The Candidate (2024): Reimagining Polish Absurdism in South African Political Satire

In July 2023, a street explosion in Johannesburg, traced to mismanaged tenders and stalled public works (Haffajee, 2024), exposed the deep dysfunction of South African governance. At the same time, I was adapting short stories by Polish absurdist playwright Sławomir Mrożek into a puppet performance. This coincidence sparked a creative inquiry: could absurdist theatre offer a compelling lens for satirising contemporary South African politics?

The result was The Candidate - a satirical play grounded in South African political anxieties and shaped by Polish absurdist traditions. While Mrożek is often associated with Western European absurdists like Beckett or Ionesco, Poland’s absurdist lineage is distinct. Writers like Ignacy Witkiewicz and Witold Gombrowicz crafted dramaturgies populated by clown-like figures, who, as Folejewski argues, are “objects of humour” and “preoccupied with the self,” struggling to impose order on chaos (1969:181). This grotesque self-absorption, combined with distorted logic and surreal structure, became central to The Candidate’s aesthetic and thematic concerns.

While Mrożek’s works have been staged effectively in South Africa, this project asked a different question: can his dramaturgical strategies be adapted, not merely transplanted, to a new sociopolitical context? Drawing on transnational adaptation theory - particularly Julie Sanders’ concept of “appropriation” (2016) - the research employed a practice-as-research methodology to explore how devices from Cold War-era Polish theatre might resonate with post-apartheid political absurdity.

Rather than offering a direct political allegory, The Candidate embraces formal experimentation. It draws on techniques such as structural inversion, exaggerated rhetoric, and cabaret-style interludes to dramatise the farcical performance of public service. One of the play’s key tropes is the bureaucratic justification of irrational actions. Characters routinely deliver pseudo-logical speeches ending with the phrase, “For this reason…” This refrain lends false coherence to nonsensical decisions, echoing Mrożek’s use of circular logic and stylised speech (Stephan, 1989:45).

The play’s central research question was: how can we revisit Polish absurdist writing traditions to reflect South Africa’s current political climate—particularly the erosion of public trust and the theatre of governance? The 2024 national election and the emergence of a Government of National Unity (GNU) added timely urgency. The Candidate critiques corruption, populism, and the commodification of democracy, using satire not to instruct but to estrange. By making audiences laugh at the surreal logic of political life, it invites critical reflection.

The decision to retain a vaguely Eastern European setting also serves a Brechtian purpose. Audiences are distanced from the action, unable to project familiar assumptions onto the characters. Instead of localising the setting to South Africa, the play uses estrangement to prompt recognition at a remove - encouraging viewers to see the absurdity of their own context reflected in a foreign one.

The project demonstrates how theatrical absurdism, rooted in a specific historical and cultural tradition, can travel - and transform - through appropriation. It suggests that Polish absurdist devices, far from being relics of Cold War pessimism, remain potent tools for interrogating the spectre of governance today.