Summary

First, stage directions describe the setting, “a raised area representing a cell on Robben Island…the prisoners sleep on the floor…in one corner are a bucket of water and two tin mugs…Stage lights…reveal a moat of harsh white light around the cell” (195)

Then, in an extended sequence written only in stage directions, two Black African men – John and Winston – communicate the experience of being in prison through action and gesture.

As the lights reveal the space, there is “the long drawn-out wail” of a siren (195). Then, the two men engage in a working activity, moving piles of sand from one side of their cell to another. “It is an image of back-breaking and grotesquely futile labor” (195).

Then, the men are shackled together with chains, and forced to run. “They do not run fast enough. They get beaten” (195) and suffer...