| What: Beggared in SA Performer: Sean Higgs Director: Gideon de Wet Writers: Stewart Clark and Gideon de Wet When: The play premiered in June 2025 in Cape Town and then tours to Parish Formosa Hall, Plettenberg Bay (June 21, 22 https://www.quicket.co.za/events/319137-beggared-in-sa/#/), National Arts Festival Makhanda (June 30, July 1,2, 3 https://tickets.nationalartsfestival.co.za/en/events/1024/beggared-in-sa-by-sean-higgs ) and Edinburgh Fringe Festival from August 1 |
Beggared in SA, performed by Sean Higgs and directed by Gideon de Wet is one person play, written by de Wet and Stewart Clark. This intriguing play, teases out the narrative of a true story to make a compelling piece of theatre. Excellent script, performance and direction.
This wistful and poignant play, edged with dark humour traces Stewart Clarkโs peregrination from having a home, a job and wife, to becoming a homeless beggar in Cape Town and then finding a home in a shack in Masiphumelele [originally Site 5], a township situated between Kommetjie and Noordhoek. Masi โ as it is commonly referred to โ is largely made up of shacks โ with around 40 thousand people [https://innovationsoftheworld.com/masicorp-supporting-education-in-masiphumelele-real-change-is-a-team-effort/].
Yes, all over the world, for numerous reasons people end up on the streets. In Beggared in SA, we see a white man who is essentially saved from being homeless by the kindness of a Black community in Masi. By day, Clark begs at the traffic lights in a nearby shopping mall and makes enough to pay his rent, look after his pets and have a bit over to buy a beer at one of Masiโs shebeens. He has lived in Masi for about 15 years.
In the play, we see the affable Stu standing at the lights, as they change, chatting to us, the motorists who either look at him or gaze away. He regales us with his story and how he got here, as a beggar and that no one should judge. Everyone has a story and this play invites us to engage with the invisible, the marginalised, the โotherโ.
There is a discomforting voyeurism in knowing that this is a real person. We are told where he begs. Stu (he is referred to as Stu for much of the play) jokes that he has become famous and has been written about in international publications. I could not find any articles with reports of white man living in a shack in Masi, begging at the lights. Is this โtrueโ, a fantasy or poetic licence used for dramatic clout? It certainly makes for riveting viewing. There is a sense of wanting to go and seek this celebrity beggar at his perch by the lights.
The genesis of the play, Beggared in SA is a story which criss-crosses and wraps around itself. I will try and make a long story, short. De Wet has been at the helm of the creation of Beggared from the start. From what I can gather from him, Clark trained as a ballet dancer and when his ballet career ran its course, he trained as a hairdresser at the Pretoria Tecknikon. At some point he also studied magic. De Wet: โStewart started doing magic in school and ended up been part of the magic society. He was a very good magician and escape artist.โ Clark did a magic show with Houdini type tricks in Cape Town in about 1994. De Wet saw that show and suggested that they collaborate on a play about Houdini. The play was staged at the Dock Rd Theatre (no longer in existence). Flip forward to 2015 and de Wet was driving in Fishhoek and there was Clark, begging at the traffic lights. De Wet was dumbfounded how this brilliant man ended up begging. Clark needed cataract surgery and couldnโt afford that. To raise funds, de Wet suggested that they write a play together, about Clarkโs life. De Wet distilled 30 pages from 300 pages of testimony by Clark. Beggared was staged in 2017 as a fundraiser, with shows at several venues, including Nicholas Ellenbogenโs Rosebank Theatre (no longer in existence) with Clark performing. The shows sold out and the surgery was paid for.
The next step for the play was to stage it at South Africaโs National Arts Festival in Makhanda (formerly called the Grahamstown Arts Festival) in 2020. Covid scuppered that. Fast forward to now. De Wet had always wanted to take a play to the Edinburgh Fringe. Clark was not well enough to perform and de Wet reached out to South African born actor, Sean Higgs who lives in Scotland. De Wet and Higgs met in 1984 at UCT (University of Cape Town) when they both studied drama and had kept in contact over the years. Their lives have been intertwined. De Wet introduced Higgs to his agent, agent Anna Fayder who became his wife. They left South Africa to live in her home country, Scotland. Sadly she died there. Flipping back to the present, De Wet asked Higgs if he would be interested in taking on the role of Stewart Clark in Beggared for a run at Edinburgh Fringe. Higgs was delighted to accept but he felt that after living away from South Africa for 13 years, although he has visited, he needed to spend time immersing himself in Clarkโs milieu. It was important he felt to stage the play first in SA, to allow the narrative to find its shape for him to become acclimatized with contemporary life in Masi and spend time with Clark. De Wet and Higgs did not want Clark do be disintermediated from the 2025 staging. Higgs felt that it was important to take the play to South Africaโs National Arts Festival, before going to the Edinburgh Fringe.
