{"id":4601,"date":"2021-07-26T09:57:30","date_gmt":"2021-07-26T08:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=4601"},"modified":"2021-07-26T09:57:34","modified_gmt":"2021-07-26T08:57:34","slug":"ruth-the-sound-where-love-is-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=4601","title":{"rendered":"Ruth: The sound where love is not"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\u2018There is a\nsound to a woman who has never been loved,\u2019 a mother says of her\ndaughter. In Ruth<\/em>,\na poetic piece of physical theatre, a surrogate mother refuses to\nlet her\ndaughter touch her. She doesn\u2019t touch her daughter either, except\nto hit her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stalking\nup and down on her solitary stage, she wails and proselytizes,\nshouting\nin\nSeTswana until she\u2019s\nhoarse,\nbewailing\nthe\nemptiness of her daughter\u2019s\nlife. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruth\nis empty of love, the mother cries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018There\nis a sound to a woman who has never been loved. \/A woman who has\nnever been loved has a way of breathing\/ That does not allow her to\nspeak.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But,\noh, how the mother reveals her own lack of love whenever she howls\nabout her daughter\u2019s love-lessness while refusing to extend herself\nto her child. Ruth<\/em>\nis a beautiful piece. The mother\u2019s moans are met by the daughter\u2019s\nown vivid imagery. Ruth tells of searching for love in the arms of\nmen, of being ostracized for sleeping around, and of knocking at the\nhearts of men to open up to her love. But her\nknocks are hollow and her knuckles ache.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruth\nsits at the center of the stage with her back to the audience. Her\nwhite frock is mirrored by a white dress hanging at the back of the\nstage. The mother, the daughter, and the image of the child form a\ntriangle of lovelessness.\nIn the poetic narration and heightened dialogue, the story of\ngenerations of wise teachings unfold,\nbut with a lack of healing. Each member of this family has been hurt\nby another. Death become familiar as hymns at a Sunday service. No\none apologises. No one acknowledges anyone else\u2019s pain, except\nperhaps to give\na speech about the ways things should be done. \u2018Genesis was a\nwarning,\u2019 Ruth says. \u2018I thought it was an excuse, but I was\nwrong\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\npoetry in Leanetse Seekoe\u2019s\nwriting is\nalluring. Each phrase unlocks a link to the fuller picture. A\npicture\nof how two women can find themselves empty\nof mutual empathy.\nThe daughter is petulant. The mother is unrepentant. Neither sees the\nother\u2019s true feelings and the need they have for each other. Ruth<\/em>,just\nas the famous bible story goes, is a story of duty. But what Seekoe\nmakes acute in her unadorned directorial fashion, is a deep need for\na healing connection between mothers and daughters. In stark movement\nto a ringing noise, Seekoe choreographs deep disconnection between\nthe pair,\nand\nwrites\nthe disconnect within the pair\u2019s individual selves. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruth\nwants\nher\nemptiness to be filled. It does not. It cannot. The mother wants a\ndaughter who still follows her around and mimics her. She wants\nsomeone to adore not love for who she is. And so, Seekoe choreographs\na still-point at the end of the play. The pair sit in the same\nindividual spotlights throughout.\nAnd you imagine they will die in their isolation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruth<\/em>\nis\na starkly poetic work, evincing the sound of lovelessness, which is\nnot silence;\nthe\nsound of two women who can never love is a sound that rings of\ncontinuous disturbance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Credits:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written\nand Directed by: Leanetse Seekoe
\nPeformed\nby: Leaneatse Seekoe and Itumeleng Moeketsi
\nChoreographed\nby: Kenneth Mphahlele
\nSound\ndesigned by: Sizwe Ndabana
\nLighting\ndesigned by: Suprise Mosehla\n<\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a92021\nThe Critter. This article is licensed under a <\/em>Creative\nCommons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/em>\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018There is a sound to a woman who has never been loved,\u2019 a mother says of her daughter. In Ruth, a poetic piece of physical theatre, a surrogate mother refuses … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[577,581],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4603,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4601\/revisions\/4603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}