Interview: Celebrate Women's Month with this year's Women's Month Festival at The Drama Factory

August is National Women's Month, a month which presents us with the oppurtunity to celebrate women and to recommit ourselves to the fight for women's empowerment. The Women’s Month Festival offers exactly this - an oppurtunity to uplift and commemorate female-centric visions in theatre. We sat down with the festival's co-producer's, Faeron Wheeler and Sue Diepeveen, to chat about this year's festival.

BWW: This is the festival’s second year! What inspired the creation of this festival and how has it evolved from the festival’s first year?

FAERON: It was something that we had on our radar for a while – to do a festival. Under the banner of F Creations, I had YOUR PERFECT LIFE and SO YOU WANT TO BE A TROPHY WIFE?, and I thought they would be good together as a mini festival. The idea then grew from that.

For last year’s festival, we had to learn a lot as we went. It was great fun, but also very intense. This year, we’ve slowed it down a bit and spread the festival over two weeks now. Audiences are still going to get the same variety, but not quite so jampacked in one go.

SUE: The Drama Factory is female owned and largely female staffed so it was a real win for us to be approached by F Creations to partner for a festival celebrating the work of women – not to exclude the men but just to give more women a platform to show their work. Putting a festival together is not for the feint hearted and we learned a lot last year and spreading it out we feel has given us more room to market each show properly as the point is also to introduce different work onto our stage to encourage people to take a chance on something different.

BWW: This year’s line-up is packed with many fun and exciting shows. How would you recommend audiences approach their viewing experience and choose what to watch

FAERON: We really wanted to bring in something for everyone’s tastes. We have clowning, comedians, serious drama, music and comedies. I’d love to really encourage our audience members to try something new, maybe see a show that they wouldn’t normally go to.

SUE: How does one choose what people want to see? This is a million dollar question and in answering that we see that we get served a host of feelgood shows, but sometimes what people need to be able to identify with what they see and this is the hard part. So we are trying to introduce the deeper dramas and new genres to our audiences along with our more lively feelgood offerings in the hope that they will take a chance on something new. Also so our theatre makers can engage with new audiences as they build these relationships. Our ticket prices are reasonable so that people can catch more than one show for less than the money needed to drive to Cape Town for instance. So we are encouraging people to take that step to try something different.

BWW: Entertainment is still overwhelmingly dominated by a male lens. What can audiences gain from watching more female-centric productions?

FAERON: My hope is to start normalizing conversations that for too long, women have been embarrassed about having. It’s not about making people sit through plays that are all about getting your period or going through menopause. It’s more to make it OK to bring those topics up in conversation. When we present female-centric productions, we help to bring those topics out into the open. I want teenage girls to hear other women talking about their cycle so that these girls know what’s normal and what isn’t. I want women to discuss the reality of the hormonal changes we go through in our lives so that we know how to support each other and ask for help when things aren’t right.

To me, that is the power of promoting female-centric narratives. Our stories for all stages of our lives are interesting, enlightening and deserve a place in the spotlight.

SUE: Long ago people sat by the fire and shared stories and things were discussed by the tribe and solutions to problems and empathy were the order of the day. We have lost a lot of that, especially intergenerational support and watching something you identify with on a screen is lovely of course but watching it live is visceral, it talks to you in a unique way. If we don’t tell our stories then they are lost. This way we make way for people to have difficult conversations, to laugh together and to feel part of a sisterhood. It is a way for men to also engage with female issues on a non-confrontational level . . . to learn about the species but not be threatened as one would perhaps in a relationship discussion.

BWW: Could you share some success stories or notable achievements resulting from the festival? What do you guys envision for the festival’s future?

SUE: We never really planned for successes or futures, the festival was more of an instinctive creation and we just want to be able to carry on offering this platform for as long as we can, to possibly get some funding or sponsorships so that we can support the artists better during the process, theatre makers always go into a festival worrying about sales and we would love to relieve them of some of that burden. We are not the only festival dedicated to women in August – so we hope that we can be on the “festival tour” and be able to offer a good experience to both producers and theatre goers.

BWW: You ladies are pioneering a platform for female theatre artists and are seasoned creators yourselves. Do you have any advice for female artists out there?

FAERON: Just keep telling your stories! Don’t let anyone tell you that people aren’t interested in a female leading lady or a story about women just being women. It simply isn’t true.

SUE: I agree with Faeron on this one, if you don’t tell your own stories, who will? I often feel like all the stories have already been told and to that end, especially on media platforms, stories are told with a pattern in mind and regurgitated versions are endless, but with live theatre, we can take a tiny slice of the story and explore the feelings and that is where the true joy is.

Celebrating South African women through music, comedy and drama, the second Women’s Month Festival – Your Voice, Your Stage runs at The Drama Factory from 9 to 20 August.

Bookings for all shows can be made at www.thedramafactory.co.za or contact 073 215 2290.

Photo: Supplied

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