Fear, helplessness, rage, and fiery protest flashed on the face of Sara Matchett, director and main cast of Walk: South Africa , left the audience at the International Theatre Festival of Kerala (ITFoK) breathless.
The play did not need any words to evoke intense feelings in viewers. The gender disparity and violence here are eerily similar. The audience could connect with each moment, every insult, and every bit of struggle that the women, queer, and the marginalised are going through in South Africa.
Walk: South Africa was a performance produced by Ms. Matchett of Mothertongue Project in South Africa in response to the brutality of gender-based violence and rape culture in India and South Africa.
The play was inspired by Indian theatre artiste Maya Krishna Rao’s Walk . Ms. Rao crafted Walk as a response to the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old girl by six men on a bus in Delhi in 2012. Ms. Rao had powerfully advocated women’s right to walk on the streets in the country through her solo performance.
The Mothertongue Project made Walk : South Africa in 2013, as a response to the gang rape and murder of South African teenager Anene Booysen. The compelling performance made the audience sit up, listen, and reflect.
The vision of the play is centred around sparse aesthetic that foregrounds the figure of a woman. It speaks directly to the scourge of rape and gender violence in South Africa and across the world. The performance included three live performance installations, a video installation, and an audio installation.
A senior lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Performance at the University of Cape Town, Ms. Matchett said South Africa has some of the highest rate of rape and sexualised violence against women in the world.
Women live under constant fear of violence. It is estimated that 50% of women in South Africa would be subjected to some kind of sexual violence in their lifetime, she said.
“It is necessary to challenge the silencing and marginalisation of women’s stories. The theatre performance is an effective means to achieving this,” Ms. Matchett noted.
