JOIN USThe importance of telling their own stories
As the curtains go up and the bright lights dramatically illuminate the room, all the audience can see is a bare stage with three chairs. A stark setting indeed and, yet, it’s the perfect backdrop for a performance that combines music, dance, laughter and heart-rending stories of feminine courage and spirited action in the face of persistent physical and emotional violence.
As the cast of young university women, which includes Vuyolwethu Tunguntwana, 19, Chizoba Mkhwanazi, 18, Ayabonga Pasiya, 22, and others, brings the stage to life with their impassioned narrations, the viewers hang on to their every word and feeling.
Even though it’s been nine years since the feminist play, Reclaiming the P… Word, was first staged at the University of Western Cape in South Africa, its message as well as effect has remained constant. This self-scripted and performed drama, which fights against the cultures that enable sexual violence on campus as well as in the South African society, never fails to enlighten and empower.
Activism through performance
Mary Hames, director of the University’s Gender Equity Unit (GEU) that has produced the play, says, “The GEU has conceptualised this play that specifically raises awareness about the objectification and sexualisation of black women’s bodies. It was the outcome of several workshops and discussions held campus-wide in which the staff, students as well as women from the larger community were encouraged to speak about or write down their own experiences related to bodily integrity and dignity.”
This process took about four months and led to the penning of a “flexible script that had multiple elements: feminist education and teaching, the evocation of empathy with the experiences of the cast and characters, the raising of awareness, and shock about the statistics on violence”.
Three weeks before the play was due to open, the scripts started to roll in; staff and students wrote their own pieces. Eventually eight monologues, one dialogue, one poem and one song were selected. “We had to come up with a title that was provocative and truthful, and I proposed Reclaiming the P...Word. The ‘P’ stands for poes — the Afrikaans term for vagina. The term has a very specific context and connotation in South Africa, especially among Afrikaans-speaking communities, and is often used in a derogatory sense. The premise of the play (and the use of the term) was to examine such social ideas of embodiment and to provoke debate and raise consciousness about the female body,” she adds.
The first performance was an overwhelming success and it was decided to stage another two performances as part of the ‘Sixteen Days of Activism Against Violence Against Women Campaign’ that year. Over the years, the fundamentals of the play haven’t changed. Ayabonga Pasiya, 22, who is in her final year of BSc medical bioscience, is the director at present. She shares, “Each portion of the play is intimately connected with the other and sensitively traces the outcome of physical and emotional violence on women’s bodies. After the show, several women in the audience usually come forward and express how they could relate to each piece.”
The perfect platform
Cheerful and enthusiastic, Chizoba Mkhwanazi who joined the group this February, believes that their play is the perfect platform to tell personal stories in an artistic manner. “It is one of the best examples of activism through performance,” she says, adding, “I love the way we use the stage. Physically, it’s bare but it transforms into a space of empowerment and freedom, where women are encouraged to find their voice.”
Dressed in black, the girls’ performance is striking as they effortlessly convey how even though women are all the same — or rather come from the same source — they are still unique in their own right. Fast-paced and engaging, the narrative, made up of several monologues punctuated with dancing, singing and drama, easily comes together as one, forcing everyone to sit up and pay attention to the violence and injustice around them. After all, only when people are confronted can they no longer turn away and pretend that they do not hear or see the prejudice or unfairness meted out to girls and women in general.
Of course, the revelations are not confined to the audience alone. The girls associated with production have their own learning curves. Vuyolwethu, a cast member for two years, feels that she now knows the “importance of telling our own stories — because if you don’t do it, no one else will.” For her, “performing the play is like taking back what belongs to women. The real meaning of the word poes. I feel very liberated because I believe in what I’m saying”.
Chizoba is quick to point out that there’s a whole range of subjects that they touch on. “We speak on a number of things — about owning our blackness or being black, feminists and how it’s become taboo to be one and how we’re scrutinised for being one. We talk about rape in family and what it does to young women who have no idea how to tell their families that they have been violated by one of their own,” she explains. Mary, who has seen successive batches of girls and women being empowered through their involvement with the play, concludes, “It’s been a journey of healing, growth, understanding themselves for the first time and hope.”
(This article is part of UN Women’s Empowering Women — Empowering Humanity: Picture It! campaign in the lead-up to Beijing+20)