Participatory theatre and production of cultures of equality with and by sex workers in Cape Town

Phoebe Kisubi is a post-doctoral research fellow on the GlobalGRACE project (https://www.globalgrace.net) housed at the African Gender Institute (AGI) and the Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies (CTDPS) University of Cape Town as well as the NGO Sex Workers Advocacy and Educational Task Force (SWEAT). She is also a lecturer on the gender studies program at the AGI University of Cape Town. She holds a doctorate in Gender Studies from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Her research interests are in critical race, gender, class, sexuality, creative methodologies and activism, public health as well as decolonial thought and praxis.

The sex work theatre group is part of a project that investigates gender and cultures of (in)equality, working with theatre and performance as the main methodological approach. Noting the health of sex workers, physical and emotional in legally and structurally constrained environment is of particular concern, this research considers gendered inequalities through a holistic approach to well-being that recognises the specific demands of the contexts in which sex workers work. In this presentation, She will focus on our work with butoh principals, a form of Japanese dance theatre whose techniques offer an embodied praxis, it draws on embodied cognition and how this manifest through emotion. Butoh techniques, which call for the body to move in non-conventional ways, speak to how the state of the body modifies the state of the mind and by extension, emotions. She will offer some insight into embodied cognitions that challenge gendered inequality and injustices for street-based sex workers in Cape Town, some of whom are trans, gender queer, bisexual and gay, a number of whom are homeless.

This webinar is part of an open webinar series, hosted by CISC. To discover more please visit the Centre for Intimate and Sexual Citizenship and follow the Centre on Twitter.