THE PLAYS Playwrightās Note:
What the Water Gave Me is about my connection with the Mothercity, Cape Town and thus intimately connected with my relationship to the Sea. Cape Town is on a peninsula surrounded by Ocean, the Atlantic on one side and the Indian on the other. The Indian Ocean is particularly meaningful for me and not just because the non-white beach was there, but because it carried stories of where we came from. I grew up different within, in a Cape Malay (Muslim) community with a mother from outside (Johannesburg, Christian). Apart from being not white or black, I was different from the other Coloured kids and different from the other Malay kids. My family was reeling from the āforced removalsā fracturing of their traditional extended family structures for most of my childhood. The geography I inhabited was one of fissures, fractures, cracks like my grandmotherās body, scarred with the many keloids of open-heart surgery. My grandmother, Gawa Arend, held the stories of Cape Town for me. She told me Bawa Mera, Bawa Puti, which I later discovered was an old Javanese story Bawang Mera, Bawang Puti (Onion and Garlic). She told me that her people had come from the East, non-specific, mythic Java, Indian Ocean and Ships.
I believe that theatre can actively be used for healing. With this work, I put those beliefs to the test using my experiences of ritual and what I found to be common ā the creation of sacred space, the invocation of the directions/elements and the closure or release at the end. I also attempted to work directly with my ancestors (particularly my grandmother) and began practically exploring Southern African shamanic techniques during this time.
Faced with the gruesome realities of sexual violence and abuse, especially against girlchildren and the constant awareness of violence in South Africa, this seemed the most potent means at my disposal. In Africa, these practises are not āNew Ageā, they are continuous, āAgeā-less techniques for the restoring of psyche amongst other things. They are effective.
The associations of water with healing, sexuality, fecundity, release and purification were called on to effect a process using the performerās body as point of contact/interdimensional interface/channel. It aimed to connect outward to the audience and community and inward to cellular memory and ancestral line.
Rehane Abrahams
WHAT THE WATER GAVE ME
Written and performed by
Rehane Abrahams
Produced by The Mothertongue Project. Directed by Sara Matchett. Soundscape by Julia Raynham. It was first seen at the Cape Town Theatre Laboratoryās Collaborations Festival at the Nico Arena in November 2000. The Mothertongue Project also presented the show in April 2001 at The Sufi Temple, a geodesic dome in a garden. The play enjoyed a further run at the Baxter Sanlam Studio in Cape Town, July 2001.
CHARACTERS
AIR ā Storyteller
FIRE ā Taxi Time-Traveller
EARTH ā Hip-Hop-Head from Heideveld
WATER ā Little Girl
Note:
We have not included specific stage directions, as we feel it should be left to the discretion of the director and performer to invent/create their own physical narrative that runs parallel to the spoken text. We have also left the transitions from character to character up to the discretion of the performer and director.
Use is made of Indian Classical dance, Physical Theatre and Storytelling as the action moves in all directions simultaneously interwoven. This is theatre with emphasis on transformation and the corporal. It is speaking the body/the body speaking.
The Set
The set is comprised of four āstationsā situated in a circle. Each āstationā is associated with an element and direction thus representing a medicine wheel. There are four characters and each one is connected to a āstationā.
AIR ā (East) is represented by a yellow circle (approx 1 meter in diameter)
WATER ā (West) by a blue circle with an empty enamel bowl
EARTH ā (North) by a white circle
FIRE ā (South) by a red circle
The performer enters as the audience enters the space. She is singing a Yoruba Chant in honour of the Goddess Oshun and is dragging a cloth bundle filled with various props. She carries a long stick, similar to that carried by Indian Sages. As she sings, she circles the āmedicine wheelā in a clockwise direction. As she gets to the water āstationā, she takes out a plastic Coca Cola bottle filled with water and pours the water into the enamel bowl. She also places a toy doll (without any clothing) at this āstationā. At the next āstationā she empties a brown paper bag filled with earth onto the white circle and places a black woollen hat down; then she takes out a large candle and lights it at the Fire āstationā and places approx 30 unlit small birthday candles onto the red circle and a ball; finally she places a small tape recorder/dictaphone and lights an incense stick at the yellow circle. She places her stick down here and takes the cloth that was used to carry the props and winds it round her head into a turban. Thus transforming into the first character i.e. The Storyteller. At some points the props are interchanged between characters, thus creating a sense that the characters embody aspects of one another. Again this is left to the discretion of the d...