About amaQueerKwere

About "amaQueerKwere"

This experimental theatre encounter is not a debate or a lecture on the issues of foreigners and gays – tv, books and internet can do that much better. What theatre can offer is a more immediate encounter with breathing, moving, speaking bodies. By bringing spectator and performer in close proximity, one can almost smell the fears and longings, the memories and fantasies that cause these bodies of foreignness to shake, quiver, and stutter, under the stare of a country and society that they cannot call home.

Theme

How much would you pay for an ID book?

How much would you pay for walking at night in safety?

How much would you pay for working legally?

How much would you pay for marrying legally?

How much would you pay for keeping your little street stall?

How much would you pay for not being deported?

How much would you pay for living without guilt?

How much would you pay for loving without shame?

Text from "amaQueerKwere"

This production asks about desires for love and freedom, and the costs that stand in its ways. For a foreigner the cost to stay in this country may be a bribe; the cost of crossing borders may be his life. For someone finding love in ways that normal society considers queer, the cost may be self-repression, banishment, gay-bashing, sometimes even death.

In "amaQueerKwere", a foreigner meets a ghostly character from the space – an old gaol. He is the spectre of feelings, desires and thoughts left over from decades ago, of a man detained during apartheid. This ghostly figure witnesses similar policing of freedom at work, even in 2005.

Why Experimental?

But, above all, this production asks about the cost of presenting stories in theatre. The real life drama of police excesses, deportations and gay discrimination makes you curl up your fist in anger, or sigh in despair; maybe it even affects you personally. In contrast, what does an audience gain in the theatre? An hour of sympathy extended towards a fictive victim, to affirm yourself that you still care, that you're human. Ultimately the story of the foreigner is subsumed within the pleasure of watching theatre. By having shed a tear of identification you feel you've done your bit.

And so this production confronts the audience with a strange (foreign, queer) experience. It is a mix of strange vocal sounds, seemingly unrelated objects, and physicality that is neither dance nor mime nor physical comedy. The audience is unlikely to be familiar with this kind of experience: a series of images that does not in itself build an immediately identifiable "story". It may feel discomforting, or even baffling.

In fact, just like a foreigner learning to speak the local language for the first time: plunged into a whirlpool of words, sounds, talking, texts ... without understanding. A bit of autobiography applies here: I remember the first few months in South Africa, I would be so happy – and relieved – if, in a group conversation, I would understand one thing and be able to contribute one sentence.

So if this is a theatre piece about people who have not found home, and their thwarted desires for freedom, the audience's desires and expectations for meaning and clarity should not be so easily fulfilled – in the hope of gaining insight into an/other experience.

Think of it this way: a foreigner's truth cannot be told in the local language, in other words, the language that is familiar to the hearer ("audi-ence" – literally the "hearers"), the language that makes him/her comfortable. This will only assimilate the foreigner and erase their difference. This show is about the search for a style or form of theatre that will let foreignness speak its own language.

Hopefully the images will stay with the audience – to think back, to chew on, to wonder why certain images stick in your head. Above all: the production offers an experience of finding your way through the unfamiliar – and therefore more open to other unfamiliar experiences and accepting strangers. In this age of polarized politics and entrenched nationalisms, this seems an urgent need.

Theoretical background: why the body?

Foreigner

Exactly who is "amakwerekwere"? The word usually refers to foreigners from other African countries, and is associated with xenophobic attitudes and verbal insults directed against black Africans who somehow do not conform to the idea of being South African. In a country where foreign labour have been used to bolster its economic production for years, citizenship and the sense of identity and belonging is, ironically, very often restricted to indigeneity – the question of whether you're born here or not.

More loosely used, the word amakwerekwere links to the general idea of being a foreigner, a stranger, someone who does not come from here. Under times of stress, foreigners become scapegoats for the hardships experienced by the local community. Nigerians are often prejudged in a particularly bad light in South Africa; but throughout the world, groups of foreigners have been persecuted, expelled, threatened and even killed. For example, Chinese populations were threatened with violence and expulsion from South East Asian countries in recent decades.

"Foreigner" is a general term. They consist of different groups from the legal point of view:

Some arrive through legitimate visas or immigration procedures, and they might be naturalized to become citizens.
Some are "refugees", fleeing from war, persecution, torture, and they seek asylum status.
Some are attracted to a country like South Africa for its comparatively high standard of living and availability of jobs and money. They are called "economic refugees", perhaps trying to highlight the hardship they face even in times of peace; their claim for asylum is however often considered less legitimate.

But the show does not intend to educate audiences about all this. This show engages with the irrational, emotional, subconscious and bodily basis of constructing the identity of foreigner, particularly by those who claim South Africa as home. There have been cases where SA citizens in possession of green ID books are arrested by police because their skin colour is a little too dark, their dress sense and hairstyle somewhat exotic, or their accent or knowledge of languages not conforming to local standards.

That's the trouble: the word "amakwerekwere" has very little to do with fact, but a lot to do with the person who uses the word. Thus, my interest in the word "amakwerekwere" has less to do with documenting real lives, but more to do with the structures of fear, blame, and scapegoating in people who erect high fences around their country, their home.

Queer

"Queer" is used to deride people of different sexualities in some English-speaking societies; its dictionary definition of "strange, suspicious and unpleasant" describes accurately the attitudes held against gay and lesbian people.

The word has been reclaimed in some circles. Calling yourself "queer" can be a purposeful acknowledgment and embracing of your difference. Queer politics often take a liberatory stance, aiming for the affirmation of different sexualities, beyond mere tolerance. An important part is, for example, depathologizing gay sex, i.e. not just to decriminalize it, but to work to change public perceptions of gay sex as sinful, sick, or needing to be hidden; to celebrate it and do it without shame.

The academic field of queer studies is related to this politics. Queer studies have done much to analyze the "heteronormativity" of society and culture, i.e. how institutions and common practices construct heterosexuality as the norm, through laws and taxation, but also through urban zoning, mass media, literature, popular culture ...

"amaQueerKwere" queers the political talk of foreigners and national identities. After all, even though we seldom think of them in sexual terms, there are gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people in the large immigrant population of South Africa; and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees recognizes sexual identity as a legitimate ground for seeking asylum.

However, the show does not aim to argue a political or academic point. Queer theorists – because of its subject – focus on the body and its desires. The body is the link between foreigners and queers. Identities of foreignness are etched on the body, where having the wrong skin and hair invites derision, hatred, suspicion. Queers are less obviously marked (although limp wrists, gait and lisping in a man still stamps you as "gay") but it is their (sexual) bodies that are judged.

So: foreigners and queers are marked on their bodies, and judged according to their bodies. They are less visible than racial and gender difference, but perhaps for this reason, more insidious, more widespread, and harder to condemn.

This show searches the bodies of strangeness – what does this foreign body want, from whom will these desires be satisfied, how will this body survive?