IF THESE ROCKS COULD TALK
There’s only one rock that matters in Athol Fugard’s play The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek. That’s the hut-sized boulder at the center of the stage, that dominates the red sand, scrub brush, and rubble around it. The rock is meant to stand for rural South Africa, where the play unfolds. This is a faraway land whose whose earth and sky, whose rhythms and possibilities, are different from our own. And this is a land that’s prehistoric. The rock’s surfaces are ravaged, as if they’ve withstood centuries of sun and rain. It’s stood here, in this place, far longer than people have.
In the first act, set in the 1960′s, an old black man paints bright glyphs across the rock and tells his assistant, a small boy, “This is my story.” Decades later the boy,
now a young man, repaints the rocks, to reclaim the old man’s story in a world that has forgotten it. While the rock is part of the play’s it’s peripheral to the performance. This play is one of words: declarations, remembrances, threats, and ideas. Everything is spoken. Even as the old man paints the rock, he explains what each mark stands for. The rock itself remains mute. And that’s a shame, because it’s such a powerful figure. Lit by a scatter of starry ceiling lights, it has an eery, lunar-like presence. It’s the richest element of the play.