Thulani Zwane in DARK NOON.
It’s a question the cast of Dark Noon gets asked often: "Why did a group of South African actors decide to dramatize the history of America?" For co-director and choreographer Nhlanhla Mahlangu, who was born in Phola Park informal settlement on Johannesburg’s East Rand, the answer lies in the eery similarities between the two countries’ pasts – and how the people who were originally living on the land became pawns in the creation of a so-called new frontier.
“Dark Noon exposes the brutality of an American dream,” as Mahlangu said in an Instagram post, ahead of the play’s U.S. debut in Charleston at the Spoleto Festival last month. The production, created by the Denmark theater company fix+foxy, is a retelling of 300 years of American history through the lens of the Western genre – complete with gunslingers and shoot-outs. In an outlandish and unflinching way, Dark Noon dismantles the idea of the white cowboy as a hero figure, instead spotlighting the violence behind their acts, and uplifting the role of Black, Indigenous and Chinese people who built America – with a kwaito tune or two thrown in as part of the soundtrack. Dark Noon premiered in 2019 in Copenhagen, before touring France, Germany and the U.K., where it played at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2023 to a number of positive reviews.
The show, which came about through a collaboration between Danish director Tue Biering and Mahlangu, as they sought to vividly reimagine Western tropes, is currently on at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. As actress Lillian Tshabalala-Malulyck tells the audience in Dark Noon, “Many people in my township died by gun, and I blame the Westerns for romanticizing it so much. And most importantly – Africans didn’t bring guns to South Africa.” The connection between the destruction and devastation these guns and the people operating them created – both in the U.S. and in South Africa – is a conversation Dark Noon wants to crack open.
Lillian Tshabalala-Malulyck in DARK NOON.
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