When Boardroom Sex Goes Wrong
Dumisani Ncube | Monday April 10, 2017 18:00
The four-member cast stage play is part of the ongoing Maitisong Festival. Nasty Burn focuses on a pharmaceutical company where one senior manager sexually abuses female workers.
The play starts in a boardroom set up when a senior manager Mokgwa portrayed by Magwaza Mathebula is telling a senior colleague, Sasa played by Loungo Masire, that he found a proper candidate for the secretary position.
He says this in high spirits stating that the candidate has all the qualities that him and the company need. Mokgwa quickly calls in the new secretary, Kgabo portrayed by Matlalepule Kloome, as he asks Sasa to excuse the two of them because he wants to talk to Kgabo privately.
The senior manager tries to make sexual advances, but his wife Connie the HR manager portrayed by Andisiwe Mkuyana walks into the boardroom before anything could happen.
Over time, Mokgwa kept on trying to bring Kgabo closer and make her comfortable till Connie noticed that her husband is interested in the new secretary. Connie confronts her husband, but he sweet talks her and even threatens to leave because she does not trust him, but she apologises in fear of being dumped.
In the same scene, Connie harasses Kgabo, calls her a b*tch who wants to snatch her husband. Innocent, Kgabo is left speechless as she is clueless.
The peak of the play comes when Kgabo receives a call to come to the boardroom after work by Mokgwa who offers her a promotion on one condition, that she sleeps with him.
Kgabo, who is shocked and scared, refuses and they wrestle each other. Connie walks into the boardroom to find her husband lying down with Kgabo on top. Mokgwa quickly screams, cries and says Kgabo is trying to rape him. This angers Connie as she lashes out at the accused victim and walks out with her husband.
While all this was happening, Sasa had planted a camera in the boardroom, which records everything. Sasa exposes Mokgwa the following day in front of his wife. He walks away embarrassed, after the revelation that he has slept with all the women in the company either for promotion or to get hired. Connie is heartbroken and left speechless.
She recalls how she got her job and got promoted within a short space of time.
An angry Mokgwa comes back to the boardroom to find Sasa and Kgabo. They tell him that they are pressing charges against him.
He threatens that he will commit suicide, as he pulls out a gun, and points it to his head, and turns and points it to Kgabo, who quickly gets scared.
While holding the gun, Connie walks into the boardroom and from behind she grabs the gun and points it at her husband and orders him to strip, he slowly removes all his clothes as the play comes to an end.