THEATRE: JAKOB 
THEATRE: JAKOB 
ENLIGHTENING 
words by Gisele Turner 
Michael Broderick’s Jakob is an interesting melange of mythology, folk tale and rural narration. It is set in a remote farming area where the elements are fundamental to the lives and livelihood of the community. It has the texture of magic reality. Transformed into a theatre script by talented Clare Mortimer and given to the exceptionally capable Bryan Hiles to animate, Jakob springs into flesh and light and leaves searing brand marks in the eyes. 
Jakob is shrouded in mystery and the unanswered questions hang like gossamer threads in a light wind. He arrives like Moses; but he is in a bucket and it is in dam. An elderly childless couple, bereft with miscarried and still born history, find him and take him home to nurture. Fate has determined that they will have a child, an ‘oddly coloured’ child, a child prone to psychotic behaviour. Cocooned in their undemanding love, Jakob plays out his restless fantasies that involve an intense relationship with the elements. In his rejection of light, his incapacity to consume it or digest it, he follows a strangely primal instinct to avoid it and secrete it. 
That’s all I am going to say about the story, because the miracle that unfolds is the denouement and climax of the play. Broderick has created a story that gives him ample opportunity to exercise his expertise, experience and skill with light. Light is the other performer on stage; its role, like the actor’s, changes features, pace and intensity. It disappears and reappears in unexpected places. It shimmers, shines, floods and is reduced to a pin prick. It glows and reflects. Together, Hiles and the light play out a serious game; a game that comes close to death. 
Broderick’s fable has its human roots in the back waters, the outcasts of society who struggle for existence and create their own reality. In a scene reminiscent of tales told by Herman Charles Bosman, Broderick has Hiles take on a number of characters, each with their own voice, stance and viewpoint. With the Afrikaans lilt to the voices, the piece is set in a timeless vacuum, where the harsh environment shapes and moulds the community. 
Jakob himself is a silent character; it is action not speech that gives him his vitality. Here, the shaven headed Hiles captures the strange boy’s processes with delicate sensitivity and fearlessness. As a narrator, he manipulates various mechanisms while sustaining the flow of descriptive prose and painting the pictures with poignancy and an understanding of silence. He also makes his way around a blacked-out stage with enviable agility, appearing unexpectedly in another part of the set. This lightness of foot and elegance of orientation add to the palpable magic of the piece. 
Jakob is a spell binder of a play; the way the words and the set and the characters and the light and the water and the wind pass through the time hung in a dry stillness changes perspectives and keeps the awareness sharp - as though we too must sniff the air and determine the level of the dam. It is the stuff of dreams, the play of imagination, the delving into the shadow world and discovering the light. 

Jakob is a spell binder of a play; the way the words and the set and the characters and the light and the water and the wind pass through the time hung in a dry stillness changes perspectives and keeps the awareness sharp - as though we too must sniff the air and determine the level of the dam. It is the stuff of dreams, the play of imagination, the delving into the shadow world and discovering the light.