BWW Interviews: Fourword March with Oskar Brown on ONE NIGHT ONLY

After almost two years in Europe, Oskar Brown is back in Africa with live comedy show, ONE NIGHT ONLY, for two performances in Windhoek and Cape Town respectively. The show, first performed in South Africa before Brown moved to Berlin, relates his experiences in the entertainment industry from drama school to big budget film and other less savoury exploits in a distinctive blend of comedy and storytelling.

I was able to sit down with him to chat about ONE NIGHT ONLY, about 'coming home' and about his own production company, Fourword Productions.

David Fick: How did ONE NIGHT ONLY come about?

Oskar Brown: While I was at studying at the University of Cape Town, I showed some of my writing to Sanjin Muftic, one of my tutors, and asked if we could turn it into a play. He said it reminded him of stand-up comedy. I had done some comedy and liked the genre and so I grew more and more stories to be performed. After I graduated, I went to New Zealand for a while, where I decided I was going to move to Germany, then came back to South Africa for five days in between and performed the show for one night only at the Playroom and decided to keep the concept going after that.

Someone from Namibia came to watch me in Germany and then asked for my contact details. I got an email from The National Theatre of Namibia about a week later and we've spent the last year and a half trying to find a time to come down and do the show here. When it worked out, I also approached Richard's and they liked the concept, so we set up a show there with the possibility of doing more next year. So now I'm doing two shows in my homeland and it will be interesting to see what it's like to bring the show back to a homegrown audience.

DF: The National Theatre of Namibia and Richard's are both a big jump forward from the Playroom.

OB: Yes, The National Theatre is a 500-seater! I’m looking forward to the jump.

DF: Is the show different every time you perform it?

OB: It's a little different each time. I find it funny when something new happens. The audience is only amused when I'm amused.

DF: Besides the comedy work, you've also set up your own company, Fourword Productions. Tell me about it.

OB: I set up Fourword Productions with Margaret Lipinski in 2009. It all happened around a play we made for the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown based on the German story, THE SANDMAN, by Ernst Hoffman. We applied to the Goethe Institute for funding and they said to go ahead with it. There was a band in the States, This Will Destroy You, whose music we wanted to use in the show, so we wrote to them and they said we could. We wanted to use clips in the show from an Oscar-nominated film based on the same story and got permission for that. Everyone we asked for anything said yes. Then I directed it to pieces and it didn't work. And no one came to see it. But in the process we found the philosophy for Fourword Productions, to create honest and intriguing theatrical, filmic, comedic and musical projects across the globe. The long term goal is to get South African work to be seen internationally.

DF: How did you come up with the name?

OB: The name sums up my life philosophy, which consists of four words: strength, honour, fortitude and truth. It sounds epic, like it should be plastered on a shield. Those are the things that are really important, for all people, artists and production companies.

DF: A big project for you this year has been BETWEEN, which co-starred you and Nick Campbell and which was directed by Geoffrey Hyland.

OB: Yes, I wrote it and we performed it at the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival. We were nominated for two awards, the Oscar Wilde Award for Best Writing and the Micheal Mac Liammoir Award for Best Male Performance.

DF: How do you manage your dual German and South African identities?

Born and bred in South Africa, David has loved theatre since the day he set foot on stage in his preschool nativity play. He graduated with a Master of Arts (Theatre and Performance) degree from the University of Cape Town in 2005, having previously graduated from the same university with a First Class Honours in Drama in 2002. An ardent essayist, David won the Keswick Prize for Lucidity for his paper "Homosexual Representation in the Broadway Musical: the development of homosexual identities and relationships from PATIENCE to RENT". Currently, he teaches Dramatic Arts at a high school in Cape Town and also freelances as a theatremaker and performer.

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