Review: WAIT Over-simplifies the Complex Dilemma of Access to Education for Girls and Young Women

The discrimination against girls and young women when it comes to their education remains a pervasive issue in contemporary society. The statistics vary. In July, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai estimated that 'over 60 million... girls around the word' are denied access to education in an article for The Telegraph; a study released by UNESCO that same month placed the number of girls and young women who were denied their right to education at 130.3 million in 2014. Either number is a damnation of our society, in which almost anything seems to be justifiable as an alternative to education for women. WAIT, currently playing at the Cape Town Fringe, focuses on just two of these: the priority of educating boys over girls and the marrying off of girls and young women for capital gain. Set in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the zones where gender inequality within the context of education remains highest, the production reminds South African audiences of a narrative we seem to have largely accepted as a problem solved.

WAIT takes the form of a narrated story punctuated by songs. A young girl wants to be educated but is told by her father to wait. Everyone seems to tell her to wait. When she eventually is allowed to go to a primary school at the age that she should have already been in a secondary school, further challenges await her. And when her father arranges for her to be married, it seems that she has to take her fate into her own hands.

Running only just over half an hour, Dipo Agboluaje's play prioritises its theme over everything else. This approach might seem an appropriate strategy given the subject matter; certainly, it is one that many of South Africa's own protest plays employed to great success. But the British-born and Nigerian-educated playwright allows the piece to slip, now and then, into a sentimental mode that largely undercuts the urgency of the meaning the play attempts to make. The very difficulties that face girls and women in pursuit of an education, a fundamental human right, are over-simplified. The risks of a young African woman who has to leave her home, travelling from a village to a city where no secure future awaits her, are underplayed. It is clear that this male playwright has not managed to find an authentic woman's story or voice in this overwhelmingly complex social narrative. The extent to which a male writer ever could is part of a larger debate on identity politics in fiction, which Lionel Shriver reignited in her recent speech at the Brisbane Writers Festival with a specific focus on cultural appropriation.

Were the shortfalls in the writing countered in the direction, WAIT might still have some clout. Kenneth Uphopho's direction is one-dimensional, all staged in a single downstage horizontal plane. Conceptually, he plays into every possible sentimental impulse in Agboluaje's script, often leaving Bikiya Graham-Douglas, who performs the piece along with a trio of backup singers and a pianist, with limited acting choices.

Graham-Douglas has an appealing stage presence, and it was evident in her performance as well as from an impassioned post-curtain speech how much the issue that is at the heart of WAIT means to her. In the play, she narrates the story and sings well, but both the play itself and its staging are inhibiting factors for her in the creation of a layered performance.

WAIT ends on a triumphant note, showing just how far education can take women through the invocation of a several successful figures from this continent and beyond. It says "look at what we can do" instead of "look at what we must do". What African women can do with the benefit of an education will change the world. Take a look at those who are currently standing up against policies promote inequality in our own South African schools. Without even having matriculated, the education they have received so far has allowed them to find a way to start dismantling institutional practices that will change the way that they and those who follow in their footsteps experience their schooling. With the futures of so many millions of women at stake, WAIT needs to leave its audiences fired up. Instead, we leave feeling complacent, validated - at best - by our ability to see that what the play proposes is the right thing. It's not enough.

WAIT runs in the City Hall Auditorium at the Cape Town Fringe until 28 September. Details of performance times and bookings are through the Cape Town Fringe website.

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