Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Edited by Linzi Manicom & Shirley Walters

“Venus in Lesotho: Women, Theatre and the Collapsible Boundaries of Silence.”

Prologue
sex…love affairs…past deeds…condoms…incest…stealing…abortion…prostitution…
Christianity…anger…shame…poverty…pain…homosexuals…sex…rape…self-esteem…
parents…politics…shyness…money…HIV status…God…abuse…fear…uncles…lesbians…lying…drinking…brothers…emotionality…sex…

The words in this list aren’t unusual. What’s unusual is the setting where the list was made and the seven young women determining what should be on it.

We made the list in a large empty room of an administrative building on the campus of the National University of Lesotho (NUL). The room was destined to one day serve as a university boardroom, but had been vacant as long as anyone could remember, so we’d claimed it for the Theatre Unit and had been using it non-stop as a rehearsal space and classroom. The room is important because it was central to all our work and was an anomaly – the opposite of the school’s drab classrooms and impersonal lecture halls. It was painted butter yellow, had high ceilings, windows on three sides that let in light and air, and the floor was covered by a thin forest-green carpet. It had become known as the Venus Room and it was ours. MORE