Reviewer: Janet van Eeden (LitNet)
ISBN: 9781776193547
I first met Ian at Rhodes University. He was a year ahead of me and an older student. I never spoke to him during those years, as I was extraordinarily shy, but I became aware of his trajectory after graduation. I saw many of the Troupe Theatre’s plays at the Space Theatre while I was failing my honours spectacularly at UCT, a year after my older brother’s suicide. But it was only in 1999 that something prompted me to send the third draft of a screenplay I’d been compelled to write to Ian’s agent. Bless Ian forever. He got in touch with me immediately and said my writing was powerful and that the film should be made. Our commitment to writing and our constant search for truth in life and in art forged a deep friendship. I’ve always been honoured to call this man – who is the epitome of authenticity – a very dear friend. Ian later directed two of my stage plays which went to Grahamstown. He brought them to life viscerally in a way no one else could have. A year or so ago, I was pleased when Ian sent me extracts of his self-named “Anekdote” – anecdotes of his life in theatre and film. I was even more delighted when I heard that Jonathan Ball was going to publish them in a memoir, called Nomad heart.
I read Nomad heart from cover to cover within two days. It’s an unflinching, searingly honest account of Ian’s childhood on an Eastern Cape farm in the ’60s, and his subsequent journey of becoming an actor via a career in farming, photography, sales and a number of other diversions along the way. After a stint at Rhodes in the drama department, he bumped into Richard Grant (later known as Richard E Grant), who was bemoaning the paucity of the talent of the current actor in a production he was working on. Ian’s “red-haired Irishman”, a part of him that acts without Ian’s volition, confronted Richard and said he would perform the role. That boldness brought him into the Troupe Theatre Company, which performed at the Space Theatre in Cape Town in the early ’80s. While acting in a production there, his talent was recognised by the already iconic Manie van Rensburg, one of South Africa’s most respected directors in the ’80s and ’90s. Ian’s transition from stage to screen was made through his humility in taking on any work on a film set, from set-building to painting, and putting his hand to anything he was asked to do. This willingness to learn led to the incongruity of a man with the most English heritage one could ask for playing a role as an Afrikaner with a brei in Dokter Con se Overberg. The rest, as they say, is history.
The book is written in Ian’s colourful style and is filled with anecdotes, many of them humorous, some of them heart-breaking. Certain images stand out: a group of young boys crammed onto a small scooter, one sitting on top of a bag of pecan nuts and another in the carrier rack, speeding along a dirt track, racing a train; the same group of boys camping in the Eastern Cape bush, with a baboon as their companion, all of them drinking sweet tea from steel mugs; Ian, as Sloet Steencamp in Arende, racing against a British officer alongside a prison fence, the officer on the outside, and Sloet on the inside; an attack on him and his family on a smallholding which brought them close to death; and so much more. Ian writes with a clarity and perspicacity born out of uncompromising honesty.
It would be a cliché to say that Ian is one of a kind, but I do believe that there is no one else quite like him. The memoir is a page-turning read, not least because Ian’s writing style is fluid and captivating, and also because the events he describes are so unusual, and again one of a kind. Anyone who loves theatre, television or film from this century and the last, should read this book. It’s an entertaining education about the performance industry, as well as a guide to living an authentic life and following your own uncompromising path in a troubled world. I enjoyed every page and recommend it most highly.
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