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The Mothertongue Project

The Mothertongue Project is an organization in South Africa. Founded in 2000 by Dr. Sara Matchett and Rehane Abrahams, the group today aims to teach women and youth at the margins of society creative and performative ways of telling their own stories, gain power and voice for themselves and within their communities. The organization operates in the Langeberg municipality, specifically the towns of McGregor, Western Cape, Robertson, Nkqubela and surrounding areas. The Mothertongue Project hopes to create a world where there is self honoring, recognition and celebration.

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Langeberg Youth Arts Project

Langeberg is a rule municipality in the Western Cape province in South Africa. Since 2012, the Mothertongue project has been teaching young people creative expression, entrepreneurial, leadership and life skills mostly through theater. Despite the Mothertongue Project’s rule operations, the company has performances and workshops in schools and for young children in early years programs. Workshops are run by trained youth leaders. Workshops and performances aim to raise awareness around issues such as drug addition, AIDS/HIV, gender-based violence, tuberculosis, and teenage pregnancy.

Womb of Fire

Womb of fire is an award-winning one woman show conceptualized, written and performed by Rehane Abrahams, conceptualized and directed by Dr. Sara Matchett. It is exploration of the “female body as a place of disruption”, personal lineage and identity. It uses the story of Draupadi from the Mahabharata as a frame work for the play as well as the stories of a slave named Grote Katrijn van Pulicat and servant named Zara who were brought to Cape Town in its early days as Cape Colony.

To perform Rehane Abrahams switches between the three women, embodying each with a different part of her body. As she states in an interview with Mela: “the one character, she’s very mental. When I place it in my head, and so she’s very in her head, and she’s very excited and she thinks a lot. And the other characters are very warm and soft, and she falls in love easily, so I place in my heart. And the other characters kind of sexually aggressive and fighting for survival and I place her in my world center…” The physicality of Womb of Fire comes from how it was created, using the system of rasa.

References

1. McGregor Tourism. Pack for a Purpose. 6 March gg2019. https://www.tourismmcgregor.co.za/pack_for_a_purpose/

2.Swingler, Helen. University of Cape Town. Creative Works for Womb of Fire. 25 February 2019. http://www.ctdps.uct.ac.za/CTDPS/news/CWAforWombOfFire

3. Mela on SABC. South African Women’s Arts Festival : “Womb of Fire” Theatre Play. 23 September 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp-RLfo9k5U&feature=youtu.be

External links

http://mothertongue.co.za/