LOCAL drama group Victory Siyanqoba Arts International has launched a play on gender-based violence aimed at addressing domestic imbalances in the community.
DIVINE DUBE Own Correspondent Desire Moyo, the director of the Nkulumane-based theatre group, told Southern Eye Lifestyle yesterday that their latest production was meant to sensitise communities on domestic imbalances.
He said women are still perceived as the weaker sex in society hence the need to fight against such stigmatisation through art.
“Women have become victims of cruelty, poverty and ignorance,” the playwright said.
“There is need to implore the winning strategy-through theatre in a bid to combat the insensitive patriarchal state of society and transform it towards practising gender equality.”
He said as Victory Siyanqoba, a theatre group whose motto is to transform communities through theatre, believed that even though women were given all sorts of labels in society, they still have the potential and intellectual capacity to develop and transform the nation.
“They (women) have long been in the tail, downtrodden and given names yet they have the potential, mental stamina and the talent to take the nation forward,” Moyo argued.
The play If God was a Woman is the group’s third theatre piece this year following a series of other inspiring plays including Our Bones premiered in neighbouring South Africa and the Way Forward, a recent post-election play.
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The play which runs like African folklore is likely about a woman who toils hard for her family, but is victimised by a patriarchal society.
She becomes an object of abuse by men who later poison her.
In the apex of the play women revenge and turn tables to claim their rightful place in society.
The group showcased the play at Manama High School over the weekend and with the 16 days of activism against violence drawing closer, the theatre piece is likely to inspire feminist activism to radical levels.
