The Playwright – Jed Hill

January 31, 2026

Here I am on our dry, flea-bitten winter field, delirious, wheeling this way and that with my teammates. We are all confused, except for Deano. The ball lobs in the air and I look up, gasping, trying to catch sight of it.
        All I see is the afternoon sky. And I realise I must be where one finds themself if they were to rip open the chest of the earth and land like a fly upon its beating heart.
        As my head spins, the blue sky and green rim of trees mesh together as one gauzy blindfold. Our limbs are springy; mine go gelatinous now. The birds are crying, swooping down into empty corners of the pitch to bicker and bob, unintimidated by our chopping legs. Two haughty goalposts observe the affair; one frowns, the other smiles.
        The school property expands alongside a wide main road which brings cars right from the suburban enclosures at the bottom past the driving range, beyond the school gate, and into the new restaurant and shopping complex looming brightly at the top like a large, excited mouth. Beyond the classrooms and the school’s church, the land drops suddenly, forming a peaceful basin that is filled every afternoon with a ragged dilution of Olympian light. The basin holds our field, and tracing down past the long school fence is a road broken from the main artery, down which cars are routinely ejected from the shopping centre exit. The road swings and circles once or twice as it enters a web-like interchange, before joining finally with the myriad lanes running far.
        This mighty highway drones and hisses beneath the field. Adults are returning home from work like a cloud of dust, converging on us. I brush droplets of sweat proudly from my hair. My feet are pooling with sweat too. They are enclosed tightly in leather boots and thick, ashy socks. The ball bounces and I get my shin to it. Poof! It lands at Deano’s feet, and he begins to race! Fumes of traffic smoke disappear in the vast Johannesburg sky.
        I hear kids screaming as I drag my heavy legs forward to keep up with Deano. The freshly ironed shirt and blazer that I put on tactfully this morning are fuming in a crumpled heap at the bottom of my sport bag. The songs of children echo on the sparse stands. They are chasing each other through quiet school grounds. Teachers’ cars are pulling away, climbing up to the gate. They beetle up unknowable routes toward their invisible homes.
        I look around me again. Everything is wrong. We must be poorly coached. Why else would I be standing now in a lonely corner, without sight of a single teammate and the faintest idea of where Deano has taken the ball?
        Now I see all the opposition are galloping one way to rescue the ball from his evil feet. They cut, dive, and fall. Nobody gets near him. It’s hopeless. He’s the fastest guy I know. And I’m in awe when, after crashing toward the columnous legs of a stubborn defender, he emerges like a pickpocket, unfollowed, untracked. He has the ball waiting for him a few strides away, and with one muscled strike it dwarfs the goalkeeper, and the match is won.
        The feeling he must have is unimaginable. I have never scored one like that. We’re all chasing him now. There are a few groups of kids watching on the stands. A group of girls are cheering. One calls out his name. But Deano does not hear. He is running around and chasing the defenders who were after him. He isolates one kid and gives him a seething smile. It takes all the rest of us to drag him away. I look at him as the boys hold back his arms. His face is already budding with hair. He has green, sentry eyes. When his bullyish amusement with the opposing defenders is stopped before a fight ensues, I can see something in him go dark.
        We walk off together. He is getting applauded by kids and teachers alike. Even some of the older boys are running down and rubbing his hair. He embraces them all with an air of unfathomable calm and mute supremacy, while whatever it is he is thinking about has trailed elsewhere, beyond my grasp, beyond our fenced-off fields, and all the pubescent smiles.
        I have long since relinquished hope of delivering such a performance as Deano did today. But that is not to say I have abandoned pursuing glory of my own. I have, in fact, many talents. My problem, until not so long ago, had been in showing myself, or in putting my name forth. But that is all in the past. In a week from now, I will have my chance to experience a glory far more tremendous, I’m sure, than anything Deano has felt on the pitch.
        The field empties quickly. Deano and his father are away in their BMW; his dad comes to all our games. The rest of the team are making the hike back up the stairs to meet their parents arriving from work at the main lot. I allow myself to linger a while on the stands. I am not expected to be in the hall for at least twenty minutes. I watch the evening emerge as an orange belt over the highway.
        There is a mythology present in these fields. I become intensely aware of it on the longer days, when it is easy to be alone in the seemingly empty school. The day that began early has swollen beyond the hours of even the adult workday. And the school has changed since the morning. The grounds and structures are now fatigued, breathing beyond the planned timetable. When you arrive in the morning the school is secluded. Its walls are impermeable. But now I’m watching it collide with and become reabsorbed by the outside world. It becomes a homely village under the pink light beginning to shift in the sky.
        It is all so large. In Johannesburg distances are long, unfilled. The empty sidewalks look as wide as the roads. People’s gates have driveways that run for yards and yards. Shanty towns spray across plots where whole lineages of people share space smaller than what our parents devote to their cars. At home my neighbour’s palm trees breach her high concrete wall, and swing for me about their windy necks. At their height they are full of gloom, watching taciturnly the suburbs denoted by green canopies––sporadic on the grey land––and the Standard Bank office building that claims its large square nearby. All this space continues to thrive, ebb, and swell without inspection. Without question or investigation. Every day so many kids run across this pitch below me, roll home along the endless road, and sigh after their long day of lessons and sport in the private magnitude of their gardens.
