Honours students from our Department of Drama and Theatre Arts recently staged the play, ‘Curl Up & Dye’, written by Sue Pam Grant. Evoking some measure of discomfort in the audience, the play explored the grey areas that permeate our society: crime, drug abuse, alcoholism, domestic violence and prostitution.

Sharing their seemingly-different realities at the hair salon, the five main characters revealed the social challenges that shade the lives of so many women. Even though the play was set in 1989 near the end of the apartheid regime, it not only reflected on our troubled past, but also celebrated how far our South African nation has come.

“This play gave me hope for myself and our country, because I saw how ‘Curl Up & Dye’ internationally became a metonym for South Africa after apartheid: In disarray, exhausted after years of conflict and repression, but not beyond redemption,” said the director, Karabelo Lekalaka.

“One of the important lessons I learnt from this play,” Lekalaka continued, “is; if we do not want to talk about our past as a country, we are delaying and denying ourselves an opportunity to heal and teach.”

The ability to relate with one another, regardless of individual issues in our lives – that goes beyond race and culture was a powerful and urgent message.