Rehane Abrahams

Rehane Abrahams (19**-)

Actress, playwright, theatre-maker, director and Fitzmaurice Voicework teacher, and a co-founder of The Mothertongue Project. Since 2026 also cited as Dr Rehane Abrahams.

Biography

Born in Cape Town, the daughter of the cookery writer and chef Cass Abrahams. She matriculated at Livingstone High School and took a Performer's Diploma in Speech and Drama at the University of Cape Town. From 1993 to 1998 she lived in San Francisco, working with companies including the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival and Thrillpeddlers. From about 2003 to 2014 she was based in Indonesia, where she studied classical Javanese dance at the Indonesian Art Institute in Surakarta, co-founded Teater Gelombang Badan (Body Wave Theatre) in Java, and in 2009 founded theatre fireFLY in Ubud, Bali. She also studied Butoh with Min Tanaka in Japan and Kathak in India. She returned to Cape Town in 2014. In 2026 the University of Cape Town conferred a PhD on her, completed in the Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies under Jayendran Pather and Kelly Gillespie, for the research-performance thesis Eco-erotic Decolonisation and Khoisan Revivalism: A Research-Performance Study of the Inseparable Sensate Exchange between Land and Body as a Register for Re-indigenisation, which works through the Khoisan water-snake figure Die Waterslang. In the same year she joined the Blue Humanities Chair at the University of the Western Cape as a research associate.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

Her early stage work, largely in Cape Town and Johannesburg and mostly undated, included Lady Macbeth in Macbeth and Abigail Williams in The Crucible, at the Arena Theatre and Little Theatre respectively, Pearly Heavens in Dankie Auntie by Zakes Mda, Topsy in Wild South at the Nico Malan Theatre, and her own pieces Adam's Apple, Venus Goes Vulgar, Wider Than This and Fresh Wounds (the last staged in London).

In 2000 she played Juliet at Maynardville, opposite Denver Vraagom as Romeo, in Clare Stopford's localised production of Romeo and Juliet; twenty-four years later she returned to the same stage as Mercutio and Lady Montague in Geoff Hyland's 2024 production. Also in 2000 she appeared in Magnet Theatre's Voices Made Night, Mark Fleishman's stage adaptation of short stories by Mia Couto, with Gosekwang Poonyane, Mandla Mbothwe and Jane Rademeyer.

She met Sara Matchett in Mumbai in 1999 and the two founded The Mothertongue Project, a women's arts collective, in 2000. The production that gave rise to the collective was What the Water Gave Me (2000, Nico Arena), her own text, which traces her paternal line; it was published in New South African Plays, edited by Charles J. Fourie (London: Aurora Metro, 2006). Their second major collaboration, Womb of Fire, follows her maternal line. Written by Abrahams and directed by Matchett, it premiered at the National Arts Festival in 2017 and played the Toyota US Woordfees on 6 and 8 March 2018 at Cloetesville High School, with Abrahams performing alongside Lukhanyiso Skosana (vocals) and design by Craig Leo. It went on to the Baxter Theatre's Golden Arrow Studio in 2018, and abroad to Afrovibes in the Netherlands and the International Theatre Festival of Kerala in India in the same year. Jason Jacobs's Afrikaans translation, Brandbaar, was staged at the Toyota US Woordfees from 11 to 15 March 2020 in the Adam Small Laboratorium, again directed by Matchett and performed by Abrahams and Skosana.

Other stage work includes Die dans van die watermeid by Amee Lekas, a NATi/Baxter production directed by Jason Jacobs, seen at the Toyota US Woordfees from 2 to 5 March 2018 with Nicole Holm, Celeste Matthews-Wannenbürgh, Elton Landrew, Ephraim Gordon and Gretchen Ramsden; and a reading of Dryfhout by Nell van der Merwe, with André Roothman, at Teksmark 2023.

For her doctoral research she made three site-specific research-creation performance events* in and around Cape Town, staged at Spier estate outside Stellenbosch, the Slave Lodge in Cape Town, and the Amazon development at the Liesbeeck River confluence.

On screen she made her television debut in the SABC educational series Die Allemans (1991) as Dalene, and has appeared as Zelda in Hotnotsgode (1998), in the German-produced feature An Act of Sabotage, as the title character in Raya (2001), in the e.tv sitcoms Big Okes and SOS, in An American Girl: Lea to the Rescue (2016), Buitenkant, the series Arendsvlei (2018) and Bhai's Café (2019), directed by Maynard Kraak.

Awards, etc.

Rosalie van der Gucht Prize for most promising student*.

FNB Vita Award for Best Actress, 2001*, for Voices Made Night.

Stone Award for Best Actress for Raya*.

Three Woordtrofees at the Toyota US Woordfees, 2018, for Womb of Fire: best play (Abrahams), best actor (Abrahams) and best director (Sara Matchett).

Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards, 2019: Best Performance in a Revue, Cabaret or One-Person Show, for Womb of Fire.

Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards, 2025: Best Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Play, as Mercutio and Lady Montague in Romeo and Juliet.

Sources

Toyota US Woordfees 2018 programme (Toneel): pp. 134, 155.

Toyota US Woordfees 2020 programme: pp. 114-115, 187.

Shakespeare's R&J theatre programme, The Fugard Theatre, c. 2011*. https://www.thefugard.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/r-and-j-programme.pdf

"Voices Made Night", Magnet Theatre. http://magnettheatre.co.za/productions/voices-made-night/

Fourie, Charles J. (ed.). 2006. New South African Plays. London: Aurora Metro.

Abrahams, Rehane. 2026. Eco-erotic Decolonisation and Khoisan Revivalism: A Research-Performance Study of the Inseparable Sensate Exchange between Land and Body as a Register for Re-indigenisation. PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, Faculty of Humanities, Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/43308

'Rehane Abrahams reimagines decolonisation through performance', UCT News, 2 April 2026.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehane_Abrahams

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