Zimbabwean play on sex workers raises important issues
Sinners is the story of three sex workers, who when business becomes slow, decide to exercise their entrepreneurial skills by harvesting sperm from unsuspecting men. Speaking to Zimbojam, Patrick Chasaya says he wrote the play after meeting a man who was traumatised after being abducted and raped by a gang of four women. The Herald’s review of the play titled ‘Explicit Sinners opens at Theatre in the Park’ implied that the actresses stopped just short of actually having sex on stage. I went with my wangu to get the male perspective on things. Although he had a good laugh during the play he was a little disappointed – it wasn’t as titillating as we had both been led to believe.
The play opens with each of the three protagonists describing how she became a sex worker. Chipo is the housewife whose husband left her without a penny, Samantha was raped at an early age by an unnamed relative, and Keresensia was orphaned and has to care for her younger brothers and sisters. The three women work on the same corner, watching and waiting for their male customers to show up. The actresses do an admirable job of drawing the audience into the play by treating them as customers, or in my case, hated competition. At one point, the police raid them. The youngest, Samantha services an officer in exchange for her freedom, while Chipo, who may be past her prime, is unable to negotiate and is forced to pay a fine.
Tired of scraping a living together especially as business is not going well, the three women hatch a plan to put their skills to better use.
The subject matter would have made excellent material for a tragicomedy, but ‘Sinners’ misses the mark. The skill of the actresses in bringing the characters to life cannot make up for their lack of depth and complexity. The script’s superficial treatment of the protagonists’ tragic back stories and circumstances detract from its comedic elements. It only glosses over the characters’ motivations for doing what they do in an attempt to lighten the subject matter.
The play picks up many interesting themes such as the long-term effects of child abuse, and the exploitation of sex workers by the police, but these are abandoned without warning or resolution. There are a lot of ironies too, like Keresensia being inspired by the Holy Spirit to harvest and sell sperm, or the trio praying before they embark on their enterprise, that are too under-developed to be fully appreciated. The play also ends abruptly, with the trio falling out in loud and emphatic disagreement about how the money they earned should be divided. At the end, we had a feeling that there should have been a message, but were unclear about what that message was.
It was refreshing to watch a play that wasn’t driven by a political or women’s rights agenda. It is not often that a story is told simply to be told in Zimbabwe. The playwright and director should be commended for trying to tackle such a difficult subject matter. It cannot be easy to walk the fine line between objectifying sex workers and turning them into victims. This play at least tries to depict them as real women with real problems. Charity Dlodlo, Eunice Tava and Gertrude Munhamo portray Samantha, Chipo and Keresensia not as women who are at the mercy of men, but rather as women who show strength, resilience and even ingenuity in facing their difficulties. I believe that is something to be admired.