“Do not forget to come up for air. Do not drown”.
“When grief arrives, allow her to visit.”
Grieve, that is how you survive, written and performed by Grace Storm and Thandiwe Nqanda is an offering – an invitation – a prompt – for us to acknowledge our grief and allow ourselves space to sit with our memories. The shape of grief is different for each person. Unfortunately many of us do not take the time out to process loss because we are busy getting on with our lives. Grieve, presented in a theatre, provides with a physical space to sit down and reflect and to acknowledge loss. Storm and Nqanda have created a beautiful and moving play, hewn from their own experiences of going through loss. They activate the space, with their bodies and voices as the primary medium. Clothes (of loved ones) and objects are scattered in the space, emblematic of those who are no longer with us. The artists move along the grid of a hopscotch grid chalked on the floor, placing items such aa bible. They are surviving by ‘playing’ with their grief. I love that. More on the hopscotch follows, keep reading.
The genre of the play is the choreopoem which incorporates voice (singing), spoken word, dance and physical theatre. Nqanda and Storm are multi-displacing creatives. Both of them are published poets and the script is threaded and knotted with their stirring and evocative writing. They evoke people who have shaped their lives and don clothes that belonged to those people. I find this very poignant as when people die, clothes and personal belongings tend to get discarded in clean-ups. These artists have retrieved the clothes of loved ones and they use them with love.
Interestingly, for the most part, they swap characters when doing impressions of their loved ones. See https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1FLyRpXujx/ (forgive the very noisy wind of Cape Town) and https://www.facebook.com/share/r/167FuyPaYe/
Grieve premiered at the 2024 National Arts Festival, Makhanda and Storm told me that the piece has shifted since NAF as they have added in material since then as they have dealt with other losses. Grief is not finite. I suggested that Grieve has become an archive of grief for them, a repository and container, which is being constantly filled. I say “filled” in a positive way as this piece is theatre of catharsis, an opportunity to commune with others with the artists and the audience. After the performance that I attended (March 1, 2025) at Theatre Arts in Cape Town, there was a grief counsellor who took the floor and invited the audience to share experiences of grief or ask questions. Nqanda and Storm are aware of the triggering aspects of this play and this led to the inclusion of a grief counselor at the Cape Town season of the play. It is a wonderful way to extend the performance and immerse the audience in the landscape that they are visiting.
They hope to include a grief counsellor in all their shows going forward. Grieve was on for a short season of four performances (February 28 to March 2, 2025) in Cape Town at Theatre Arts.
Talking of immersion and access, before the performance, I wandered around the space and was intrigued by a hopscotch game, chalked on the floor, with the prompts – Start – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5- end. This pinged for me in relation to Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and her five stages of dying: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, proposed in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying.
In response to my read of the famous, five stages, Storm said: “The meaning behind the hopscotch is multi-layered. .. We don’t believe in the typical five stages of grief…. We go in reverse – 5-4-3-2- 1 – because we believe that grief is a cycle. There is no end to it, really. It has a two-fold meaning – when we placed our loved ones’ clothing at the end [of the play]. We started at the ‘start’ and walked through. It is also a representation of the start of life and the end of life – the process –that a person has lived – that there is a start and there is an end – inevitably – it has to end. So there is a two way reading to it. However the audience decides to interpret it – we have left that a bit open. The numbers – as we have used them – can also represent the amount of days/weeks/months/years that a loved one has been gone or the day they passed, or the age they were.”
Do not be afraid of grief. Embrace the cycle – of life and death – and attend a performance of Grieve, that is how you survive when it visits a theatre near you.
For more on Grieve, see interview: https://thecaperobyn.co.za/interview-grace-storm-and-thandiwe-nqanda-talk-about-creating-grieve-that-is-how-you-survive/
✳ Featured image: Thandiwe Nqanda and Grace Storm – writer/performers of Grieve, that is how you survive, which was presented February 28 to March 2, 2025 at heatre Arts, Cape Town. Pic: Supplied
