Dieketseng Mnisi AKA Mantuli from Skeem Saam reflects on her 40 years artistic journey. It was a magical performance that inspired me to watch the production more than once. In one show, her co-lead character, Thabani Patrick Tshanini (Mabatha) was off-sick and Msomi himself had to step in the role that he originally assumed in 1971 when the production premiered at the then University of Natal.
Before I saw Dieketseng Mnisi on stage in the role of KaMadonsela (Lady Macbeth) in Umabatha, Welcome Msomi’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, I didn’t know that an actor could embrace a character heart and soul the way she could.
Her combination with Msomi, the playwright and director himself, on that evening was just priceless, a very fond memory that I can’t cherish enough. That was in 1995 at the then Civic Theatre (Joburg Theatre) when the show was staged for the first time in a new South Africa since its 1971 opening.
It went on to tour world stages from 1972 with Msomi and his wife, Thuli Dumakude in the lead. When it returned to the country in 1995, Mnisi was already a stage veteran with at least seventeen years experience in the industry.
In 1978 she was a 17-year-old schoolgirl who was learning to recite her lines at the garage of a Dube, Soweto home owned by the father of township theatre himself, Gibson Kente – a hard taskmaster but fine talent scout who knew a rough gem when he saw one.
Source: IOL News
