A tale of complex, dynamic women

The play intricately weaves the lives and journeys of three women

THE provocative and bold onehander Womb of Fire by Cape Town Theatre duo Rehane Abrahams and Sara Matchett will be staged at the Baxter Golden Arrow Studio.

The play intricately weaves the lives and journeys of three dynamic and complex women in history and Hindu mythology.

It has gained acclaim since its premiere at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown last year.

Conceptualised by co-founders of women’s arts collective The Mothertongue Project, the play was nominated for three awards at the recent Stellenbosch University Woordfees in the categories for Best Play, Best Director and Best Performer.

Actor, writer, director and theatre-maker Abrahams portrays early Indian feminist icon Draupadi, Khoekhoen (Khoi) Zara, who was employed as a servant from a young age, and Grote Katrijn, the first female bandit slave who was banished to the Cape.

Abrahams said she was drawn to these three troublesome women whose stories were not well known, but were 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,” said Abrahams.

She said the catalyst for the text came from conversations she had with her mother, well-known chef Cass Abrahams, about ancestry and grandmothers.

The play reaches back and forward across time following Grote Katrijn’s journey across India to Batavia (present-day Jakarta) and then to Cape Town in the 1600s; Zara’s brief, brutal life, violently punished posthumously by the DutchEast India Company for her crime of suicide; and the outspoken Indian deity Draupadi, who had five husbands.

Matchett, a director and UCT senior lecturer in the Department of Drama, said: “My compulsion to make a new work also came out of my PhD research, which explores the body as a site for generating images for performancemaking.

“Rehane was one of the co-investigators on the project, and the development process was the result of a particular performance-making methodology that the research proposes.”

Womb of Fire previews at the Baxter Golden Arrow Studio on April18 and opens on April19 until May5, with an age restriction of 13 years.

Tickets are R100 and booking for Womb of Fire is through Webtickets or Pick n Pay stores.