Act 1 - Scene 7
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 June 2019
Summary
(The family are gathered around the kitchen table. JAKES flourishes a Drum magazine with great pride and excitement.)
JAKES: I've got it! (He lays the magazine on the table.) I've got it here! Come and see, come right up and see! This is break. No more boxing, no more gangster stories. I'm dealing with socialites. Come on - open it. Who do you see?
LULU: (Opening it.) It's Ruth!
RUTH: (Rushing to look.) Do I really look like that?
LULU: Look here, it's me! Oh, Jakes, in my school uniform! How could you do that to me?
PRINCESS: (Pleased with herself.) Look what I look like!
JAKES: The front page of Drum is waiting! Cheesecake, crime, babies, boxing - and more cheesecake. Princess must become a Drum girl, a model.
PRINCESS: Do you really think so?
MINGUS: You'll be famous, my sweetie. Let's have a party.
EVERYONE: Ja!
JAKES: Don't you want to hear it? Listen here: ‘The first of four articles on a Sophiatown phenomenon, “Ruth Golden” by Jakes Mamabolo.'
RUTH: God - if my parents find out they'd die!
LULU: Come on. Who in Yeoville reads Drum? It's a native magazine.
FAHFEE: Don't worry - nobody is gonna find out. Jakes, what's the page number?
JAKES: What?
FAHFEE: The page number, what's it man? It's today's winner.
JAKES: Number 23!
FAHFEE: Ah! You see! Number 23! A Dream of Long Hair!
JAKES: Don't you want to hear what it says?
FAHFEE: Com'on, give it here - I'll read it. ‘Mixing It Up in S of town. Dig that crazy white girl living it up in Gerty Street! Pshoo! Was there a scramble when word went round Sophiatown that a Jewish girl was living at Mamariti's Diamond Shebeen …'
MAMARITI: Say that again - that's me!
FAHFEE: ‘Nobody believed it was possible. Was this just a fantasy? A Jewish girl living in Softown! It's not possible. Is she crazy as a bedbug? Who'd leave the easy white life of Yeoville for the seething hot-spots of Kofifi? Well, folks, let me introduce you. She is none other than Ruth Golden. Height: five foot three inches …'
RUTH: Five foot four!
JAKES: Oops! Sorry.
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- Information
- SophiatownA PLAY CREATED BY JUNCTION AVENUE THEATRE COMPANY, pp. 37 - 47Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 1993