Through the women's body: staging rebellion in the play Purdah by Ismail Mahomed

This article examines the play Purdah (1993) by the playwright Ismail Mahomed, a Pakistani writer and director born in Johannesburg (29 May 1959) who has been active on the theatre scene in South Africa for the last thirty years. Purdah1 is a one-woman stage performance that addresses the issue of seclusion and subjugation of the Muslim Indian women of Lenasia, the neighbourhood of Johannesburg, which during the apartheid regime was constructed as a ghetto for the Indian community. I argue that the play, narrating the story of Ayesha, a young girl subjected to the customary practices of her community and Muslim family laws, is an instance of ‘issue theatre’ that creates a venue for discussing the seclusion of women in purdah not just as a curtailing of freedom and a breach of human rights, but also as a psychological form of ‘colonisation of the mind’ that impinges on the development of woman’s psyche and impedes the act of ‘creation’, in the double meaning of artistic ‘creativity’ (poiesis) and ‘fabrication’ of subjectivity.