Under a spotlight in a pitch shaded room, Oliva Ouedraogo holds up a portion of cloth that appears enjoy its stained with blood.
She cries “Long live the girl!”, her converse drowning out the loud hum of a generator, an wretched necessity as the city of Bamako in Mali lies in darkness due to vitality cuts.
Ouedraogo’s play “Queen” (known by its French title “Reine”) confirmed at the Acte Sept cultural centre on 15 October.
It tells the story of a girl who defies her family and speaks out after being raped by her stepfather on the night he marries her mother.
Ouedraogo, who comes from Burkina Faso, said she wrote the play to tackle the custom of silence about rape and sexual assault in Africa.
“What pushed me to write this? It’s that even the victims settle for this. I’m asserting no, you don’t have to settle for, to put up to this, to be trampled on,” she said.
She says she’s offended that it’s the victims of this violence who’re is considered as “dirty” and “trash”, and that they feel obliged to stop restful in teach to reduction far flung from family battle.
In accordance to legitimate figures, nearly half of of Malian women folk aged between 15 and 49 have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lives.
The yarn by the Malian National Institute of Statistics renowned that of these, 68 per cent had by no arrangement spoken about the violence to anybody.
Adama Traore, director of the Acte Sept cultural centre, said he proposed internet hosting the play because the silence surrounding rape is a huge discipline.
“All this rape and incest, whether it’s in Europe, Africa, the West, in all places – the United States. It causes scandals, but we don’t relate about it normally,” he said.
“So, one day we need to be in a assign to confront the target audience with these shaded aspects of ourselves.”
Mariama Samake, the director of the Malian NGO “Girl in Misery” said the custom of silence that Ouedraogo campaigns against is neatly-liked.
“I will disclose that in every family, we have ladies which have been victims of rape,” she said. “Mali is a patriarchal society, so these victims are forced to reduction restful, to now not relate.”
“Queen” will be performed another time next month at the Cesana Theatre in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.