        I eventually walk up the stairs and across to the hall. Everything has already been set up for today’s rehearsal. They tell me the actors are ready to perform a scene. I say, ‘Go ahead.’
        Jon and Alexandria enter the stage. For years, I must admit, I have been painfully in love with Alexandria. Jon has too, I suspect. I used to hate it when he said even so much as ‘excuse me’ when he brushed by her on the way to class. Yet it had to be her if this was to work. And in many ways, it had to be him too. By selecting them for these roles I have proved beyond doubt my devotion to the success of this production. Such is my fever for winning and shocking the audience that my heart does not flinch when I see them together on my stage. Only my imagination stirs, and horrible images of the audience cowering with shame pass pleasingly through my mind.
        Jon and Alexandria are sitting in the prop vehicle I had the crew make for this scene. They are a soon-to-be disgraced husband and curious wife waiting in still traffic. He begins the scene by waving away a man begging for money outside his window. She is exchanging glances with the boy revving his engine alongside them.
        Last night while reviewing the audition reports, I landed on Jon’s profile. In his photo you see his face floating vacantly atop a Springbok jersey. Behind him there are square grey tiles, likely part of an expensive, modern patio at his home. I remember that expressionless face now as he sits there on stage disguised as my tragic hero, Mr. M. He is no ordinary boy, Jon. No, he is an avatar of sorts, the like of which I have studied and observed around me for many years.
        I realised from a young age that I was being taught not only by my teachers, but by the parents of my peers as well. Every day they spoke to me through their children. I was picking up their sentences, their fears, their humour. Now, using this production, I will finally speak back to them through their children.
        ‘But ahm taayid of these bilders beeing at our haas bayb,’ Mrs. M says to Mr. M. ‘Do we rreally need forty gaas working on our patio?’
        Jon looks so claustrophobic in the car we’ve made for him.
        ‘I wrote this play for you, Jon Millar!’ I want to say to him. ‘Not your father watching incomprehensibly from the audience.’
        I want to throw him a mad speech.
        ‘You are misunderstood, Jon. Your story is voluminous and empty. I have cast you as your own father, ha! People will not know what to say when they see you. And I will give you no tongue!’
        I am interrupted by Mr. Stefanakis who wants my opinion of the actors’ line delivery or some similar matter. As of yet he has failed to grasp the meaning of my play. His eyes reveal some immeasurable loss that has befallen him. The rumour is that his husband fled to America as an Afrikaans asylum seeker. Now, he wants to know why Mr. M is not performing any of the dialogue I wrote for him in the script. I tell Mr. Stefanakis that I spoke with Jon two nights ago, and we decided that beyond the first act, he is to perform all his lines using only his nose.
        The remainder of the rehearsal passes by beautifully. Alexandria is an angel on stage. She has completely stolen Act Two all for herself. The rest of the crew move with crazed precision. The sets change in the blink of an eye. Costumes rotate without delay. My complex lighting cues are executed perfectly: the stage glows with natural wonder. My music is thunderous and absorbs the hall in dizzying waves. In just two months I have organised what appears to be an army, consumed totally by a hellish obsession. Even the make-up artists are frightening me with the terrible focus deep-set in their frozen eyes. In this moment I foresee only one outcome at the annual Interhouse Performing Arts evening next week. Our production will blow away the competition.
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Loud murmurs from the hall shake the school as I gather the crew in our designated classroom. Jon and Alexandria are flirting in the back. Every other department has congregated in little clusters to whisper their final details. There is little more I can do now. I sense my authority lost in the feverish machinations set into motion by my script.
        Now the first wave has begun its march backstage! I run away from them to take my seat in the hall. The curtains shudder. The stage alights. Low, lamenting tones fill the air as Jon’s face appears before the audience without fear. He delivers Mr. M’s opening monologue and the teachers and parents around me fall dead silent. My stomach is twisted in sweet knots as I hear my words echo through the hall.
        I have written the play so that the disquiet in the audience builds gradually. We are a couple of scenes in, and already I notice the faces of a few of the parents around me begin to harden. I smirk in the dark.
        Yes, dears. Your intuition does not betray you. There is something uncanny about Mr. M, isn’t there?
        Mrs. M, played by Alexandria, has managed to distract the audience for a short while. They look proud and comfortable again. She takes them on a spellbinding journey in her BMW, first to a park thronged by other SUVs. She joins an assembly of morning runners and their dogs (performed by the smaller kids) tailing obligingly up the dusty trail. After the run, we see the cars drive gloatingly past meadowed courses and abandoned lots, ignoring scabby litter zones as they park outside restaurants constructed beside hot, begging roads. Alexandria glides across the Johannesburg voids with perfect form; everyone is in disbelief of the cardboard cars and streets whipping up before them.
