‘Rise ’76’ shakes audiences to the core

At first, Rise ’76: The Story of June 16 lures its audience into comfort. There is laughter. The opening moments are playful and energetic, with the cast engaging and bouncing between characters, languages and moods with ease.

The audience at The Baxter Theatre Centre chuckled frequently on Saturday night as the performers recreated everyday township interactions with warmth and familiarity. But that comfort does not last long.

The production shifts from entertaining to emotionally devastating. The first gunshot cracked through the theatre with such force and precision that my wife physically dropped her handbag in shock. In that instant, the play had stopped being something we were merely watching – it became something we were experiencing. The audience collectively jolted into the terror, panic and confusion that defined 16 June 1976.

That ability to transform memory into visceral experience is what makes this production such a compelling theatrical achievement.

Produced through a collaboration between The Baxter Theatre Centre and the Market Theatre as part of the 50th anniversary commemorations of the Soweto uprising, the production carries immense historical weight. Yet, it avoids becoming a dry history lesson. Instead, writer and director, Tiisetso Mashifane wa Noni, crafts a living, breathing story from testimonies, memory and movement.

Scenes rooted in lived experiences

The Baxter’s marketing manager, Fahiem Stellenboom, explained that the production emerged from extensive interviews and testimonies gathered from people connected to the events of 1976. That documentary-inspired approach is evident throughout the performance. Scenes feel deeply rooted in lived experience rather than staged nostalgia. The play does not romanticise struggle – it humanises it.

One of the production’s greatest strengths is its fearless use of translanguaging. Afrikaans, English, Sesotho, isiZulu and isiXhosa flow into one another naturally and unapologetically. Rather than alienating audiences, the multilingualism enriches the production’s authenticity and emotional texture. Language becomes more than dialogue – it becomes memory, identity and resistance. In many ways, the linguistic fluidity mirrors the complexity of South Africa itself.

The cast deserves enormous praise for sustaining the production’s emotional intensity. They demonstrate remarkable versatility as they switch roles, accents, physicalities and emotional registers with extraordinary speed and clarity. Their performances never feel mechanical despite the constant transitions. Each character arrives fully formed, even in fleeting moments.

Cast member Alex Sono, whose background spans theatre, television and experimental filmmaking, brings a layered sensitivity to the production. His performance captures both youthful defiance and inherited trauma. He noted in an interview that the story resonated personally because he has family members affected by exile during apartheid. That emotional connection is visible in his performance, particularly in scenes depicting fear and uncertainty among black youth confronting state violence.

“The initial response was fury and a deep heartbreak,” he said. “Learning about the traumas of our people. For me, the story is a personal one, as I do have an uncle who was exiled. I understood that my job and my role are to embody the sensitivity of that trauma endured by loved ones and embody the black experience – what it is now and what's happened to form it.”

“I am still trying to figure out how I can contribute to something that is meaningful and leads in the direction of change in our status quo.”

Zilungile Mbombo delivers some of the evening’s most emotionally bruising moments. Her performance following the interval, in which she portrays a nurse recounting the horrors witnessed at Baragwanath Hospital, silenced the theatre completely. Surrounded by symbolic “dead bodies” scattered across the stage, she delivers testimony with restraint rather than melodrama, which somehow makes it even more painful to watch. Her ability to hold grief, anger and disbelief simultaneously is one of the production’s standout achievements. “This scene affects me the most because I’m confronted by the amount of ‘dead bodies’ (clothes) on stage, and I must give a testimony on how some of these students died in my hands and how some of them would be scarred for life because of what the police did. Yeah, not an easy story to tell.”

The physical staging is minimal yet deeply effective. Rather than relying on elaborate sets, the production uses movement, sound, lighting and projection to create atmosphere. This allows the audience’s imagination to fill in the gaps, often making the violence feel even more haunting. “Hectic”, “moving”, and “thought-provoking” are some of the comments heard from the audience.

The transitions between scenes are fluid and cinematic, reinforcing the documentary style that Sono himself described as central to the production’s realism.

Asking difficult questions

Importantly, Rise ’76 does not confine itself to the past. The production constantly asks what today’s generation has inherited from the youth of 1976. Mbombo reflected that the play challenged her own understanding of what she stands for as a young black scholar in contemporary South Africa. “I am still trying to figure out how I can contribute to something that is meaningful and leads in the direction of change in our status quo. However, I do believe my performance in this play is a step in the right direction.”

That question quietly hovers over the entire performance: What does resistance mean now?

The answer is left unresolved, but perhaps that is precisely the point. The production is less interested in providing solutions than in forcing remembrance and reflection. As Stellenboom observed, theatre becomes “a place of memory”, a space where stories remain alive long after audiences leave their seats.

By the end of the performance, the earlier laughter feels distant. What remains instead is a heavy silence and the uncomfortable awareness that the freedoms many South Africans enjoy today were paid for in blood far too young.

Rise ’76: The Story of June 16 succeeds because it understands that history is not only something to be remembered intellectually, but something to be felt emotionally. It is entertaining, yes, but also unsettling, urgent and profoundly human. Most importantly, it refuses to let audiences forget.

“Rise ’76: The Story of June 16” runs at The Baxter until 30 May, before transferring to The Market Theatre’s Mannie Manim from 5 to 28 June.