Blood Knot at A.C. T.

lynnruth@pacbell.net

BLOOD KNOT AT A.C.T.
by
Lynn Ruth Miller

Athol Fugard wrote Blood Knot in 1961 at a time when South Africa’s apartheid policy was at its height. Fugard was 29 when he and Zakes Mokae, a black jazz saxophonist made theatrical history for a single Sunday-night performance of a play about two brothers, one black, the other white, struggling to honor their family bond. The performance took place in an abandoned button factory in Johannesburg’s Dorkay House because the South African government banned multi-racial events. “I am astonished that it’s still so relevant and still so painful almost 50 years after it was written,” said director Charles Randolph-Wright. “Blood Knot makes me feel things I don’t want to feel and forces me to deal with issues I think we all wish we could have overcome.”
But we have not become color blind in our society or any other. We still harbor biases that prevent human beings from realizing their full potential because of artificial barriers we ourselves have erected. Blood Knot is the story of Morris (Jack Willis) and Zachariah (Steven Anthony Jones) who are brothers, yet one is white and the other black. It becomes apparent that Morris is the better educated, more worldly member of the family because of the color of his skin. Zach cannot read and is a menial laborer with no rights and no aspirations. Morris has tried to live in a white world and but he does not fit into the pattern despite the color of his skin. He wants to create a life with his black brother that has some security and comfort by saving the money Zach earns so they can buy a plot of land somewhere to live free from oppression and the social chains that imprison them.
“Part of Blood Knot’s power is that it brings together such a mixture of elements, said Randolph-Wright. ”The hope of this play is that it invites audiences to discuss things we don’t often discuss. It is imperative that we see stories different from our own, that we explore other worlds. And if these worlds scare us, that that’s fantastic.”
And watching this play, seeing these brothers try to find some meaning in the prejudices that have warped their thinking as well as that of the society they are in is eye-opening to say the least. Everyone is the sum total of their heritage and in a society that says it welcomes and encourages diversity, that is a wonderful thing.
This issue in this play is that saying and believing are two different things and it is every one of us who pays the price by limiting the potential of people because of our own pre-conceived notions. “There is a blood knot that ties every human being to another human being,“ said Fugard in discussing this very real, very human work. “It’s a knot we each share that cannot be untied. “
Theater is truth you do not find on television or in headlines, and very often it is truth we all must see and understand before we can change not just the world, but ourselves. See this play. There is not one false note in this production. The story will move you and it will make you wonder just exactly who you really are.

If you go: Blood Knot runs through March 9 at
Where: The Geary Theater 4i5 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA
Tickets are $17.00-$82.00 www.act-sf.org or 415 749 2228