        My play is a simple story. One that has almost written itself over the years, performed without an audience by voice actors and avatars. I have only filled in the final act, and by doing so have elevated Mr. M’s character from the pits of predictability to the ecstatic heights of hubris. By imagining some scandalous work incident, I have taken everything from him. He has lost his office and his wife. His kids have flown to their grandparents in Cape Town, where they will hide away in a public school, waiting agonizingly for Mrs. M to decide that in fact it’s better for them to be homeschooled. And while they squeeze in her parents’ tiny office to observe her hopeless performance of their former and better curriculum, their father is on the other side of the country, making pleading calls to old friends and colleagues from his otherwise empty mansion in which, ironically, I keep him prisoner.
        And so, Mr. M’s hubris continues to unfold. Every time Jon enters the stage to mow his own lawn or work at a restaurant waiting tables, he appears to the parents increasingly like a carnival mirror, making a hideous projection of themselves onto all those people they see, but fail to understand, alongside them every day.
        My audience feels betrayed as we descend on the final scene. The BMW has long been sold. Mr. M has clocked off from his job serving high school kids at a shopping centre. A new set decorates the stage: a mighty road of cardboard cars and a sliding background that makes them race.
        Bouncing down in his new, cheaper car, Mr. M is amazed to find a child walking through the hurtling traffic. Countless horns flare at the small child as they cross the lanes, until they appear in Mr. M’s window. The old car brakes as hard as it can, stopping just before the kid, who skips calmly off the road toward the audience.
        ‘Fuck!’ Mr. M mouths soundlessly.
        He takes several breaths and gets out of the car to join the kid. They are facing the audience behind a fence, looking beyond us at the mezzanine encircling the hall. My tireless crew pull around several canvases over the terraces so that we are all enveloped by a long Johannesburg sunset. I have used so much orange paint for this scene, emptying entire shelves in the art room, that I have denied the art students their supply for the entire year.
        ‘Hey, buddy are you awright? You gave me a helluva frright.’
        Mr. M speaks for the first time since losing his job. The child ignores him, focusing now on something in the audience. Heads begin to spin as we hear quick footsteps sounding across the floor. In a flash Deano whirls through the hall with a bright ball at his feet. He thumps it over the chairs to a teammate on the other side. Happy cheers emerge naturally from the surprised parents. The child on stage grips the fence. Mr. M is looking down on us, on the parents, as he intones, ‘I wish I was there too, bud.’
        The audience bursts into applause. Some of the parents are moved to tears. Others are smiling through the shame and indignation. Arguments are springing amongst them. I tell my actors to get off stage immediately. The principal enters in a sudden panic. She yells in her mic. The parents settle down. She declares it time for Mr. Deedy to announce the winner.
        A slender man rises from his seat in the front row like a nail. The school has enlisted him as an independent judge for our competition. Without much delay, he confirms it.
        I have won.
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I must admit, I was struck with indescribable anxiety when I was told this morning that public schools would be performing tonight too. After crowning us best play at our school, Mr. Deedy invited us to perform at the Johannesburg Student Performing Arts competition. I cannot understand exactly where my anxiety stems from. Mr. Stefanakis tries to reassure me on the bus.
        ‘It’s not your fault that you have been given a larger budget than many of the other schools. What is important is what you have achieved with it.’
        He loves my play.
        Our performance begins in the Joburg Theatre, located in the heart of the city, far removed from our school. Everyone is doing their job perfectly. I look excitedly around the audience. People are whispering. As the dramatic finale begins, they are visibly rolling their eyes. I wince as Deano arrives boastfully with the ball. My anxiety from earlier returns with aching blows. The sunset is too much. It looks silly now. Like a ghost, I leave my body and rise in the theatre. I sense the myth and the satire folding on each other like two opposing winds, and in the middle of their swirl I see myself, watching my disaster, unable to decide one way or the other.
        Tonight’s judge enters the stage. She is young and cold.
        ‘My name is Dr. Modise. Before I announce the winner, I sense there is something we must all discuss. I think I speak for many of you when I say that the last performance has left a certain uh, nausea in the air. Speaking of nausea, can we please have these orange drapes removed? Thank you.’
        I shiver in the back of the room as she speaks.
        ‘It’s funny. When I say “nausea”, the word “nostalgia” pops in my mind. I guess they share similar sounds, that’s true. But there’s more to it, I suspect. For years we have had to endure laments by certain artists to a certain memory of this country. Clichéd orange sunsets at the safari, taming the wild African plains in Land Rovers, great schools running with kids sweating through their English uniforms . . . And tonight, we were led to believe that this vision is so . . . is so sacred that it is completely plausible for a child to tempt death, just for one little peek at their mythology, their nostalgia.’
        I am hiding in the back. The audience wants to see the tactless writer from St. Hesper’s, but I will not humiliate myself further. My only wish is to remain protected in this anonymous pit of children.
        But Mr. Stefanakis, not listening at all except for the mention of our school, has stupidly yelled ‘Whoop! That’s our boy!’
        At once hundreds of eyes land on me. They show me plainly what I have lost.

And still, they follow me as the lonely months pass by. They occupy every classroom window, every pale sky. Yet sometimes when I squint and pull them closer, back into the hall, back through the gate or over the fence toward the field, the memories of my glory return to warm me, and I invoke these visions imperceptibly, often with a sensuous whisper or a private smile.