By MIKE LOEWE
We should replace every colonial statue with art which recognises, acknowledges and honours South African lesbians.
I have just seen Chapter 2 Section 9, by the Sibikwa Arts Centre. It’s a piece of utter brilliance which takes interviews from 50 lesbians and dramatises their stories.
They are close, real, us. You will know these stories, but you won’t know the depths of horror and hatred, the atrocities we have committed against people of a different orientation to ours.
In the past, I have been told by lesbians to take a hike. I did, with a crew of lesbians on the Whale and Otter trails and I will never forget a woman coaxing her voluptuous, naked lover across a strongly flowing river saying: “You can do it my darling, you can do it!”
Other South Africans can do it too – and sharply directed pieces like this offer an incredible entry point from our alienated, homophobic, violent, unexplored, Dopper, rigid-upper lip, fundamentalist social world, into the story of SA lesbians.
The play is based on 50 interviews and the cruelty at every level – from the intimacy of home to self-serving uncivil idiots at Home Affairs; the disassociating bureaucratic blathering of insincere, hostile cops to the violations, the beatings, “corrective” rape and murder – is breathtaking and shameful.
We messed-up South Africans should feel deeply disturbed and ashamed. But we don’t, because the stories are told so damn well, and with such warmth and quiet joy, that there is no time for this. We simply sit there spellbound as four actresses weave these tales and give us a keen sense of what we must become – a place of peace, non-violence and acceptance.
Every South African who cares about the freedoms enshrined in Chapter 2, Section 9, should see this piece.
It’s not good theatre, it’s great theatre. It is committed, searing, touching, engrossing work. We don’t need change, we demand change – and work like this is change.
lChapter 2 Section 9 is on at 11.30 am today. — mikel@dispatch.co.za
Thrilling piece a call to action
We should replace every colonial statue with art which recognises, acknowledges and honours South African lesbians.
I have just seen Chapter 2 Section 9, by the Sibikwa Arts Centre. It’s a piece of utter brilliance which takes interviews from 50 lesbians and dramatises their stories.
They are close, real, us. You will know these stories, but you won’t know the depths of horror and hatred, the atrocities we have committed against people of a different orientation to ours.
In the past, I have been told by lesbians to take a hike. I did, with a crew of lesbians on the Whale and Otter trails and I will never forget a woman coaxing her voluptuous, naked lover across a strongly flowing river saying: “You can do it my darling, you can do it!”
Other South Africans can do it too – and sharply directed pieces like this offer an incredible entry point from our alienated, homophobic, violent, unexplored, Dopper, rigid-upper lip, fundamentalist social world, into the story of SA lesbians.
The play is based on 50 interviews and the cruelty at every level – from the intimacy of home to self-serving uncivil idiots at Home Affairs; the disassociating bureaucratic blathering of insincere, hostile cops to the violations, the beatings, “corrective” rape and murder – is breathtaking and shameful.
We messed-up South Africans should feel deeply disturbed and ashamed. But we don’t, because the stories are told so damn well, and with such warmth and quiet joy, that there is no time for this. We simply sit there spellbound as four actresses weave these tales and give us a keen sense of what we must become – a place of peace, non-violence and acceptance.
Every South African who cares about the freedoms enshrined in Chapter 2, Section 9, should see this piece.
It’s not good theatre, it’s great theatre. It is committed, searing, touching, engrossing work. We don’t need change, we demand change – and work like this is change.
lChapter 2 Section 9 is on at 11.30 am today. — mikel@dispatch.co.za
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