\n\u201cHallo.\u201d This is not a greeting so much as a threat. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMoetie vir my soe ko aankykie,\u201d says Antie Wi\u2019Oekal<\/a> (Aunty Whoever). She\u2019s in her old gown, mug in hand, hair in a bun. She needs to find a new gown. This old gown is her ever-end. This Auntie is one we know. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She\u2019s skinnering\nabout the neighbours: \u201cJy, tief, het jy gehoor\u201d. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n She\u2019s casting\naspersions: \u201cThis vrou se huis is kakvuil.\u201d \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n She will not be\npatronized: \u201cJy hou vir jou so kakhoog, jy kak mos icecream.\u201d \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n An avalanche of\nphrases associated with this stereotype tumbles from her mouth. Then,\nwith a jolt of an elbow, like a glitch, one line becomes a refrain. A\nplea, eating at her neck. A scream, breaking through her sternum.\nShe\u2019s possessed by it. A casual phrase becomes distorted, dispersed\ninto a multitude of voices. She is distraught repeating this off-hand\ncomment. Until it suddenly stops. And Auntie takes a sip of her\ncoffee, tugs at her gown, and carries on like nothing happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her rambling and\nranting continues, \u201cJy wiet mos\u201d. She\u2019s annoyed by all the cats\naround her, \u201cNet \u2018n klomp katte hier\u201d. She\u2019s determined still\nto get a new gown \u201cSoek \u2018n nuwe gown\u201d \u2013 This fixation is a\nboiling one. We see it on her warped face. She is losing her shit\nwith these damned cats. \u201cMoet net nie my bors warm maakie.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She\u2019s flipping\nthrough the channels on the TV filling our screens, \u201cMy fellow\nSouth Africans\u2026\u201d we know these lockdown channels. As Auntie flips\nthrough them, so we see Marc Lottering as Aunty Merle on the screen\nfor a few seconds. An important reference. Moving as she flips\nthrough the channels, she\u2019s sliding upside-down on her chair, deep\nin the cabin fever. We know this lockdown stasis: \u201cNee meisie, my\ndag was heel productive!\u201d It\u2019s shrill and contrived. A lie we\u2019ve\nall told. \u201cThey stole my iPad,\u201d another current reference. \u201cMoet\nek nou wiet waars die man se ipad?\u201d asks Auntie, in a to-die-for\ndeadpan comedic moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Abruptly, cat\u2019s\neyes are big and looming filling the whole screen now \u2013 picture the\nmenacing iconic logo from the musical Cats<\/em>. \u201cJirre. God.\nNeeeeee!\u201d She\u2019s scared now. With auntie\u2019s fear palpable, she\nimplores the cats \u201cMoetie vir my soe annkyk nie.\u201d Sheer terror on\nher face. \u201cEk kan vryf,\u201d she concedes, hoping she won\u2019t get\nscratched. Frantic to appease the cat. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n A puncturing Meow!<\/em>\nis met with Auntie\u2019s high-pitched Jaaaaaa!<\/em> in response.\nRepeatedly until this dialogue, this call-and-response devolves into\nsomething uglier. Now, Auntie is giving this cat the \u201cfull\ntreatment\u201d. Brushing, washing, and treating the cat\u2019s hair,\nAuntie remarks: \u201cJy\u2019t nie \u2018n regte draad nie.\u201d This invokes a\nlarger reflection on hair politics. This line is repeated. At first,\nit is simply said as an observation. Then as a statement of fact.\nThen it becomes a reprimanding, until it finally snowballs into blind\nrage. \u201cJy hettie \u2018n regte draad nie!\u201d she screams incessantly\nat the cat, still doing its hair. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Theatre of Cruelty<\/a><\/em> and its pioneer, Antonin Artaud, are living in this moment. The cruelty is the sensory disruption intended to shock the audience. And, true to form, the gesture becomes grotesque, the sentence now a chilling incantation. We\u2019ve been bombarded, we\u2019ve broken with the rational and we now live in her world. It\u2019s fucking terrifying what Faith Kinniar does with the familiar. This is the work of a surrealist, a top-tier satirist with unflinching delivery and command of timing and tone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This Auntie is going\nbefok because she can\u2019t get a new gown. I want to go and get her a\nnew gown FFS, if it could for a second fix things, quell the loud\nfracturing. This simple mundane thing is overblown and derailing\neverything. We begin to understand why. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDie gown. So baie\ngedra al. Ek voel ek rafel uit.\u201d And there it is, the moment we\nrealize that the issue is not one of a lapsed mundane errand, but an\nessence interrupted. The Auntie is reduced to this old gown, she\u2019s\nessentialised by it. Just as so-called coloured aunties have been\nreduced to and essentialised by this trope. By men, by whites, by the\nmedia, by theatre, by comedy \u2013 endlessly. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n This worn gown,\nthreads unraveling, holes widening, has trapped her. Caused her\nurgency, her fixation, her resolute demanding. But when the music\nfades, it\u2019s a whimpering that ensues for \u201c\u2019n nuwe gown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This shrill shrewd\ncoloured woman trope, as we\u2019ve so often seen her depicted, as we\ncontinue to represent her, whether for tragedy or for laughs, is\nrooted in a gendered, racialised, class-specific gaze. These\ncharacters, these aunties, their way of speaking and being have been\nmined for comedic value by many. Coloured woman are often reduced to\na punch-line. Unworthy of specificity or backstory. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here, it\u2019s\ndeconstructed. It\u2019s in her Eartha Kitt-heightened laughter, \u201chet\njy al in jou longe ge-orgasm?\u201d Kinniar breaks her. Watching her\nbreak is also hard, because we\u2019ve come to love this relatable\ncharacter. But this stereotype, when pushed to its limits, is not\njust crass and funny, nor simply brash or common \u2013 it\u2019s bleak and\noppressive. She forces us to confront what it is: representation\nwithout nuance. This production does something remarkable in showing\nthis up. It caricaturizes and problematizes simultaneously. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The naming of this\nabsurdist play, Antie Wi\u2019Oekal (Aunty Whoever)<\/em> is highly\ndeliberate. The Brechtian minimal set, class commentary and lack of\ncharacter name is telling. Who is this aunty apart from a trope?\nAntie Wi\u2019Oekal is all those aunties we\u2019ve seen depicted on stage\nand screen. She\u2019s all of them in one, distorted to breaking point\nand stretched into gimmicky meaninglessness. Her mundane phrases are\nrepeated and heightened, until you feel them snap in your spine.\nSomething is wrong. We\u2019ve snatched her humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cVat my terug hel\ntoe,\u201d says Auntie. With tropes, we don\u2019t ever get a glimpse into\nwhat their particular hell is like. In this play, we do. It\u2019s dark,\nwry and devastating in the right ways. It\u2019s made me re-examine both\nthe way I consume and create art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Antie Wi\u2019oekal will be availabe to view on demand at the National Arts Festival <\/a>from 22 \u2013 24 July.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \nWriter:\nFaith Kinniar \n\u00a92021\nThe Critter. This article is licensed under a <\/em>Creative\nCommons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cHallo.\u201d This is not a greeting so much as a threat. \u201cMoetie vir my soe ko aankykie,\u201d says Antie Wi\u2019Oekal (Aunty Whoever). She\u2019s in her old gown, mug in hand, … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":4528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4527"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4529,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4527\/revisions\/4529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nDirector:\nJeremeo le Cordeur
\nPerformer:\nFaith Kinniar
\nProduction\nand Lighting Design: Alfred Rietmann\n<\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n