John Kani

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I still remember the moment when my teacher, Mr. Budaza, walked into class and said, 'Today we are going to study 'Julius Caesar,' one of Shakespeare's most important plays.'
- John Kani
Collection: Teacher
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All over the world, there is someone sitting in a cell because he or she is not allowed freedom of expression.
- John Kani
Collection: Freedom
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We've got the right to vote, but what does it mean? People now want to have the right to a job, the right to education, the right to medical services.
- John Kani
Collection: Medical
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I want my work to contribute toward creating a better society, toward bringing people together. That is always the first consideration, not the money.
- John Kani
Collection: Society
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You can't always play the hero. You have to play the villain.
- John Kani
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Seventy is beautiful for me. I am truly, at last, an elder.
- John Kani
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Theatre has had a very important role in changing South Africa. There was a time when all other channels of expression were closed that we were able to break the conspiracy of silence, to educate people inside South Africa and the outside world. We became the illegal newspaper.
- John Kani
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Before 1994, many South Africans used theater as a voice of protest against the government. But with the end of apartheid, like the artists who watched the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe, theater had to find new voices and search for new issues.
- John Kani
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Protest theater has a place again. It's not against whites or apartheid. It is against injustice and anything that fails our people.
- John Kani
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It is a troubled soul that forces the human being to act. It is some kind of gangrene within you, inside of you, that eats your soul, that forces you to save your soul.
- John Kani
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I was 51 when I voted for the first time in 1994, and I look at South Africa through those spectacles.
- John Kani
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When I tried to do 'Waiting for Godot, it was such a controversy. I was tired of political theatre. All I wanted to do was 'Godot.' You know what happened? We were told we had messed up and politicised a classic that has nothing to do with S.A.
- John Kani
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'Sizwe' is the beginning of protest theatre; 'Nothing But The Truth' is post-apartheid South Africa.
- John Kani
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I will always vote. I have done so, ever since 1994.
- John Kani
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Our job as artists, we believe, is not to make changes in society. We don't have the ability to do that. We reflect life. We are the mirror of the society to look into. Our job is to raise questions, but we have no answers.
- John Kani
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You can give me any of Shakespeare's plays and I'll tell you a parallel African folktale.
- John Kani
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'Captain Marvel,' whereby the steel trap is challenged, where the hero is a heroine, where the most powerful person who has the welfare of the future of the human race is a woman. What else can it be? Because that was the role of my mother when I was a kid.
- John Kani
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My stories are about humanity, about the challenges of surviving and the constant fight against ignorance, inhumanity and complacency.
- John Kani
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In 1990 there were about 300 scripts being written demanding the release of Nelson Mandela. And suddenly we watched Mandela walking out of prison. So those scripts had to be destroyed.
- John Kani
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That's the beauty of art: art is universal.
- John Kani
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I write about the human condition, as a South African. I sometimes see South Africa with the spectacles of the past and there will then be a political content in my writing.
- John Kani
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This is the problem I have: I write a play and I give it to a director and they say, 'I'll do it one condition: if you play the role.'
- John Kani
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I am a citizen of the world, or no world at all!
- John Kani
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Someone once asked me what I missed most. I said, 'My youth.' I've never been a boy who could run around, go crazy, do this, try that. There wasn't time for that.
- John Kani
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Acting became a powerful tool for change. You had to tell stories that were important to you.
- John Kani
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I spent 51 years under apartheid. I don't imagine suffering. I know it.
- John Kani
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I did 'Sizwe Bansi is Dead' for 34 years.
- John Kani
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Shakespeare examines how democracy is built.
- John Kani
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In South Africa in 1987, apartheid was still going strong. Some of the most brutal race laws had been relaxed, but they hadn't yet been repealed. There was still a lot of tension.
- John Kani
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I'd read Shakespeare in school, translated into isiXhosa, and loved the stories, but I hadn't realised before I started reading the English text how powerful the language was - the great surging speeches Othello has.
- John Kani
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And I'm part of the generation of South Africans who feel we're lucky to be alive.
- John Kani
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Whenever I play Shakespeare, I keep thinking, 'how did this Englishman know so much about me?'
- John Kani
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In South Africa, we've been watching these movies all our lives - 'Batman,' 'Superman,' 'Captain America' - and every time the mask comes off it's a white man.
- John Kani
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When I first encountered Shakespeare as a boy, I read every word this man has written. To me, he is like an African storyteller.
- John Kani
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Shakespeare's words paint pictures in glorious colour in my language. They were written by a man whose use of words fits exactly into Xhosa.
- John Kani
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When I'm abroad it's almost like I'm in a transit lounge. I'm only comfortable when I know the date of departure.
- John Kani
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Everything you do on stage is always a response to something, not the next line.
- John Kani
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I'm Dad at home, not John Kani.
- John Kani
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It is ridiculous to think we can erase racism in South Africa, but through theater there can be a genuine attempt to move on with our lives and build a better country.
- John Kani
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I come from a long line of storytellers.
- John Kani
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My grandfather told me our history through his stories about all the great Zulu battles.
- John Kani
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I had to look at white people as fellow South Africans and fellow partners in building a new South Africa.
- John Kani
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In Australia, I almost became a counsellor. At the end of each performance there would be a queue of sobbing people backstage. They all wanted to explain why they left South Africa.
- John Kani
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It dawned on me that theatre is a powerful weapon for change.
- John Kani
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Other theaters exist here solely to entertain the white audience and keep South Africa on a par with what's going on in the West End or Broadway. The Market concerns itself with theater of this country, for this country.
- John Kani
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I must concentrate all my efforts in the attainment of freedom for my people.
- John Kani
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When you write as an artist, you just tell a story and people say it addresses issues.
- John Kani
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Yes, we have the judiciary, the Constitution, we're fighting racism on a daily basis, but these are all state efforts and are not the efforts of the individual. The individual has to commit to change, the individual has to look at the past and take accountability of the past; for the wound to heal we have to dress it together.
- John Kani
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Any older actor knows the last great mountain to climb is to play King Lear and now, if I ever play Lear, I will have done the pre-preparation because I had to go into the play and read it over and over again.
- John Kani
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When I am offered work, I am very selective.
- John Kani