That is how Beggared in SA 2025 is manifesting – in South Africa and in Scotland.
This play is not a docu-drama and not meant to be. In conversation about the play, de Wet remarked: โSean is not playing Stewart, he is playing the character in the script called Stewart. So in that way the characters from Stewart and Sean although the same story are very different, and yet I see the same patterns in the audience, how they get drawn into the story and has empathy with the character.โ Yes, we feel deep empathy for him and his sadness at having lost his profession, home and security. There is the fear that homelessness can happen to anyone and begging may be the only resort. It happened to Stu. We meet his gaze and do not look away. We sit in our vehicles metaphorically, waiting for the lights to change.
Stu entertains and woos us. He tells us that his regular customers at the lights, donate fresh vegetable and food to him. I am told that the real Stewart, as an ex ballet dancer is tall and skinny. The cuddly jovial Stu, played by Higgs in the play is an avuncular raconteur.
Team de Wet and Clark have done an impressive job in streamlining the narrative in the play script, foregrounding Stuโs hairdressing career and love of rugby. They have focussed on the community that he has found, after losing everything. He is wrapped in a warm embrace of Ubuntu where cheap beers are available in the shebeen, with a bottle passed around for two hours, shared communally. We hear inspiring stories of the wonderful people in his life, who keep him safe – such as Mamma, his landlord who owns his shack.
Stewart talks about growing up as a privileged white South African, in the 1960s in Apartheid. With all the benefits of education and opportunities, he lost it all and ended up homeless, begging and living in a shack. The legacy of his privilege is not shied away from in the play. However, several people (white people) walked out of the theatre in Cape Town, remarking that they had no idea that white people live in Masi. It is discomfiting for me โ that we are viewing the shack living in this play with a glossy tint of Ubuntu and sharing beers. The reality is not so warm and fuzzy for millions of South Africans of colour living in shacks, mired in poverty and unemployment. [1.4 million households were living in shacks, as estimated by the 2022 Census from Stats SA https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P03015/P030152022.pdf] Chatting to a Black colleague about my concerns with putting a gloss on shack living in this play, she said that she does not find this problematic: โIt is a great story โ I want to see this play.โ
Higgs does fantastic accents as he fleshes out characters and the love of sport which unites them. He is very funny and dishes it up with humour which is in the vein of observational stand-up comedy. Higgs has done some stand-up. His comedic timing is superb, along with some improv which he used with aplomb on the night I attended when there were some technical difficulties with the lights. He was brilliant. His performance is mesmerising as he conjures up Stu as somewhat a poster advert for making the best out of his life as a beggar; watching us watching him doing his best to survive.
Stewart Clark and Gideon de Wet are splitting the writerโs fee for the play, 50:50. Clark is benefiting from his life being performed on stage and is credited in the programme.
The Edinburgh Fringe uses a star rating for theatre. I would give Beggared a five star rating- script, solo performance and direction. This warm hearted and moving play conjures up a slice of life in Cape Town, through the lens of a beggar who invites us to engage with him and see him. That is something we can all strive to do โ to engage with and be kind to those who are marginalised; refugees, asylum seekers; people who end up homeless because of dire poverty, generational deprivation (such as the legacy of Apartheid SA), mental health and substance abuse. It is a play with an enchanting protagonist, brought to life on stage vividly by Sean Higgs who plays the role as if it is his life. He is utterly believable. The takeaway is that no matter oneโs circumstances, it helps to laugh and have a self-deprecating sense of humour.
โณ Sean Higgs stars in Beggared in SA, co-written by Gideon de Wet and Stewart Clark, based on Clark’s life.
