Noting street-based sex workers as one of the most marginalised groups in post-apartheid South Africa, in this chapter, we present a ‘coming home’ for a group of sex workers living under dehumanising conditions. Various forms of trauma were brought on by multiple alienations, structurally and physically, because of the criminalisation and stigmatisation of sex work. First, we locate the ‘coming home’ in Theatre Arts, the community theatre space that housed the theatre group for a period of three years during the research process (2019–2021). It became evident that the sex workers felt the need to physically come ‘home’ to Theatre Arts, which over the three years of the research project, provided a space where street-based sex workers could safely explore their lived realities through theatre and performance. The safety provided by this physical space, this landscape, opened up possibilities for the second articulation of ‘coming home’ to the body as a form of healing. Through bodily theatre processes, the sex workers were able to access embodied forms of trauma by reimagining them through ‘restorying’. Collectively, all these processes manifested in a sense of community and belonging, so much associated with ‘home landscapes’.

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Precarious Landscapes: Theatre and Belonging With a Group of Sex Workers in Cape Town

  • Sara Matchett,
  • Phoebe Kisubi Mbasalaki

摘要

Noting street-based sex workers as one of the most marginalised groups in post-apartheid South Africa, in this chapter, we present a ‘coming home’ for a group of sex workers living under dehumanising conditions. Various forms of trauma were brought on by multiple alienations, structurally and physically, because of the criminalisation and stigmatisation of sex work. First, we locate the ‘coming home’ in Theatre Arts, the community theatre space that housed the theatre group for a period of three years during the research process (2019–2021). It became evident that the sex workers felt the need to physically come ‘home’ to Theatre Arts, which over the three years of the research project, provided a space where street-based sex workers could safely explore their lived realities through theatre and performance. The safety provided by this physical space, this landscape, opened up possibilities for the second articulation of ‘coming home’ to the body as a form of healing. Through bodily theatre processes, the sex workers were able to access embodied forms of trauma by reimagining them through ‘restorying’. Collectively, all these processes manifested in a sense of community and belonging, so much associated with ‘home landscapes’.