August 1, 2006
By Ndaba Dlamini
FLIPPING the Script!, a play about four women from different races, backgrounds and culture telling their life stories, is back at the Market Theatre as part of the Women in Arts Festival.
This year the Women in Arts Festival, on at various Newtown venues from 4 to 13 August, is part of the City's Arts Alive programme.
Well received at the Grahamstown Festival in July 2005 and the National School of Arts Festival of Fame in May 2006, the stories in Flipping the Script! are based on personal and observed experience.
Written by Catherine Mlangeni, Zubeda Dangor, Nonzi Bogatsu, Dorothy Brislin and Bobby Rodwell, the play which ran at the Market Theatre in November 2004, tracks the lives of Fikile, a 29-year-old woman played by Nomonde Mbusi, who believes that if a woman has vision in South Africa, she has to have attitude. She is an independent woman, a character who does not entertain any of the bad treatment that her mother and grandmother endured from men and society.
She intends to shock and some of her monologues are quite explicit as she feels women should reclaim their sexuality. Her character is a sharp contrast to that of the older women in the play.
Fikile joins Gogo alias Mam' Gladys, a 73-year-old woman born in the 1930s in KwaZulu Natal who settles in Soweto in the 1950s. Her story is about the constant struggle of trying to shake off the shackles of abuse from her husband and bringing children up on her own. Gogo is played by seasoned stage and television actor, Connie Mfuku.
Leeanda Reddy, television soapie star acts as the naïve, 35-year-old Muslim woman, Zainab. Zainab marries at 16 and lives the affluent life of a Bollywood star. She discovers that she married a very abusive man and, with the assistance of her brother, manages to leave him to open up a cooking business. However, years later, her husband tracks her down and kills her.
Charlotte Butler portrays the life of Amanda, a middle-aged white woman "who has seen better days". Born of wealthy parents, Amanda was abused as a child and her life just never got off the ground. She finally commits suicide.
According to Mehlo-maya, producers of the Flipping the Script!, the play was never meant to focus on violence against women, but in the process of production, it became apparent that one cannot deal with women in South Africa without engaging in the issue that many women fear daily - violence.
"While the play deals with feminist issues, it also deals with socio-political issues facing the characters, and this is a particular position taken by the company, that gender and women's issues do not take place in a vacuum. Flipping the Script! plays around with levels of acceptability in different societies, what is acceptable for its Indian character, its young black character, its older black character and its white character"
The play is on at the Laager Theatre in the Market Theatre complex from 9 August to 13 August. Tickets for all performances cost R65.
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