Piecing together a girlhood: using ‘girlfriend play’ as method to perform memory

Katuntu (...and you too) (from now on referred to as Katuntu) was devised and performed by myself and Injairu Kulundu as part of my thesis production in fulfilment of my MA in theatre-making from the University of Cape Town in 2009. The work was concerned with memory. In particular, I engaged with the concept of ‘playing memory’ through narratives of loss of language, place and family, brought on by a disrupted or uprooted childhood. Playing memory suggests in the first instance, an actual active playing of personal recollection that attempts to stage that which has passed. Playing memory in the second instance, is an exploration of how one might go about re-membering in order to recall oneself into being, that is, recapturing a lost time, place and childhood in order to put oneself back together.