THE THREE WITCHES stage-piece at Olive Tree Theatre in Alexandra Township

Performed by seasoned theatre practitioners; Khutjo Bakunzi Green, Mwenya Kabwe and Nomantshego Kelebogile Khutswane – Three Witches is a satirical piece with a tremendous revolution brewing up, a revolution which drives the performance into a thought-provoking state of the mind. On stage appears three women, seemingly sitting on top of each other in their white-like angel drapes, with mealies or corn maize hanging lazily as neck-pieces around their them – powerful recitation of poetry in the background narrating ancient ancient tales – with a punctuation of words such as “She is the one who awakens the sea from sleeping, that one who reads the lines of the land and tells the secrets buried …”. While an audience’s ear still virtuoso at the mesmeric words of grace and ecstatic power, the sight is cajoled with motions of three women on stage, seemingly in the fields tilting the soil at times or affectionately submitting greater attention and care at a child embraced in arms.

Images Courtesy of Olive Tree Theatre, Photographer: Fikile Smynes

With preset music by a ten-times Grammy Award winner  Bobby McFerrin, arguably the most celebrated American jazz vocalist and conductor, this performance piece journeys one on the uncharted paths of soul searching. McFerrin’s  unique vocal techniques and his singing fluidly but with quick and considerable jumps in pitch for example, sustains not only the melody of songs but the Three Witches performance, while alternating with poetry in the background and harmonies from the improvisational vocal percussion.

Images Courtesy of Olive Tree Theatre, Photographer: Fikile Smynes

Restless women are moving about the stage with tin bucket and metal vessel, they never say a word, one can effortlessly associate their silence of agitation with succinctness. Their physiques are a clean canvas from which their performance paints an image, somehow abstract. The enactment on stage seems to have them turned into the live art of chasing shadows invisible to the audience. If there is ever a traditional performance that comprehend not only the collision of day-to-day struggles of women with the sternness and prowess of African women and cultural make-up with a deeply-embedded value stances in South Africa today, it is the Three Witches performance piece.  It is a voice resonant with most ancient values we have and yet with a kind of cosmic laughter. We enjoy the rigidness exhibited on their faces pregnant of countless stories, their power and learn from their wisdom.

Images Courtesy of Olive Tree Theatre, Photographer: Fikile Smynes

Witchcraft is performed at night when only nocturnal pests and owls are at sight. The lights projected on to the stage fades away and flashes back we notice a portrayal of a pregnant woman. Suddenly the fight is waged against the woman who is pregnant by the other two, with the pregnant woman being pressed down on to the floor. It seems that the fight is as a result of other two women not being able to conceive or that the baby is a boy and might become her mother’s prince – the views here are as abstract as the silence that is a thread into the needle hope of the production.We see black souls communing with the night and listening to its mysteries, night defining black souls and their pride. We learn that night is no longer to represent the ugly and the darkness of spirit but flair and prowess exhibited by women on stage with their loquacious silence.

Three Witches is a kind of production that makes one be visited by many questions with absent promise of answers. Traditionally speaking, some witches are often referred to as sangomas or shaman or sanusis. European misconstrued view refers it to witch doctors. It is believed that sangomas must be able to draw knowledge from what is called ‘Hidden Lake’. African belief system serves that there is a huge unseen lake somewhere in the spirit world where all the knowledge of the universe – past, present and future – is to be found. The English version of this practice is ‘meditation’.

Images Courtesy of Olive Tree Theatre, Photographer: Fikile Smynes

Reflecting on stories told by his maternal grandfather during his time as a ‘Sangoma Apprentice’ The Zulu Shaman, Vusumazulu Credo Mutwa; “Knowledge lives in that lake in the form of a silver fishes. You must never again say that you do not know something. You must just ask the lake, the unseen lake, to provide you with the knowledge that you seek. You are a child of God, you were created by God,” remembers Mutwa. Audience enjoy this play until the scenes get repeated that one wishes to go out of theatre. This performance, directed by Tamara Guhrs, is without contest a stage-piece celebrating the powers and wonders of universal women.

Olive Tree Theatre, a community based theatre development, aimed at bridging a gap between the mainstream theatre and alternative spaces located in Alexandra Township and focuses on developing and uplifting women and the youth around the area. The OTT is hosting its 5^th International Women’s Theatre Festival 2016 under the artistic directorship of Ntshieng Mokgoro, the 2008/9 Standard Bank Young Artist Award Winner for Theatre. Mokgoro is the founder and creative director of Olive Tree Theatre. All the productions in this festival are written, directed and performed by women from across the SADC region. This includes workshops and panel discussions spearheaded by women.

The festival officially opened on the 4^th November and will concluded on the 13^th November 2016.

Khehla Chepape Makgato is a Johannesburg-based independent artist and arts writer, regularly contributing articles to ART AFRICA and The Journalist. He works at Assemblage Studios and is the founder of Samanthole Creative Projects & Workshop, a community-based art organisation focusing on arts and literacy youth programmes. Chepape is the ImpACT Award WINNER for Visual Arts 2016 from the Arts and Culture Trust of South Africa.