Bartelt is, in general, far more experienced* than am I. However, we are both very experienced when it comes to conferences: he is used to being a guest performer and speaker and I am used to handing out the badges, pointing to the toilets, explaining it's just one goody bag each to people who earn at least four times what I do. Between us we really do have all the bases covered.
As has been the case all over South Africa, and over both of us hangs the fact that we are now days away from leaving though we try not to mention it, we make friends here in Hilton, real friends: people we engage with on facebook almost right away! One of them is Sheryl, who works for Hilton, the school at which the event is being held. She has two great kids who are volunteering here and we all laugh together, and talk, obviously. Sheryl is clearly very good at her job whilst remaining open and lovely. We also make friends with one of the teachers - she teaches drama to lots of teenage boys and I suggest the idea of Black Watch to her as something her students might find engaging - I mention it's one of the best pieces of theatre I have seen in my life. We exchange ideas and get excited about life in general and theatre in particular - Joclyn's energy is just infectious. I wish she'd been my drama teacher when I was at school. In fact, I wish my school had taught drama... but that's another over-privileged moan for another over-privileged day.
As well as the marvelous people, we have also benefitted from seeing great work here in RSA and this conference is no exception. There is a performance of a show about all that is sex when you're a teenager which gets a massive reaction from the audience. It is dealing with subject matter which moves the students and they show it. It's a great piece of educational theatre with the emphasis on entertainment and on patronising no one: lots of these students will already have endured situations the performers know nothing about - that's the case in the UK, but it's so much more certain here. And there is another show about the lives of an old couple, a mask show, so different, and great.
Over lunch we are approached by students and teachers and we sit and eat with the other creatives who are here to work with and speak to the students. In fact, I have lunch with, amongst others, Sihle Xaba who, I quickly realise, is a very famous man. I could probably have lunch with Meryl Streep or Brad Pitt and not realise I was with someone famous, so utterly rubbish am I. The great thing, though, about being surrounded by students who are fans of his, is that they make it utterly clear how very fabulous he is.
And that evening I start to see why he is so adored: we get to see a screening of the excellent Otelo Burning in which he stars. Set in a township in the turbulent 1980s we follow a group of teenagers through a story that is more than real. The students who surround us are too young to remember the necklacing that took place, or the inter-tribal violence... they don't even remember Pass Books. Martin and I do though. And it's curious, to me, that there I was, a teenager myself, on the other side of the world. And because of my South African family, though maybe I'd've been engaged anyway, I watched avidly the development of many horrors in 1980s South Africa. In some curious ways it feels like my story too. Of course I realise that's ridiculous, that I was a very distant bystander, able to dip in and dip out of the goings on as I slept safe in my bed in a village where there is still no street lighting, (because people don't want it not because there is no electricity). And yet these teenagers know little of this history. Not only does it fall into that Bermuda triangle of just before they were born - too early to be history, too late for them to know about it - but there is also a desire amongst many young South Africans not to dwell on Apartheid. They are not their parents, they are not the struggle, they are the new South Africa. The danger in this is, of course, that if we do not understand our antecedents we cannot understand ourselves, that we risk making the same mistakes and laying blame in the wrong places.
But that's not to pretend that I think I have the right to judge the way they are being South Africans, being themselves. I see why the desire just to move on is so strong, and so it is heartening to hear so many questions for Sihle at the end, of all kinds - technical, historial, about his own celebrity life. Some actors are great at playing humility, but I swear this is no act - the man's feet are clearly rooted to South African soil and he remains un-pumped-up by the screaming of teenage girls. And Martin and I, driving away, off to find some supper, yet again, cannot believe how lucky we are. It is as if we have been party to a private conversation in a private home - we have been allowed to sit and look and listen to this on-going debate about who these young folk are, who they will be, and what they do and do not consider important. We've heard responses from artists and seen their work standing there for itself.
And in a country where many people do not have clean water and sanitation we are going home to electric blankets: we are more privileged than I can describe.
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