And the Girls in their Sunday Dresses

Two very different women meet during a long wait to buy subsidized rice and discover they have more in common than their poverty; an old man and child share a last, loving waltz; a cynical, disabled gangster learns humanity from a committed social worker; and a young girl finds her missing father and her role in the political struggle. This colleciton of three plays and one cine poem captures the essence of Zakes Mda's method as a dramatist. In most of the works, the chartacters have no names: they come onto the stage with no identity - except perhaps for the kind of clothes they wear - and slowly reveal themselves. What the reader experiences is a slow but intimate process of revelation (on the part of the characters) and discovery (on the part of the audience or readers).