill, as well as Lonely Hearts and The Contract, alongside Morgan Freeman.
Krige found that playing the wonderfully wicked Critabella in Silent Hill was a great strain.
"When I got home from 3 months of filming on Silent Hill my little dog found my presence so disturbing she would have nothing to do with me. I don't generally think of myself as bringing my work home, but I certainly was trailing darkness after that one. And although to play a very human person, flawed but struggling, facing devastating problems, was a great and stimulating challenge, it was by no means a cheerful experience!"
Krige acting career was sparked when the opted out of training to be a clinical psychologist at Rhodes University and signed up at the new Drama Department, then headed by Roy Sargeant.
By the first term of her 3rd year, Krige decided that she wanted to be an actress.
"It wasn't what I always wanted to do, and although I look upon the last 30 years of work as having been greatly stimulating, very privileged and intensely rewarding, acting is not necessarily the only thing I will continue to do from here on in."
Krige will also be involved with the launch of the StringCaesar -The Turning Point Foundation in June.
Said Krige: "The Foundation will be based in Cape Town, and will create a theatre space and (ultimately) a HiDef facility where people from the Cape Flats and townships surrounding Cape Town can come and tell their stories as theatre or film. The Foundation will do similar work in Pollsmoor Prison."
What makes Krige tick as an actress is her constant "fascination with human behaviour" and "the human experience/journey"
Said Krige: "And these beg a larger series of questions about human consciousness, the cosmos, and our purpose."
As for inspiration, Krige keeps "exploring around the character, in ever widening circles, keeping a bit of my brain empty and receptive, while at the same time looking for answers to the questions which might lead me to who she is - until hopefully she shows up and takes over and I'm just there as a channel."
"Each given role, script, cast, director, crew, each production, if I'm paying attention, seems to open the path to the character. I have no formula - the search for each character is as unique as the character itself."
As for the future, Krige will continue to work as an actor.
"The great majority of actors, and anyone who works on a freelance basis, walk a tight rope between employment and unemployment - which for me has been a very interesting life - you learn to take nothing for granted and to expect the unexpected…"
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Copyright © 2010 Daniel Dercksen
Printed with Permission in the Sunday Tribune
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