A play that has been kept alive in audiences’ memories since 2002 has been brought back to the stage.
Award-winning writer and director Nadia Davids’s play, At Her Feet, performed by film and television actress Quanita Adams, will return to the Baxter Golden Arrow Studio from November 22 to December 8, for the first time in 14 years.
This is the last time Adams will perform the one-woman play.
Written in 2002, At Her Feet speaks to the experiences of four Muslim women in Cape Town whose lives are touched by the events of 9/11, and by the honour killing of a Jordanian girl.
“At Her Feet was born in and out of a moment of global chaos, in those turbulent months after the attacks on New York City and in the horror of the build-up to the invasion of Iraq.
“I wrote the play as a response to the ways in which Muslim women were being portrayed and the ways their bodies were being turned into ideological battlegrounds. I wanted to make a piece of art that reflected my experience of growing up Muslim in Cape Town - the ordinariness of it, the love, the joys, the difficulties, the complexities - and to write about the women I knew,” said Davids.
Adams and Davids had known each other since high school and met again at university.
“We knew instinctively this was a work we wanted to make together, from its first staging as a student production at UCT’s Arena Theatre. We are both back in the city after a while and it feels lovely,” said Davids.
Winner of two Fleur du Cap awards (best new director and best actress), nominated for a Noma and a Naledi, At Her Feet has travelled throughout southern Africa and has been staged in New York, London and Holland.
“It was a profound experience to make the work together in 2002 and it’s a wonderful feeling to be able to bring it home after all these years, to reconnect it with its original audience and to introduce it to a new generation of theatre-goers. It’s also so meaningful to bring it to the Baxter again. This feels like a homecoming.”
Adams said it brought her such joy to be able to bring these women home again after all these years.
“Their stories feel as important, moving, gut-wrenching, urgent, poignant, funny, warm and resonant as ever. I love that I get to work with Nadia again, and that we get to share this work with Cape Town.
“The play is very much about our city, our community, but we’ve always been thrilled about how diverse our audiences have been. I’ve never looked out and not seen a multiracial, multi-generational, multicultural audience looking back at me. That’s rare in theatre and rare in Cape Town and it’s something to be cherished.”