A heart-warming children’s play about an unwanted puppy that saves the day and becomes a family’s hero has won Durban playwright Gisele Turner second place in the Trinity College of London International Playwriting Competition and publication in a compendium of award-winning plays.
Turner, who is also a theatre practitioner and arts journalist, says a stray dog who wormed its way into her life was her inspiration.
“I first encountered Savvy when she was just four weeks old,” says Turner. “A scrap of brindle fur, she had been abandoned on the side of the road in Clairwood, was rescued and badly in need of a home. When I took her to the vet for her shots I thought that ‘Staffy-cross-Alien’ might best describe her breed; but I was told she was a Canis Africana, the real deal, the dog of Africa. Her stand-up ears were hilarious and her gold-flecked eyes warm with appreciation for food and an old cushion stuffed into a cardboard box.
“Her playful antics left me in hysterics – her favourite thing was to clasp my arm firmly in her front paws, like a koala. She wasn’t going to let me go.
“When I sat down to write a play for six- to 11-year-old children that could be entered into the competition, Savvy begged for a part. Envisaging her as a long-legged brindle-coated marionette, the rest came quite naturally.
“A little boy, his teenage half-sister, living on the edge of a large Durban township with neither mother nor father to take care of them came to mind. The girl leaves for school and the boy is alone; a scruffy puppy enters the shack and he plays with it, delighting in the company. The sister returns, the excited puppy leaps up and makes her spill the precious sour milk and sugar given by a kindly neighbour. Boy and dog are evicted and make their way through the long grass down to the river to wait out the afternoon. There they become the butt-end of scoffs and teases from other boys who ridicule his Zimbabwean father and his jackal-looking companion.
After a series of events, the dog and the boy are parted and when a threatening man grabs the boy, the dog saves the day by biting the man’s ankles.
The puppy is a hero. It is given a name: Lucky Strike. The sister agrees that it will be good to have a dog to keep them company. They all sit together and she shows her little brother a letter from his father.
He plans to come back as soon as he is released from jail for belonging to the wrong political party. There is hope.
“I would say my dog is very proud of me.”