National Arts Festival Hit WOMB OF FIRE to Play Season at the Con Cowan Theatre in Johannesburg

After sold-out performances at the National Arts Festival, UJ Arts & Culture, a division of the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Johannesburg, is proud to present WOMB OF FIRE, in partnership with Mothertongue Productions this spring.

Written and performed by Rehane Abrahams, theatre-maker and award-winning performer, and accompanied by the vocals of Lukhanyiso Skosana, WOMB OF FIRE is set against an episode of the Indian epic, The Mahabharata. The play interweaves a personal narrative, and contemporary realities, with the lives of two women from the early years of the Cape Colony's establishment, to interrogate the "womb of fire" from which South Africa was birthed. The production is directed by Sara Matchett and designed by Craig Leo.

WOMB OF FIRE follows Grote Katrijn van Pulicat's journey as the first female bandit slave, first across India to Batavia, and finally to Cape Town, then explores the brief and brutal life of Zara, a Khoekhoen servant woman violently punished posthumously by the VOC for the crime of suicide. WOMB OF FIRE explores the power of the performing female body in challenging the pornography of the British Empire, simultaneous to the process of decolonisation and self-retrieval.

WOMB OF FIRE runs at the Con Cowan Theatre on its Bunting Road campus from 27 September - 1 October. Bookings are through the UJ Arts website and tickets range in price from R20 - R100.

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