Surfacing woman-consciousness in Reza de Wet’s On the Lake

Abstract

Reza de Wet is one of South Africa’s most acclaimed and translated playwrights. On the Lake is one of her most under-researched plays. It forms part of a trilogy of Chekhov-sequels all of which premiered in South Africa before they were eventually published by the Brittain based Oberon Books in 2002 as A Russian Trilogy, thereby reconsolidating De Wet’s international stature. On the Lake’s Chekhovian source text is The Seagull. De Wet crops Chekhov’s dozen-plus cast of characters to five, restricting them to female characters, all contained in the framing perspective of a protagonist-cum-centre-of-consciousness, underlining as such her surfacing of Chekhov’s concern with throttled female artistic agency. On the Lake is discussed here as De Wet’s dramatization of the co-incidence and correlation of a woman’s artistic awakening with psycho-sexual emancipation amidst and at odds with a patriarchal regime. De Wet recasts The Seagull’s Nina Mikhailovna Zaryechnaia as the protagonist in On the Lake and dramatizes her gradual evolution from an actress into a playwright and her shedding of her emotional dependence on her former lovers. On the Lake is read in comparison with an unpublished draft of it that offers insight into De Wet’s writing process and the motivations underlying the final published version. I make a case for De Wet’s optimism regarding the artistic and psychological self-actualization that her protagonist achieves. In view of De Wet’s resistance to the moniker feminism, Curb’s term woman-conscious theatre is engaged to place De Wet’s project in a wider field of woman-centred drama.