Een toegewijd Zuid Afrikaans vrouwenhockeyteam bestormt het podium om niet alleen de laatste wedstrijd van het seizoen te spelen, maar ook om een strijd te voeren tegen seksueel geweld in het land. Is aanval de beste verdediging?

English spoken / English below

Whistleblowers - Verity Productions

Is aanval de beste vorm van verdediging? Het is de laatste wedstrijd van het hockeyseizoen. De kampioenstitel staat op het spel. De winnaar krijgt alles.

Een vastberaden team van jonge vrouwen stormt het veld op, klaar voor de uitdaging. Maar er staat veel meer op het spel dan deze ene wedstrijd en deze ene titel. De vrouwen onthullen verhalen en situaties van (seksueel) geweld tegen vrouwen in Zuid-Afrika. Terwijl de scheidslijn tussen het spel en het commentaar vervaagt en het team ruimte geeft aan de ​​collectieve woede en frustratie over de situatie van deze vrouwen in Zuid-Afrika, moeten ze een​ keuze maken: aanvallen of verdedigen.

Met afwisselend fysiek spel, beeldende performance, verhalen en surrealistische droomscènes, is Whistleblowers een eerlijke en tragikomische oproep tot actie. Een strijdkreet voor de ziel.

[Waarschuwing: de voorstelling behandeld thema's rond gendergerelateerd geweld – alle actie op het podium is symbolisch, maar er komen wel hectische scènes in voor.]

Whistleblowers - Verity Productions

Is attack the best form of defence?

It is the final match of the field hockey season. The championship title is on the line. Winner takes all.

A committed team of young women bursts onto the field, ready for the challenge. But much more is at stake, as the play reveals back-stories and situations of sexual assault that the women have been experiencing in South-Africa. As the lines between the game and social commentary start blurring, and the team finds a collective voice of anger and frustration at the plight of women in South-Africa, the team needs to make a vital choice: attack or defend.

Shifting between physical and visual performance, searing storytelling, and surrealist dream sequences, Whistleblowers is an honest and tragicomic call to action. A war cry for the soul. 

Created and performed by: Reabetswe Gaentswe, Boitshepo Maile, Kgaogelo Makgoba, Modipadi Mokgohloa, and Phindiwe Qakoshe. | Directed by: Quintijn Relouw and Rob Murray | Language: English (main) and multi-cultural | Age Restriction: 16V and TW 

[We’ve added the Trigger Warning as the play deals with stories related to Gender based violence – all the action on stage is metaphorical or symbolic, but the play does deal with some hectic scenarios]

In de media

Zelden was de helende kracht van theater zo voelbaar

Marijn Lems - Theaterkrant

These young women rail against this power, but remain powerless. The question is why, when they are more than them. A question with no clear answer, not here at least. But there is anger born of frustration at its evasiveness clearly expressed, along with glimpses of vulnerability.

Born out of fear, too. Fear of what men do, their unpredictability and capacity for violence. So many women killed, raped, mutilated, left for dead. We know their names, some of them, most we don’t, or forget. They are all here, legions of our guilt and our ghosts, all murdered by men.

These five performers bring them to raging life, with the desire for vengeance only the living can give to the dead.

They are in your face, blood pumping through their veins. The energy is at cup fever pitch. This is a game that has to be won.

- The Critter tijdens het National Arts Festival

These girls speak in hopscotch dialect about the problems they encounter with their large sticks and short skirts. They voice voiceless fears about dancing with men in bars, and they have written on their hockey sticks the names of young women who this country has let down. The Karabos and Uyinenes, the Bontles and Tshepangs, the Irenes and Sarahs, Aviwes and Amandas and the Thiwes and Hannahs, to name only those whose violent deaths reached national headlines. The backs of their shirts have numbers indicating the percentages of rape victims, of unreported cases, of men who get off scot-free.

Whistleblowers is an unabashed piece of advocacy theatre that articulates different levels of fear. Evocative of works such as Peter van Heerden’s Six Minutes of 2006 or Sello Pesa’s 2018 piece Bag Beatings, it’s a powerful and complicated, yet supremely direct piece, in which even the theatre doesn’t feel like a safe space for the telling and the hearing of these multiple and multiplying stories of damage inflicted. 

- Robyn Sassen tijdens het Hilton Arts Festival