Womb of Fire 2018

Title

Womb of Fire 2018

Department

Theatre

Genre

Theatre

Production Type

Research Based Production

Research Lecturer

Description

Winners of three awards at the 2018 Stellenbosch University Woordfees in the categories for Best Play, Best Director and Best Performer, winners of two 2019 Fleur du Cap awards in the categories for Best Performance in a Revue, Cabaret or One-person Show, and Best Sound Design, Original Music Composition or Original Score, and winner of the 2018 UCT Creative Works Award, Womb of Fire has gained acclaim since its premier at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 2017. Thereafter it performed at: the ICA’s 2017 3rd Space Symposium; the University of Johannesburg Con Cowan Theatre (2017); the International Theatre Festival of Kerala, India (2018); Woordfees Festival, Stellenbosch (2018); the Baxter Theatre (2018); Pan African Creative Exchange (PACE), Bloemfontein (2018); and the Afrovibes Festival, The Netherlands (2018).

Womb of Fire was conceptualised by Sara Matchett and Rehane Abrahams, co-founders of The Mothertongue Project, a women’s arts collective with a 23-year history of engaging integrated arts methodologies to activate personal and social transformation. In 2000, Rehane and Sara created works like What the Water Gave Me (the production that birthed The Mothertongue Project). Set against an episode from the Indian epic, The Mahabharata, the play interweaves personal narrative and contemporary realities with the lives of two women from the founding years of the Cape Colony to interrogate the Womb of Fire that birthed South Africa. The play follows Grote Katrijn van Pulicat’s (1681-­1683) journey across India to Batavia and then to Cape Town as the first female bandit slave; it then explores the briefly brutal life of Zara (1648-­1671), a Khoekhoen servant woman who was violently punished posthumously by the VOC for the crime of suicide. Womb of Fire looks at the power of the performing female body to challenge the pornography of Empire, in the process decolonising and retrieving itself. The play reaches back and forward across time to reassemble the dismembered body, allowing it to speak.

This production has seen multiple tours to: the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown (2017); the ICA’s 2017 3rd Space Symposium; the University of Johannesburg Con Cowan Theatre (2017); the International Theatre Festival of Kerala, India (2018); Woordfees Festival, Stellenbosch (2018); the Baxter Theatre (2018); Pan African Creative Exchange (PACE), Bloemfontein (2018); The South African Women's Arts Festival (2018)and the Afrovibes Festival, The Netherlands (2018).

Language

English

Script Type

Devised

Year Created

2018

Opening Date

18 April 2018

Closing Date

5 May 2018

Duration

01:00:00

Age Restriction

pg 13

Performance Venue

Geographic Location of Performance

Cape Town

Producer

Mothertongue Theatre Project

Director

Text By

Rehane Abrahams

Cast

Musical/ Sound Composer

Lukhanyiso Skosana

Musical Director

Lukhanyiso Skosana

Musician

Lukhanyiso Skosana

Lighting Designer

Costume Designer

Digital Designer

Production Manager

Stage Manager

Social Media

Linked resources

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Relation
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Womb of Fire 2018 poster Poster
The application of a translational performance method using archival material, personal narrative, mythology and somatic practices: the making of Womb of Fire Text
Based On
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Brandbaar TheaterEvent