Day 11 Friday 5 December 2014 The Designer: Greg King Greg is Artistic Director of Durban’s foremost theatre company, the multi award winning KickstArt. His personal speciality is design. He is currently designing the Christmas family panto, Aladdin. Among his enormous body of work, he has designed productions which talk to domestic issues and a strongly female narrative (Sister Agnes of God, Shirley Valentine, Wit, God of Carnage, Oleanna and Keely and Du). 16 Days of Activism: What it means to me I have always despised bullying. I was often on the receiving end of it in my youth – not the punched-up, physical kind, but the insidious kind that is so subtle and difficult to detect and impossible to prove. The kind that is always excused because it was “only a joke”. The kind that you bravely shake off without realising that the experience has chipped away at your self –esteem just a little. I’ve always felt proud to be above such delinquent behaviour. On reflection one day, I was horrified to recognise that I have been guilty of this hateful crime. In that difficult growing-up time, home was my sanctuary from the cruelty of other kids and so it was the one place where I could let down my guard and feel safe. Ironically, it was the place where I claimed back a little power by relentlessly teasing my younger sisters. ‘It was only a joke’, but it was abuse. I was a bully! A little personal epiphany about how “violence begets violence”. When I magnify that truth, and acknowledge the dehumanising conditions that people have experienced in this country for generations, I get a glimpse of the bigger picture. I see how pent-up anger and rage creates a need to exert some kind of power on anyone that might take it. So often, it’s those that we love. The statistics are shocking and inexcusable. But my shameful admission that the root of such behaviour even exists in me is my key to understanding what’s going on, and knowing that I am involved. My message will never reach the men whose acts send the rape and violence statistics into orbit. So it’s for the men who like me, believe they would never hurt a soul. 16 Days of Activism is a time for all of us to reflect and monitor our behaviour as we tread this invisible line. Pic Gcina Ndwalane / Daily News
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 15:26:47 +0000
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