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Zakes Mokae 1934 - 2009

Zakes Mokae of Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada was born on August 5, 1934 in Johannesburg, City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality County, GP South Africa, and died at age 75 years old on September 11, 2009 in Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada United States.

Zakes Mokae

Zakes Mmakgoana Mokae

Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada 89102

August 5, 1934

Johannesburg, City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality County, GP, South Africa

September 11, 2009

Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada, United States

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Zakes Mokae Zakes Mokae (1934 - 2009)

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Zakes Mokae's History: 1934 - 2009

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Introduction

Zakes Mokae Born August 5, 1934 in Johannesburg, Union of South Africa [now South Africa] Died September 11, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA (complications from a stroke) Birth Name Zakes Makgona Mokae Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, on August 5, 1934, actor Zakes Mokae was initially a jazz saxophonist. Moving to England in 1961, he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and became one of the most distinguished thespians in South Africa for over two decades. Mokae was one of the few actors capable of crossing the divided racial sections, punctuated by his collaborations with white writer Athol Fugard. Together they founded the radical theater group The Rehearsal Room in the 50s that specifically dealt with his country's injustices. In fact, over the years his performances in "The Blood Knot," "Boesman and Lena," "A Lesson from Aloes" and "Master Harold...and the Boys," have been universally applauded. He fled the racist apartheid policies in South Africa in 1969 and migrated to America, subsequently winning a Tony award in 1982 for "Master Harold..." and proceeded to perform in American films to somewhat lesser acclaim, including A Dry White Season (1989), A Rage in Harlem (1991) and Waterworld (1995). TV appearances included strong appearances on such programs as "Law & Order," "Dream On," "Oz," "X-Files," "The West Wing" and "Monk." In later years, Mokae moved to Las Vegas and served as artistic director for the Nevada Shakespeare Company. 75-year-old Mokae died there from complications of a stroke on September 11, 2009. Spouse (2) Madelyn Mokae (5 August 1985 - 11 September 2009) ( his death) Madelyn Mokae (1966 - 25 January 1978) ( divorced) Trivia (12) Directed a production of August Wilson's "Fences" in 1999. First went to London in 1961 when his country blocked his acting career. Founded the Black Actors Theater in San Francisco with actor Danny Glover in 1980. Started out as a saxophonist with Trevor Huddleston's Huddleston Jazz Band. Took up acting after meeting white playwright Athol Fugard and they worked together creating plays. Won Broadway's 1982 Tony Award as Best Actor (Featured Role - Play) for his role as Sam in Athol Fugard's "'Master Harold'... and the Boys," a portrayal he recreated in the television version of the same title, 'Master Harold'... and the Boys (1985). He was also Tony-nominated in the same category in 1993 for "The Song of Jacob Zulu." Divorced wife Madelyn in 1978 after 12 years of marriage. They remarried in 1985. They have one daughter, Santlo Chontay Mokae, who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Had no previous acting experience before forming a professional bond with playwright Athol Fugard, who was white. Was jailed several times as a young man in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the corrosive times of racial separatism in his country. In 2005, he and his wife returned to the States from Cape Town, South Africa, and settled in Las Vegas in order to seek better medical care for his Parkinson's disease. He died at his home in Las Vegas from complications of a stroke he had on May 6, 2009. He previously had received diagnoses of Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Twice played a character who makes a statement to which the other character's response is, "I like that": Dad (1989) then later in Monk: Mr. Monk and the Marathon Man (2002). Personal Quotes (1) If you're a black man in South Africa and you've never been in prison, there's something wrong with you.
08/5

1934

Birthday

August 5, 1934

Birthdate

Johannesburg, City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality County, GP South Africa

Birthplace

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Nationality & Locations

born and raised in (Apartheid) South Africa. Died in Las Vegas.
Professional Career

