Surviving Reality

From Giving Birth to My Father, admittedly, I expected something completely different, something that involved the woman creating a whimsical world filled with imaginary friends and the what-not. But I was pleasantly surprised at how the production turned out.

It was well realised, and although shorter than advertised, well developed.

Nomathemba (Lihle Dhlomo) lost her mother young but was lovingly raised by her grandmother until she was 19. She then journeys to Johannesburg to search for her father who she’s never met.

A victim of circumstance, tragedy strikes the naïve young woman’s life.

Hlengiwe Ntombela. The name of dread. The name that haunts her in her prison cell. The name that put her there. The choice to have this name written out on the stage highlights its ever-presence in her life. Hlengiwe Ntombela took Nomathemba’s life away from her. Twice.

Dhlomo is totally natural and deeply invested as she shifts between characters (gogo, father, Ntombela, a prostitute). Nothing is forced, and one gets the sense that, as Nomathemba, she is playing these roles… In part to keep the people alive for her, and in part because they’re all she knows from ‘that other world, out there’.

In her cell she repeats, “I want to stay here”. It’s all she’s come to know. Even the cups banging bars comfort her. She feels safely contained by “these four walls” wherein she’s god of her world.

Eventually, Nomathemba ‘transforms’ into her father, removing her prison jumpsuit, redressing for the outside world. The shyly embarrassed look she gives as she pulls her pants down, speaks to the sexual innocence she still has. She was a teenager when locked up. How will she cope with the changed world, two decades later?

And is her father really there? Or the final step in manifesting the figure she’s imagined..? Will her deeply damaged psyche ‘make it’ in the real world?

Directed and written by Wiseman Mncube, Giving Birth to My Father is gently crafted and is excellently performed by Dhlomo. From within Nomathemba’s story, the work asks questions about rehabilitation and dehumanisation in the prison (and justice) systems.

It’s a worthwhile production, and needs more than our measly audience of 5 yesterday. – Sarah Roberson

Giving Birth to My Father is on tonight (01/10) @ 6pm @ Alexander Bar. Click here for production info.