Napo Masheane

ON NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES ABOUT THE BLACK FEMALE BODY AND SELF-AFFIRMATION THROUGH THE STAGE

Many of us women folk have become part in a chain of pervading thought regarding how we should look. Not only do we live out these notions, we keep them alive through surrender. We authenticate modes of our objectifi cation religiously by offering them identifi cation daily, yearly, as long as we can remember. It’s a fresh occasion down here in Mzansi to bump into a woman who is all BUM and owning it! Napo Masheane has come a long way since her days as a member of the spoken word female ensemble Feelah sistah. Last year, she authored and selfpublished her offering to the world of words. The manuscript was beautifully captured as Caves speak in Metaphors – an anthology of essays and poems compiled over a decade. In an interview with her she prepared the reader that bits and pieces of her head space are documented herein and shared that in her experience poetry is about growth, “ I can measure my growth through my book.” Opening oneself up to the world takes a little more than courage and in this instance it was a desire to break the practice of silence which we so uphold as Africans. She was inspired to begin a dialogue in addressing the real issues that pertain to womanhood that remain understated because of cultural virtues. Using her make up as the means of objectifi cation, Napo would attempt to unlayer the collective complexities around the black female body, as a voyeur of herself.

Fusing acting and poetry into something she defi nes as “Poedra”, she continued her undertaking in a re-staging of a drama she had written four years ago titled My Bum is Genetic – So Deal with It. Mentored by late thespian John Matshikiza, the work would borrow from the minimalism genre, taking one back to the simple yet brilliant methods of Mbongeni Ngema’s Woza Albert. Through the fi rst person narrative, Napo would seek to bring to the viewers’ attention, the anxieties afforded to the stigmatised black female physique due to dominating ideology. The one-woman show themed identity on a two-fold level – the internal and the external – and ironed out the practice of how appearance serves to work as a prior identity, before anything else begins to be assessed.

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