What the Water Remembers
What the Water Remembers (also performed under the Afrikaans title Wat die water onthou) is a collaboratively created, multilingual South African spoken-word poetry production by Pieter Madibuseng Odendaal, Lwanda Sindaphi, Toni Stuart and Afeefa Omar. Performed in Afrikaans, English, Xhosa and Somali, it grew out of the severe drought that gripped Cape Town in 2017 and 2018, and explores the personal, historical, social and spiritual sides of people's relationships to water in the city.
The original text
The production was the culmination of Odendaal's doctoral research at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, on how spoken-word poetry can help communities respond to social and environmental change. The four poets developed the work together over several months, attending workshops, visiting rivers, springs and other bodies of water around Cape Town, and writing the poems collaboratively. Director Jason Jacobs shaped the material for the stage, with singer Babalwa Zimbini Embo Makwetu and multi-instrumentalist Nceba Gongxeka providing live music. Moving between languages and voices, the poems ask what the city has forgotten about water, what might happen if people do not listen to it, and what one might have to give up in order to care for it anew. The full script has not been published, having been placed under embargo for later publication.
Performance history in South Africa
First staged on 4 September 2019 in the Fugard Studio, Cape Town, as part of the Open Book Festival, directed by Jason Jacobs and supported by InZync Poetry and the QUT Creative Lab. The performance wove together individual poems and songs — among them Sindaphi's "Amanzi Akhumbula Kwanto"* ("The waters remember everything") and Stuart's "why does the water refuse to fall here?" — building towards a closing section on healing accompanied by projected images of water.
2020: Restaged at the Toyota US Woordfees, Stellenbosch, 6–15 March, in the Adam Small Laboratorium.
The project was shortlisted for the Stückemarkt of the 2020 Theatertreffen in Berlin, Germany. A filmed version of the production, with English captions, was recorded.
Sources
Norton, Cliffordene. 2020. 'What the water remembers: 'n onderhoud met Pieter Odendaal', LitNet, 25 February 2020.
'Press release: What the Water Remembers', LitNet, 22 August 2019.
https://openbookfestival.co.za/programme/what-the-water-remembers/
Odendaal, Pieter. 2020. Sounding relations to grond and water: Responding to social-ecological change through spoken word poetry. PhD thesis, Queensland University of Technology.
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