Zakes Mokae biography "Zakes Mokae paid some very heavy prices for working with me. I mean there were days when I had literally to cradle his body because he had been beaten up and kicked around by policemen." (Athol Fugard in talk at Signature Theatre production of Blood Knot, 2012). Zakes Makgona Mokae was born in Johannesburg, South Africa on 5 Aug 1935. You always hear me tell the story of how my parents don't know what it is I do because there is no word in my language [Setswana] for an actor. The closest word is "to play". So I tell them I play and they say "A big man like you and all you do is play?" Mokae attended St. Peter's Anglican school in Rosettenville, where he came to know the Superintendent, Father Trevor Huddleston. Mokae started as a saxophonist playing in the Huddleston Jazz Band, an initiative of Trevor Huddleston "I spent about a year begging instruments. I hadn't got any money - I had to beg the money as well as the instruments. And gradually we built up a really first-class jazz band". Hugh Masekela most famously played in it. Mokae married Madelyn, they divorced in 1978 and remarried seven years later. Mokae had a daughter from a previous relationship. (Denis Herbstein in The Guardian, 10 Nov 2009). Acting After meeting Athol Fugard, a then unknown white playwright, Mokae took up acting. He and Fugard worked together creating new plays that reflected the situation in South Africa of the time. Fugard had in Mokae an actor able to carry the intelligence and emotion required in Fugard´s work. Blood Knot, performed by Mokae and Fugard, was the first masterpiece to attract world attention. The apartheid regime blocked his acting career in South Africa so he went to London in 1961 to study acting at RADA and the British Drama League, and appeared on the West End and Broadway- below his biography from the programme of Fingernails Blue as Flowers (and presumably the last credit should be The Rise and Fall of Michael Rimmer rather than Mr. Rumus). Zakes Mokae In 1969 he moved into American films and established himself as a gifted character actor, and sometime, as in the horror film The Serpent and the Rainbow, and in the anti-apartheid film A Dry White Season, giving a glimpse of his full acting ability. Zakes Mokae Zakes Mokae Zakes Mokae Zakes Mokae In 1980 he founded The Black Actors Theatre with Danny Glover in San Francisco. In 1982 he won a Tony Award for his performance in Master Harold and the Boys and in 1993 received a nomination for The Song of Jacob Zulu. In Feb 2005 he was presented with the South African Life-Time Achievement Award for his stage work. He continued working in theatre as a director: "I'm more into directing now... I leave acting to the actors. I've been acting for too long. It makes sense for me now to move from acting to directing." (Ken White in Neon). Mokae taught at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and was a directing fellow of the American Film Institute (from biography in Jacob Zulu programme). "His final years were spent in Las Vegas, where he worked as the artistic director for the Nevada Shakespeare Company. He and his wife bought a second home in Cape Town in 2005 and had intended to spend more time in the new South Africa, but Mokae's advancing Parkinson's and then Alzheimer's disease meant they had to return to America." (Denis Herbstein in The Guardian, 10 Nov 2009). Zakes Mokae passed away in his sleep on 11 September 2009 in Las Vegas after a long battle with Parkinson's disease. He was cremated in Nevada, USA and laid to rest at the West Park Cemetery in Johannesburg, South Africa. Tributes Some of the many tributes to Zakes Mokae: "Zakes did us proud with his acting talent helping the world to understand the awfulness of apartheid. We give great thanks to God for this stalwart of our struggle for freedom. May he rest in peace and rise in glory" Desmond Tutu, September 16, 2009, Cape Town. "I worked with Zakes in a movie called The Comedians. It was not a comedy. He was my assassin. But in the south of France we shared many laughs with Mandy and Alex Haley. Then more profoundly he was my mentor in learning how to do the Fugard plays. Mostly I miss his laugh." James Earl Jones, September 16, 2009, New York, NY.
Personal Life & Family

Madelyn Jean Mokae June 14, 1942 ~ February 13, 2013 (age 70) Obituary MADELYN J. MOKAE nee Woods of South Africa and Cleveland, OH, passed away February 13th, 2013. She was the beloved wife of the late Zakes Mokae and the dear sister of Richard I. Woods Debbie; dear aunt of several nieces and nephews. Private family services will be held. The family prefers that those who wish may make contributions in her name to The American Red Cross, 3636 Euclid Ave Cleveland, OH 44115.
09/11

2009

Death

September 11, 2009

Death date

Stroke.

Cause of death

Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada United States
Death location

