Amy Jeptha is a playwright, screenwriter and actor. She was named the Mail & Guardian’s 200 Top Young South Africans in 2013. She was the recipient of South Africa’s highest art accolade – The Standard Bank Young Artist Award – in 2019 and the 2017 Eugene Marais Prize for Drama.
The premiere of her play A Good House is playing now at the Royal Court Theatre until 8 Feb and then heads to Bristol Old Vic from 14 Feb to 8 Mar. It is a thrilling and comedic play which explores the consequences when a mysterious shack springs up out of nowhere in a middle class neighbourhood. As a biting satire of community politics and nimby-ism, the script is a fast paced look at assimilation politics, class and race. The play is directed by Bristol Old Vic Artistic Director Nancy Medina and marks the first production of David Byrne‘s second season.
Amy is also the director for 2021’s Barakat, the first film ever in the Afrikaaps language, to change the negative perception around the use of the language among Cape Town’s mixed-race communities. A Good House uses the language of Zulu to explore the hegemony of the ‘English’ language and its intellectual dominance across the world. She is also the chair of Women Playwrights International, and this is her fourth time working for the Royal Court.
What was the inspiration for A Good House?
The inspiration for the play started with a particularly thorny feeling I’ve had, as a woman of colour in some of the spaces that I found myself. These were usually white spaces where I was the first or only one of my kind and I was seen as a kind of trailblazer, bearing the weight of feeling exceptional as an artist and breaking boundaries. By virtue of being the first person of colour in such spaces, I would always have to negotiate my Blackness in those rooms.
So I wanted to write a race play, but one that was knottier and more complex than the usual binaries. One where there is no good, and no bad; there is no villain or hero. This play is a way for me to stumble through what race relations in post-Apartheid South Africa means for me now, as a Born Free, or a person born after democracy. We’re now 30 years into a South African democracy, so what does it mean now for us to negotiate being Black and being white in this country? But also what are all the conversations that we, as South Africans, haven’t had about our history, how the consequences of that history affects how we relate to each other on a human level?
To what extent does A Good House feel like a South African play?
At the beginning of writing the play, I wanted to make it non-specific and non contextual but as the process has gone on, and with the steerage of Nancy (Medina), my incredible director, I realised that the play was going to be at its most incisive if it was truly South African, a dissection of what it means to live in post-Apartheid South Africa. So now, I think, as much as it is universal, A Good House is so particular to my country and where I’m from, and I think the play is probably better for it.
The central couple Sihle and Bonolo play a key role in the play, can you speak more about their relationship?
The play essentially is about Sihle and Bonolo, about how in their intimate space, which is their relationship and their home, they’re still having to negotiate outside interference. This interference comes into their private space.. In the play, they are forced by their neighbours to interrogate their Blackness within the privacy of their home, whether they want to or not. So in part, the play becomes a study of their relationship, about their own personal histories and about how they come into conflict. They frequently disagree with each other. Often it becomes about how Black people have to shapeshift to accommodate whiteness.
How does it feel to be collaborating with your fellow creative team on A Good House?
It’s such a privilege to be able to collaborate between London and Bristol but also with the Market Theatre in South Africa. Our cast are South African, I’m South African, Nancy comes from Bristol via New York, our Associate Director is from the US, our cast is a mix of South African, Zimbabwean and British. It’s such a privilege to be able to have a truly collaborative team, and to bring all of these backgrounds together.
What do you hope audiences will take away from A Good House?
At its heart, the play is really about how we live alongside one another. How you live not only in your own home, but in communion with your neighbours and the people around you, about how those neighbours become your community. I guess the story of community is the story of anyone anywhere, because no matter how specific A Good House is to South Africa and to the particular circumstances of this play, we – all of us – live somewhere and live alongside people and have to negotiate the friction of our neighbourhoods and our communities. And communities make societies, so this play is really a microcosm of the world. So, yeah, what I hope is people will identify with that, even as specific to the context of the story that South Africa is, it’s universal enough to connect with anyone who lives next door to someone else.
How do you feel about A Good House being performed in Bristol?
I haven’t been to Bristol, and now my first introduction to it will be through Nancy, which is a great introduction, because she’s such an ambassador for the place. Nancy’s commitment to her audience in Bristol and the theatre itself has made me excited to go there, and I will probably spend much of my time sitting in the theatre and taking it all in.
