Pauline: In Christmas Carol I play the character of Scrooge. The story is still the same, basically, as the original Scrooge that English people would know, but it' s basically, took a turn, and it' s looking at Scrooge as a South African businesswoman, if you like. I think basically because nowadays, you know these days there' s a lot of empowering women, the government empowering women and black empowerment. So there' s lots of women coming up as entrepreneurs, as businesswomen, you know things like that. So for us it was important that we feature a South African woman in that sense.
Interviewer: And what about... the play has transposed the gender of your character, because Scrooge is usually played as a male part, I wonder if you can say something about that, and what the transposition means in terms of the story?
Pauline: Probably it' s what I said, but maybe I didn' t say it clearly. I don' t know why they decided to make Scrooge a woman in the first place. What I was told was you' re gonna play Scrooge. I was not happy, I was not happy at all because if you like, Scrooge would be my first role on stage, my first speaking role and to me it was quite long for me as my first one. But I think that the idea behind, not that there weren' t any good men in the company who could play Scrooge as men, but because of what' s happening in South Africa at the moment, you know as I said before, the Black economic empowerment, the empowering of women, women taking charge, women not just wanting to be housewives but women wanting to be out there, do not what men do, but do what they want to do, what they would like to do. You know, instead of men telling them you have to do this and you have to do that. So it' s women taking a stand, so in this Christmas Carol, that' s exactly what Scrooge is doing, at the same time as playing this mean and... people see it as mean and... but if you look at it, yes she' s mean, but there' s more to her meaness than what people see. Sometimes people can grow up to be things they didn' t really want to be but because of circumstances they were forced into those situations. So I think that Scrooge' s background shaped her into what she ended up being in the end, because you know, if you look at the story we don' t see anything, we don' t hear anything about the parents being, we know that the father had, you know, been working all the time, but we don' t see any family background where they' re mean and rich and not giving to the poor. So I think if you look at it in the South African context you' ll say basically she had to be, because she was forced into a position where she was in a male dominated business world, where is she wanted to survive, she had to become a man herself. And so she, instead of being herself, in a way, she forgot about her values, and sort of thought men haven' t got values. You know, you know, it' s sort of confusion, she got into confusion and all those circumstances of Scrooge being mean really.
