Rare achievement for Matthew Ribnick

THERE is no one I know of on the local theatre scene who gets away with so much racial stereotyping as playwright Matthew Ribnick.

Off course our comedians have been playing the stereotyping game since the dawn of democracy - and made us laugh in the process.

But stand-up comedy is stand-up comedy, which is totally different from theatre, and audiences for some reason tend to be more tolerant of stereotyping in comedy than in straight theatre.

In other words, comedians have more latitude, a kind of license to make more fun of people across the board than any other art form.

But then Ribnick's kind of theatre thrives on racial stereotypying, and yet he not only gets away with it, but his shows attract all racial groups. A rare achievement in a country where race, to a large extent, still defines people's tastes in a number of things such as like theatre, food, music, books and even jokes and religion.

And the playwright is one of the few actors whose shows are capable of making a profit without receiving any form of sponsorship - from Hoot, Chilli Boy to Monkey Nuts.

And all these shows have, remarkably, sold out in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, making him a hugely successful playwright by local theatre standards, with erratic and inconsistent audience figures.

Ribnick and his wife Geraldine Naidoo first made an impression as a creative team in 2002 with Chilli Boy, (currently running at the Fringe Theatre at the Johannesburg Theatre until November 6). It will be followed by Hoot, and their new play Monkey Nuts.

All their plays have been conceptualised as one-man plays, with Ribinick having to play several characters and in some cases even 20 characters. In Chilli Boy, the hero is a white gangster possessed by the spirit of an Indian woman with unfinished business on earth.

In Hoot, a wealthy white businessman, ruined by divorce, hits rock bottom and becomes a taxi operator.

Naidoo has a faculty for inventing juicy scenarios that allow her marginalised characters to infiltrate broader society, and let their narratives take centre stage.

This time its an idiot savant, Edgar Chambers, whose misfortune in love and life is counter-balanced by his luck in winning competitions.

"The power of theatre is in the conceptualisation, followed by the script and then the acting. Our plays work well because they are well conceptualised," Naidoo says.

"One thing I have learnt is that as an actor I must just stick to acting and leave the rest, the business side to those who are into business. Geraldine is a businesswoman, and so she does the producing because I know nothing about that side of theatre.

"The biggest problem in this industry is that you will find people who do everything - writing, acting, directing and producing.

"But the question is do some people who call themselves producers know what this involves. Producers must, among other things have the skill to find money for the production," Ribinick said.

The actor also revealed his secret of playing on the societal stereotype, and yet he is not condemned but rather admired.

"I had white people come out of Hoot for example, having changed their attitude towards taxi drivers. For me that is the success of theatre, changing people's attitude and perspective on something in society," he said.