Life on the road... 

17 January 2008


Allow me to introduce myself – my name is Tanya Vandenberg, and I’m the creative director of the 2008 HIP2B² Roadshow. That means I’ve been living with the show for quite a while before any of the schools saw it. Months of prep culminated in the first live show, which took place in Johannesburg on January 14th. Basically, my work is now done... The day-to-day performing and running of the show is in three sets of capable hands. Firstly, there’s Steve Grenfell. He’s our tech guru and road manager. If the show is late, or anything doesn’t work, it’s his fault! But with 7 years’ touring experience behind him, there’s not much that can rattle his cage. Now for the actors – Damian Collins plays Alexander Graham Bell, and gets to wear a full 19th century suit in African Summer temperatures. Ouch! Taryn Bok is the bubbly, excitable android from the future, Annie. Between them, they bring the issues to life on stage.

Each day on the tour starts in much the same way – multiple alarms going off in the flat that the team shares, and yawning, sleepy people reaching for coffee. Waking up before 5am is never easy... Then it’s into the tour van, map on the lap, braving the early morning traffic to get to the first school an hour before the show must start. The first day, it took nearly an hour to set up all the equipment. By the fifth school, it was down to 20 minutes. The fastest so far was 9 and a half minutes flat! Then, with the sound gear, the enormous screen and the projector ready to go, the actors get changed, and are ready to introduce another group of learners Bell and Annie. More next time from Cape Town!

Camps Bay, Cape Town

4 February 2008


How lucky can you be? It was really hard to find accommodation in Cape Town in February, so we were forced to take a beautiful holiday apartment in Camps Bay, with a view of the ocean. It’s a hard job, but someone has to do it! It took two days to drive down from Joburg, stopping halfway in Colesberg. So it was a tired and travel-weary team that stood on the balcony in Camps Bay. But somehow, that view just wipes away the miles...  And a good thing, too, because the very first school the next morning was in Somerset West.

Every school has a different feel, a unique vibe, as well as differing opinions about the show. At one school, Taryn was accused of thinking she was better than the kids, because she speaks English without a Flats accent! It made no difference that she’s from Joburg... And then, at another school, where it’s clear there is little money, but a great, dedicated group of teachers, there was a whole bunch of kids who didn’t want to let us go. How could they find out more about Siyabulela Xuza? How do you start a business? Do you think I could be a mechanical engineer? We were bombarded with enthusiastic, excited questions. Now that we’ve done 30 schools, it’s starting to become very clear that it’s not the wealth of a school, but the enthusiasm of the teachers, that makes the biggest difference in levels of motivation.

Are the Cape Town schools in any way different from the ones in Joburg? YES! They tend to start the show at least 15 minutes late! J Seems like people here really are just not in so much of a hurry...

Next time I’ll try to get Taryn to write a little about what it’s like being up there in front of so many learners, twice a day.

If I could change anything I would.... 

14 February 2008

Well, it’s still Tanya writing. Trying to get the team to think of blogs after a long, hard day is more difficult than I thought!

It was a looooong drive back to Gauteng, and we were all glad to get out of that Cape Town wind. Not that the weather up here is much better! Still, it was a great relief to have a couple of days off before starting the Pretoria leg of the tour. That kicked off this morning with an amazing show at Afrikaanse Meisiehoërskool. What fun! The girls there rock – really responsive and involved. At the end of the show, the whole hall started chanting war cries, and didn’t want to let the HIP team go! It’s always wonderful to get a reception like that...

We’ve been getting a lot of kids asking questions, wanting to know where they can get more information, and telling us their dreams and ambitions. Once a week, we have a focus group, where we ask 20 kids to fill in a few questions about the show, and let us know what they think, and how we can improve it. Question number 4 reads, “If I could change anything I would.....” and we kind of expected people to fill in what they’d like to change in the show. But not ev eryone reads it that way. Here are a couple of my favourite random responses:

If I could change anything I would....  try to discover gravity (sorry, dude, too late!! :-))
If I could change anything I would....  invent an electric car and save the world from global warming
If I could change anything I would....  go to Mars so that we’d have somewhere to go when the planet gets worse!

Looks like there’s no lack of imagination in South African schools!

What a shame....  

26 February 2008

We’re passing the halfway mark now – that’s 50 shows done, and 50 to go. This can often be a difficult time on a roadshow tour. It feels like you’ve been doing the show forever, and it’ll never end! And the actors know the parts soooooo well by now. Still, there are moments that make it all worthwhile, like the great crowd at The Glen in Pretoria last Friday, who stomped and clapped and cheered and made us feel so welcome and appreciated.

On the other hand, there are some really hard days. It’s a very sad thing to have to say, but we’ve been to two very white schools where it was clear that racism is not dead in South Africa yet. Every time a black face appeared on the screen, the learners laughed and booed. At one school, a group of hecklers made Taryn’s time on stage (she’s not white) an absolute misery, with no intervention whatsoever from the teachers. What a pity – when the very message the show is bringing is ‘you can be whatever you want to be’. It’s not about your race, your background or your advantages – it’s all about your passion, your desire to succeed and your ability to be diligent in your studies. Prejudice and animosity have no place in this beautiful country of ours. So – racists and bigots – get over it, and get on with the job of building a new South Africa!

Nevertheless, nastiness like that is mercifully rare. The vast majority of learners and schools are eager and welcoming, and bubbling with enthusiasm for Hip to be Square. I had my first (and only!!!) fame moment the other day, when I was parked outside a school in Joburg, and a group of boys suddenly started pointing and yelling, saying, ‘We saw you on Hip to be Square, lady!’ And wherever we go, kids who notice the branding on the bus laugh and wave at us. SO we choose to focus on the 98% who are great, and pity the 2% who do not even know how much they are missing out on.

Durban is HOT!!!

03 March 2008

Great first show in Durban at Durban High... But it’s going to take a while for these Gautengers to get used to the humidity! Wow – how do you Durbanites cope with this all the time?! Poor Damian – he has to do the whole show in a complete 19th century suit, waiscoast, frock coat and all, and it really takes it out of him. Luckily, the accommodation is right at the beach, so the blessed sea is there for cooling off and chilling down. Life could be worse!

It’s amazing how different each of the cities are. Each place has its own vibe, a ‘feel’ generated by the people who live there. Durban and Cape Town are laidback in entirely different ways – something to do with the different temperature of the water, perhaps? :-)

I can hardly believe I’m saying this – but we’re getting close to the end of the tour. Okay, we’ll only be done at the end of the April, but the Easter holiday means a nice break in-between. In actual fact, there are only three-and-a-bit weeks of shows left. It’s hard work, but it also goes pretty quickly when you’re so busy every day. With each week that goes by, we get more and more feedback from the schools, and the vast majority is really, really positive. Something I find particularly heartening is the number of kids that say the show showed them that they don’t have to wait to be older or richer to start changing the world. Let’s hope they’re really taking it to heart!