Walk 2019

Title

Walk 2019

Department

Theatre

Keywords

Production Type

Research Based Production

Research Lecturer

Description

Walk is a performance piece created in response to Indian artist Maya Krishna Rao's The Walk. Rao crafted The Walk after the rape and murder of Jyoti Singh Pandey, a 23-year-old student who was tortured, raped and killed by 6 men on a Delhi bus in December 2012. A few months later, we decided, with Rao's permission, to create our own version of Walk as a response to the gang-rape and murder of Anene Booysen, a South African teenager, in 2013. The unimaginably horrific assault and deaths of these two womxn was a catalyst to create Walk as a way to honour their memories and to talk honestly about rape culture.

The process of making Walk allowed for the emergence of a series of performed installations, which involve the audience and the performers walking through the pieces together. Although in both South Africa and India there were similarities in public reaction to Jyoti and Anene’s cases, India’s civil response seemed of much greater magnitude compared to South Africa. Despite South Africa celebrating 20 plus years of democracy, coupled with a constitution that is a shining example to other countries, violence against people who identify as womxn and gender non-conforming is still prevalent. One ponders whether, as a nation, South Africans have become numb to the violence imposed on womxn and trans people on a daily basis. Have we gone so far as to normalise it? These question urge us as performance-makers to create work that stirs, that questions, that galvanizes people into action.

Our vision for Walk is centred around a sparse aesthetic that foregrounds the figure of the womxn. Its focus is very much on the seven performers and considering the unavoidable, physical fact of their bodies – a fact which we understand rape culture to seek to obfuscate or erase.

Walk has performed at various venues and festivals around the world including the GIPCA Live Art Festival, Cape Town 2014; DFL Sex Actually Festival, Johannesburg 2014; Cape Town Fringe Festival 2014; The International Women’s Playwrights’ Conference, Cape Town 2015; Freedom and Focus Conference and Festival, Dublin 2016; Vifa Festival, India 2016; the International Festival of Kerala, India 2018; The National Arts Festival, Makhanda 2018; and the DFL Transforming Arts / Transforming Lives Conference and Festival, Johannesburg 2018.

Script Type

Devised

Year Created

2019

Opening Date

1 March 2019

Closing Date

6 March 2019

Start Time

various (refer to poster)

Content Warning

Rape
Gender Based Violence

Performance Venue

Hoerskool Lükhoff

Geographic Location of Performance

Cape Town

Producer

Mothertongue Project

Co Production with

Woordfees

Dramaturg

Koleka Putuma

Linked resources