By Anasuya Isaacs

On my way to South Africa, I searched for organizations that focused on women, the arts, and HIV/AIDS. The list was long but one jumped out: MotherTongue. I LOVED the name and all the possible meanings of it for me and my continuing exploration of Self: What is my mother tongue? What is my connection to the indigenous languages of Africa? How do I use my tongue for liberation and justice? How do I connect with others through my mother and my tongue? How could the theater work they do in transforming trauma into triumph be used by Let Love Lead in our work with people confronting HIV/AIDS?

So just hearing the name, MotherTongue existing in Africa, connecting women “performing artists, who explore keys to the empowerment of women and practical processes of healing and transformation through the arts,” I knew I had to swim in the oceans of their transform/rebirth/gifting process.  I had to partner with them in offering women (and men) safe space to create a way to LIVE with their assigned death sentence: death by pleasure-begotten dis-ease.

I have always explored in my writings the power of language and words to express my sense of be/not/longing, free/not/knowing, while birthing universes in verses. In writing about the umbilical cord pulling me to Africa long before I landed, breathed, and returned all seven generations lost/disconnected/wandering in America back to her, Mother/land/soul, I have always known, “I am hers and she is mine, forever…” So here I have come to not only bring back those stolen but to give to those here being stolen by this particularly vicious virus that does not AID anyone.

Despite all of this knowingness, I forgot about it! I arrived in South Africa and other groups, people, places filled notebooks of possibility. Three months later, one encounter had someone recommend I speak with Sara Matchett: “You’ll love her! You guys are up to the same thing, and MotherTongue is phenomenal!” Excited, I took down the name and number, thinking, I love this name, MotherTongue, not realizing it was the same group I had discovered on-line in America.

When I called Sara, we connected immediately! As fate would have it, she had moved to Johannesburg but was coming back to Cape Town to lead a theater workshop on Ritual Narratives for the Spier Invades the City Festival. The morning of the workshop we met Sara for breakfast and were awed, moved and inspired. I was thrilled by our parallel journeys to healing, upliftment and empowerment through theater and discovering one’s voice. It was like discovering what “I” had been doing in Asia and Africa while the other I was in Europe and America. Clearly we were having a homecoming in each other’s terra firma of the soul and would not be separated again.

Fre and I went home to change into clothes that we could get dirty in, and picked up Chesray, a South African friend I met in the States. The point of the workshop was to create ritual theater with a few people that would engage the audience completely and lead to some sort of transformation. I explore the use/need for rituals a lot in my writing, especially my poetry, and though rituals have been used in my plays, none had invited the audience’s full participation on stage (beyond singing along and “Amen-ing” in the right places). This was a brand new world!

Sara was challenged by the limited time allotted to the workshop which normally takes place over 4-5 days. We had three hours! Yet the excavation process, the objects and images, the partnering and poeting, lead us quickly and deeply to the place where we were open to joining our “story/gift” with others to birth something mine/ours/everyone’s.

The two plays we created at the end were thoughtful, healing, and provocative invitations that took us on an inner and outer journey through candle-lit, water-splashed, earth-grounding inner landscapes. Whoever came in that door at 7 was not walking out at 10pm. This taught Fre and me how much we can accomplish with our workshops when all we have with the groups is a few hours.

HALLELUJAH!

My soul revealed a message buried in her rough rocks, a diamond:

Set  yourself free
                                                                  tell our stories
                                                                  tell our pain
                                    stolen
                                    damaged I am
                                    me
Set your Self free
Lying
I am alive
                                                                   tell our stories
                                                                   tell our pain

now is the time now is the time now is the time now is the time

This is the message I will share with all who take our workshops. This is the gift that art therapy, movement and creativity offers to all who are willing to engage in going beyond definitions given us by society, culture, language and gender to discover and express our true voice, our true Selves.

This is the path we all can take to “Let Love Lead” and offer our gifts of Love to the World.

Amazed and grateful!
Anasuya

Check out the sublime Sara and the phenomenal work of MotherTongue on their website: www.mothertongue.co.za