Three women who speak back to power
PROVOCATIVE, bold, challenging. Womb of Fire poses questions and offers scenarios that may not leave audiences in a comfortable place but will certainly rouse awareness on a number of issues.
It opens tonight at the Baxter’s Golden Arrow Studio, with acclaimed performer Rehane Abrahams skilfully portraying three women across different time spans, moving back and forth between them.
It was nominated for three awards at the recent Stellenbosch University Woordfees in the categories for Best Play, Best Director and Best Performer, and since its debut at last year’s National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, it has played to much acclaim. Directed by Sara Matchett, it was staged earlier this year in India at the International Theatre Festival of Kerala.
It has been described as “a deeply moving exploration of three complex women” that sheds light on who they were beneath the vulnerability.
Their lives and journeys, in history and Hindu mythology, are intricately woven together and make use of an ancient Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, and the little-known struggles of two women from the founding years of the Cape Colony in the 17th century.
Draupadi was an important feminist from an early Indian epic; the Khoekhoen (Khoi) Zara was employed as a servant from a young age; and Grote Katrijn was the first female bandit slave, who was banished to the Cape.
Abrahams says they drew their inspiration in part from a collection of stories, Agnigharba, by Mahasweta Devi. “It features a rendition of Draupadi in which she is an indigenous rights activist or ‘tribal’, as they call it in India.
“There is a part of the story from the Mahabarata where Draupadi is before the court and they attempt to undress her. It is rewritten so she speaks back to power with her naked body. Our play centres on this fragment from the story.”
Matchett, a senior lecturer in UCT’s drama department, adds that when the pair spent time in Kalakshetra Manipur, north-east India in 2014, they saw a performance of Devi’s Draupadi.
“The issues raised have profound resonances with women’s experiences in Southern Africa. I was awakened by the raw, uncluttered and extremely moving portrayal of the character Draupadi.
“After experiencing Ima Sabitri, the lead performer, it felt like my heart had been opened and I wept uncontrollably. These were tears of healing. The connections I made there bordered on epiphanic moments that any researcher and theatre-maker longs to have.”
The play reaches back and forward across time as it follows Grote Katrijn’s journey across India to Batavia and then to Cape Town in the 1600s; the briefly brutal life of Zara who was violently punished posthumously by the Dutch East India Company for her crime of suicide, and Draupadi – also known as an outspoken Indian deity who had five husbands.
Abrahams says: “History is so often one-sided – this is an account of the past from a different perspective.”
“I was drawn to these three troublesome women whose stories are not well known and yet are riveting and explosive. I wanted to interweave their personal narratives with contemporary realities to give them a voice today. The play uses the female body to disrupt the status quo and these characters challenge the laws of the land. It is no longer a lament, but a roar.”
She explains: “Disruption could mean to disrupt the audience’s preconceived notions; to disrupt the regular social order and challenge what is established.
Solo female performance work often highlights the female body – our play uses the body itself to challenge and disrupt.
“This becomes clearer in the play with the stories of the individual characters’ bodies.”
Matchett and Abrahams are co-founders of The Mothertongue Project, a women’s arts collective.
Matchett says: “South Africa has some of the highest rates of rape and sexualised violence in the world. The result is a society in which women’s bodies, in particular, are constantly under threat of violation. The necessity for a women’s arts collective that focuses on women creating and performing theatre inspired by women’s personal stories may play a role in redressing gender imbalances and the high levels of violence against women historically prevalent in South African society.
“Its necessary to challenge the silencing and marginalisation of women’s stories and I believe that theatre and performance is an effective means to achieve this.”
In 2000, Matchett and Abrahams created What the Water Gave Me.
While their earlier production traced Abrahams’s paternal line, Womb of Fire follows her maternal lineage. The catalyst for the text came from conversations she had with her mother, well-known chef Cass Abrahams, about ancestry and grandmothers.
Abrahams says: “In the writing process we recorded my mother’s stories of her two grandmothers, one from South India and one, a Khoe woman from the Kat River. We use those stories to flesh out our characterisations.”
What should audiences take away from the play?
Abrahams says: “I would like the audience to experience the play and take their own response away with them”.
Matchett adds: “Live performance has the capacity to inspire a sense of deep reflection; where both performers and audience are affected.
“Live performance rather inspires conversations… debates that move people to cogitate on their role in the situation and how they are able to shift it from a point of personal reflection that potentially leads to personal action.”
Abrahams’s electrifying rendition of the three characters will be complemented by design by Craig Leo with haunting vocal accompaniment by Lukhanyiso Skosana.
l Womb of Fire opens tonight and runs until May 5 at 8.15pm. Tickets are R100 each and booking’s through Webtickets or selected Pick n Pay stores. Age restriction of 13.