Zak Hendrikz plays a bad guy but he's actually really nice!

Recently I saw I Have Life: Alison’s Story, 20 Years On at the Auto and General Theatre on the Square. It’s the story of Alison Botha who was brutally raped and disembowelled by two attackers in 1994 – and how she survived and triumphed. I was very impressed with Zak Hendrikz who plays the terrifying part of Frans du Toit the psychopathic rapist. He tweaked the golden thread of humanity in the audience that night and made us think. I knew it would take an exceptional actor to play that part, and I needed to chat with him. And he is really nice!

I’ve seen I Have Life, it was such an amazing experience. Unfortunately it’s nearly the end of the play (it ended on 30 August). I don’t know how you must have experienced doing it. 

Well, for us it was quite a different process because we had five weeks rehearsals which is quite a lot of time to rehearse a play. Usually when you rehearse a play you are looking at three to four weeks maximum, but because it’s such a sensitive subject matter and because they had to redo the play from the book they had to rework it. The process was very different and we had to be very sensitive about how we were going to approach the play and subject matter and we had to try different avenues to see what is the best way of telling the story. The best way of portraying what we wanted to convey to the audience that would not distance them, and then also what is the best way for the actors to feel the most comfortable on stage.