Joburg Theatre brings to life Dancing the Death Drill, a profoundly
moving production adapted from Fred Khumalo’s 2017 historical
novel. The performance unfolds like a slow-burning revelation,
beginning in a Paris restaurant in 1958, where a shocking act of
violence sets off a quest to unravel the life of Pitso Motaung, a
South African WWI soldier aboard the ill-fated SS Mendi. Khumalo’s
novel spins a narrative web that traverses continents and generations,
capturing the tender, complex, and often brutal realities of war,
colonialism, racial politics, and human resilience. On the stage,
these layered themes are rendered with visceral intensity.
As the story unfolds, the memory of the SS Mendi tragedy resurfaces – not merely as history, but as a living, trembling presence. At Joburg Theatre, audiences will find themselves immersed in the tragedy of the doomed ship where over six hundred Black South African soldiers perished, an event largely obscured by history until voices like Khumalo’s restored its memory. Through sharp dialogue, poignant staging, and narrative pacing that mirrors the novel’s blend of sorrow and wry humanity, the production wrests this story back from oblivion.
Khumalo is a literary chameleon – journalist, memoirist, novelist, and short story writer. His earlier work includes Touch My Blood (2011), and more recently The Longest March (2019) and Two Tons o’ Fun (2022). Notably, Touch My Blood was adapted for stage, demonstrating Khumalo’s innate theatricality in his prose, making him an ideal anchor for stage adaptations.
His craftsmanship shines brightest in Dancing the Death Drill. Reviewers highlight how he avoids turning history into a dry lecture, instead weaving “a dazzling syncopation of improvisation and veracity” that invites readers (and now viewers) to ride the tide of narrative rather than be dragged through historical minutiae. This storytelling gift – his ability to animate memory – translates powerfully on stage, where characters’ interior lives, their grief, pride, humour, and defiance, stand in bold relief.
At a University of Pretoria event, Khumalo described his creative process as “fishing out bones and breathing life into them through fiction,” underlining his belief in historical fiction’s power to fill gaps that official records leave empty.
This staging of Dancing the Death Drill is more than a historical retelling; it’s a reclamation. It resurrects stories lost to time, giving them texture, voices, and humanity. In doing so, it honours Khumalo’s writerly mission: to remember, to provoke, to heal.
For Joburg Theatre, this production underscores the stage’s potent ability to engage South African audiences with their layered past, fostering both reflection and connection. And for Khumalo, it affirms his trajectory as a versatile storyteller whose words – whether on page or stage – carry the force of living memory.
Dancing the Death Drill is on at Joburg Theatre from 9 – 28 September 2025. Click here to find out more, and book your tickets.
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Extract: Dancing the Death Drill by Fred Khumalo
‘Pitso,’ started Tlali as they were eating dinner one evening in Cape Town, ‘tell me I haven’t died and woken up in the land yonder, the land of my ancestors.’ …