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Obituary

Zakes Mokae, 75, Actor In Apartheid Battle, Dies By BRUCE WEBER Published: September 16, 2009 Zakes Mokae, a Tony-winning South African actor whose partnership with his countryman, the playwright Athol Fugard, in plays like ''The Blood Knot'' and ''Master Harold ... and the Boys'' brought the insidious psychological brutality of apartheid to the attention of a world audience, died on Friday in Las Vegas, where he had a home. He was 75 and also lived in Cape Town. The cause was complications of a stroke he had on May 6, said his wife, Madelyn. He had previously received diagnoses of Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, she said. Mr. Mokae, who was black, and Mr. Fugard, who is white, were part of a drama collective in South Africa in the 1950s. In 1960, when they performed together in ''The Blood Knot,'' Mr. Fugard's play about brothers with skins of different hues, it was the first time that black and white performers had appeared on the same stage in South Africa, Mr. Fugard said in an interview on Monday. The play not only defied a national taboo; it also propelled Mr. Fugard to international fame as a playwright and Mr. Mokae to a rich and varied career in theater, film and television. The play's local fame persuaded an English producer to open it in London, where Mr. Mokae continued to act in it, though Mr. Fugard did not. It was a sensation (despite a scathing review by Kenneth Tynan). As Mr. Fugard continued to explore the corrosive effects of racial separatism on the individual psyches of both blacks and whites in later plays, Mr. Mokae took on major roles in several of them. He appeared with Ruby Dee and James Earl Jones in the 1970 American premiere Off Broadway of ''Boesman and Lena,'' about a mixed-race couple migrating from one bleak settlement to another, embittered and inextricably yoked by their predicament. Mr. Mokae first played an old black man, nearly incapable of communicating, who nonetheless befriends Lena; he later took over for Mr. Jones as Boesman. In ''A Lesson From Aloes'' he played a political activist who confronts a white man, a former friend he fears may be a government informer, taking the role in regional theater and as an understudy to Mr. Jones on Broadway. And in 1982 he won a Tony for his performance as Sam, one of two servants working in a tea room in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in ''Master Harold,'' the first of Mr. Fugard's plays to have its world premiere outside of South Africa. Sam looms as a surrogate father for a spoiled white teenager, whose frustrations with his actual parents result in the eventual manifestation of his ugly, racist upbringing. The play had its roots in his own childhood, Mr. Fugard said, and the character of Sam in two men he himself had known. ''I knew I wanted Zakes in that defining role in the play,'' Mr. Fugard said. Zakes Makgona Mokae (pronounced ZAYKES Muh-KWA-nuh Mo-KYE) was born in Johannesburg on Aug. 5, 1934. In vicious times in South Africa, he was jailed several times as a young man. He was playing saxophone in a jazz band in the late 1950s when he was introduced to Mr. Fugard by a black journalist, Bloke Modisane, who was helping Mr. Fugard create a theater that was specifically about South African life, a theater that did not exist at the time. Mr. Mokae had no previous acting experience, but Mr. Fugard, sensing a bond between them, cast him in two plays even before ''The Blood Knot.'' When ''The Blood Knot'' was revived by the Yale Repertory Company in the United States in 1985, with Mr. Fugard and Mr. Mokae again acting together, it was, Mr. Fugard said, among the most emotional occasions of his life. After ''The Blood Knot'' opened in London, Mr. Mokae was barred from returning to South Africa. He did not return until 1982, when he learned that his brother James was to be hanged for murders committed during a robbery, though it was unclear whether James was present during the killings. Mr. Mokae, who learned of the death sentence on the night he won his Tony Award, returned to Johannesburg in time to witness his brother's execution. In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1966, divorced in 1978 and then remarried in 1985, he is survived by two sisters and two brothers in South Africa; a daughter, Santlo Chontay Mokae, of Atlanta; and three grandchildren. Mrs. Mokae said she and her husband moved back to South Africa in 2005, while his mind was still mostly intact, ''so he could live under freedom there and have some memory of it.'' Mr. Mokae's many films included ''The Comedians,'' ''Darling,'' ''Cry Freedom'' and ''A Dry White Season.'' In 1993 he was nominated for a Tony for a supporting role in ''The Song of Jacob Zulu,'' a first play by a white playwright, Tug Yourgrau, about the South African trial of a black activist. Mr. Mokae played a man who had spent much of his life in prison. ''If you're a black man in South Africa and you've never been in prison, there's something wrong with you,'' Mr. Mokae said in an interview with The New York Times at the time, adding that a tirade by his character had grown out of conversations he had with Mr. Yourgrau. ''Tug hasn't been in prison a lot with black folks, so I had to talk about it with him,'' Mr. Mokae said. ''It's true that when they count you at night they walk on your face with their boots. And they do it all night. All night, somebody's being beaten. Somebody's screaming. That stuff, to me, it's real. You have to tell a white person, 'That's what it is,' so that he gets it, the filth and the stink, the kind of poetry that comes out of that.''Zakes Mokae passed away on September 11, 2009 at age 75. Zakes was born on August 5, 1934. We know that Zakes Mokae had been residing in Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada 89102.

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Zakes Mokae lived exactly as long as the average family member when died at the age of 75.

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