Review: NIQABI NINJA an Essential Commentary on Sexual Harassment at Alexander Bar's Upstairs Theatre

In an early wrap up on Facebook about this year's National Arts Festival, playwright Mike van Graan's final observation read: 'So desperate is the theatre establishment for young, black critical theatre voices, that the same mistakes are being repeated as during the anti-apartheid protest theatre period: fulsome praise for the content, while going soft on the theatricality.' The same point often holds true when people are searching for ways to express developing cultural practices or their reactions to social issues in a dramatic form. There are two discernible phases of development through which each such process matures, and the starting point is one in which there is a need simply to express the content - to articulate the point of view, to introduce the idea, to begin developing forms that serve the content. Only then does a concern for improving, expanding and amplifying the theatrical languages arise. On a smaller scale, a corresponding process is apparent in the creation of a single play and the crafting of its theatrical production.

Written by Glasgow-based Egyptian playwright Sara Shaarawi, NIQABI NINJA is the story of Hana, a woman who has endured sexual harassment for most of her life. At first blaming her clothes, then herself, she designs various sets of rules that help her to negotiate life in modern-day Cairo without adding physical attacks to the mental traumas that have already scarred her for life. But when these rules fail her, an idea takes shape in her mind. What if she were to adopt an alter-ego, a superhero that avenged sexual harassment and punished predators that feed on the dignity of women?

Shaarawi has used this conceit as a cogent mechanism to frame the social commentary that NIQABI NINJA delivers and to explore the inevitable progression from actions such as wolf-whistling through to the unimaginable mass sexual assaults that have been documented in Egypt over the past decade. When the play details these mob rapes, during which men position a woman at the centre of what is known as a circle of hell, it is not difficult to make links back to the South African context. Our (unreliable and conservative) annual rape statistics imply that more than one rape in South Africa is taking place at any given time, and that up to a third of these may be gang rapes. There are, naturally, many programmes geared towards preventing rape and, for that matter, other high profile forms of gender-based violence. NIQABI NINJA makes a case that until kinds of acts that are perceived as small, everyday occurrences are challenged, the type of incidents that capture the attention of the media and society will remain prevalent. To dismantle the misogyny that is at the root of the problem, the myth of normalised sexual harassment needs to be shattered.

While Shaarawi's text for NIQABI NINJA is robust and confrontational, Megan Furniss's direction is cautious and lacking in dimension. One can sense the passion Furniss has for the subject matter in her approach, about which she has written extensively and convincingly in several posts on her blog, "Megan's Head". Furniss's outrage at what she terms there as 'the invisible made visible' - the ubiquitous scourge of sexual harassment - characterises her writings about NIQABI NINJA as well as her staging of the piece. Her direction handles the themes of the play with the utmost integrity, but her work on the structure of the piece, its characters, and the aural, physical and visual languages through which they speak all need deeper interrogation.

The performances too, from Bianca Flanders and Loren Loubser, need to develop greater texture, although both offer grounded, connected and full-voiced work. Both can push further into the emotional extremes of the play and highlight further the central conflict between Hana and the alter-ego she is developing.

With Van Graan's observation in mind, NIQABI NINJA is a play that is - to borrow a term from Tony Kushner - on 'the threshold of revelation'. Furniss, on her blog, says that she, Flanders and Loubser are 'ready to tell' men who 'need to hear these stories' about the experience of sexual harassment by all women, and the oppression that is both inherent to and facilitates it. Theatre can bring people to the threshold of revelation; theatre can also engender revolution. NIQABI NINJA achieves the former, but its limited theatricality presents it from going further. Its essential commentary outlined, NIQABI NINJA needs now to amplify, unapologetically, what it has to say.

NIQABI NINJA returns to the Alexander Bar's Upstairs Theatre from 1 - 3 August at 19:00. Tickets cost R80-R90 and can be booked online at the Alexander Bar website or purchased at the bar. For telephone bookings and enquiries, call 021 300 1652. Alexander Bar & Café is situated at 76 Strand Street in the Cape Town city centre and can be followed on Facebook and Twitter.

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