Advertisement

Play looks at Bosnian rape as weapon of war

Thursday March 19 2015
EATEAMAGAZINE1803

Dorra (Gladys Oyenbot), left, and Esther Tebandeke as Kate in the play The Body of a Woman as a Battlefield in the Bosnian War. PHOTO | ABUBAKER LUBOWA |

The play The Body of a Woman as a Battlefieldin the Bosnian War by Romanian playwright Matei Visniec, may be a work of fiction, but the real life events it is based on are common in many war situations around the world.

Rape as a weapon in war not only represents the abuse of a women but that of whole communities or nations, and on the personal level, the rape of women is supposed to be a punishment of men who are involved in the war. The women are mere collateral damage.

Visniec’s play, translated into several European languages, was staged at the National Theatre in Kampala from March 7-8 as part of events marking International Women’s Day, and was produced by Alliance Francaise Kampala and the Uganda National Cultural Centre.

While informed by the events of the Bosnian War (1992-1995), in which rape was employed as a military strategy to demoralise and humiliate the adversary, the play explores questions of belonging and loss of identity in the context of inter-ethnic war.

In the play, Harvard-trained psychologist, Kate, (played by Allen Kagusuru), is sent to Bosnia to help a forensic team record the atrocities of the Bosnian war by exhuming victims of the war buried in mass graves. She suffers post-traumatic stress disorder and is cared for in a Nato medical facility where she meets Dorra, (played by Gladys Oyenbot). Dorra is pregnant, a victim of a politically motivated gang rape.

A dynamic relationship develops between the two women and it takes unexpected turns as they deal with the aftermath of war. In a series of scenes and monologues, the women’s scarred lives become intertwined in both expected and unexpected ways.

Advertisement

At first it seems as if Kate is attempting to heal Dorra as she records her encounters with her in her diary, speaking with cool scientific detachment, Dorra on the other hand, resists all attempts at communication from Kate and her situation is revealed to the audience when she is alone with her hate, anger at God, and determination to end her life rather than live with the agony of birthing a child conceived from rape. 

It turns out both women are institutionalised in this German-run hospital, Kate because of her breakdown after working at too many mass graves sites and Dorra because of her unwillingness to return to normal life after her ordeal. The unborn child is a symbol of things she would like to forget.

Although Kate is against Dorra’s wish to have an abortion, the health system has broken down and there are no counsellors to help Dorra. 

In one scene, the women get drunk and play tapes of European music as Dorra lists the virtues and vices of some nationalities in Europe and the Americas.

She says: “…The Croats, they’ll stab you in the back, they’ll betray you as soon as they look at you. You saw what they did in 1941, they went over to the Nazis, all of them in the end, all except Tito. They sided with the Nazis and massacred the Serbs. Because that’s what they’re like, the Croats: bastard collaborators; ustashi. And even today they’re thick as thieves with the Germans, Germany’s their real country. Oh, the Croats… Here’s to us!”

The character of Kate was played by three actors; Esther Tebandeke, Rehema Nanfuka and Allen Kagusuru. Tebandeke played the human and intimate part of Kate, Nanfuka the Balkan man while Kagusuru was the psychologist.

The playwright here is making the audience understand how ethnicity, nationalism, social mechanisms and religion played out in the Balkan conflicts.

On playing Dorra, Oyenbot said: “It was very emotional and challenging playing a woman who has gone through gang rape. Changing my moods from anger to happiness to sadness to frustration and to depression was very hard.”  

According to Tebandeke: “Rape is not meant or directed at their women but to the men who are the husbands or brothers. Women are used as weapons to demoralise the men. If you can’t buy a gun, then you rape your enemy’s wife.”

Advertisement