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CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE
INTERACTIONS
SERIES EDITORS: ELAINE ASTON · BRIAN SINGLETON

Applied Theatre and

Sexual Health
Communication
Apertures of Possibility
Katharine E. Low
Contemporary Performance InterActions

Series Editors
Elaine Aston
Lancaster University
Lancaster, Lancashire, UK

Brian Singleton
Samuel Beckett Centre
Trinity College
Dublin, Ireland
Theatre’s performative InterActions with the politics of sex, race and class,
with questions of social and political justice, form the focus of the
Contemporary Performance InterActions series. Performative InterActions
are those that aspire to affect, contest or transform. International in scope,
CPI publishes monographs and edited collections dedicated to the
InterActions of contemporary practitioners, performances and theatres
located in any world context.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14918
 Katharine E. Low

Applied Theatre and

Sexual Health
Communication
Apertures of Possibility
Katharine E. Low
Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
London, UK

ISSN 2634-5870     ISSN 2634-5889 (electronic)

Contemporary Performance InterActions
ISBN 978-1-349-95974-7    ISBN 978-1-349-95975-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95975-4

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Limited 2020
The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
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publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
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The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW,
United Kingdom
 To the Our Place, Our Stage participants: Amanda M, Amanda Q,
Babalwa, Khanyisa, Khusta, Luyanda, Neliswa, Nomlindelo, Nomvulo,
Nondumiso, Nontombi, Nosiphiwo, Noxolo, Ntombesine, Ntombozuko,
Nwabi, Nwabisa, Olwethu, Pam, Pamella, Refilwe, Sikelelwa, Siyabonga,
Thobela, Wandisile, Xoliswa, Zimkhitha and Zukile.
 Foreword

But we need more outcries and more discussion

I was somewhat anxious about the task of writing this foreword. Perhaps
not justification anxiety—the dread of having to prove that what we do is
worth anything, which Kat Low writes about so well in the pages that fol-
low—but more simply I wasn’t sure as to the purpose of a foreword. I
don’t want to repeat what is in her book—read it, it’s great. And I’m not
the person on the back cover who offers two sentences endorsing its con-
tribution and its importance. However, I do want to say something. And
ultimately it is summed up in what is one of the last sections of Applied
Theatre and Sexual Health Communication: Apertures of Possibility, where
Kat says:

but we need more outcries and more discussion. We need multiple voices,
multiple understandings of the situation.

My foreword is, therefore, an endorsement of her demand for a forth-

rightness in our complaints about the range of problems facing different
communities and also an agreement with her commitment to a plurality of
perspectives on those issues. Kat’s book, I believe, captures the need
both to cry out and to listen hard in a particularly insightful way.
I have been an applied theatre practitioner the whole of my professional
life and have written about practice over a number of years. While reading
Kat’s book, I assumed that sexual health education was not an area that
overlapped with my particular experience but then I remembered that one
of my first pieces of writing in this field examined a theatre-based ­HIV/

vii
viii FOREWORD

AIDS programme for the prison system in Brazil. This was a project devel-
oped by Paul Heritage and the Centre for the Theatre of the Oppressed in
Rio de Janeiro. I remember being concerned how the neat option for
behaviour change—wear condoms!—was troubled in a setting where at
times prisoners paid off debts by selling their conjugal visit rights—and
thus their partners—to others. How do you persuade your debtor to use a
condom when having sex with your partner? The context—the difficult,
messy and complex reality of these prisoners’ lives—meant that comfort-
able prescriptions and assumptions about the purpose and then outcome
of the work were nonsense. The process felt dynamic, rich and meaning-
ful—but the outcome? Words like empowerment or transformation
seemed overblown and wishful thinking. I was bewildered by the possibili-
ties, but failed to articulate what they might be. To use Kat’s term, there
was something happening here, and while I might have championed the
desire not to pin that down precisely, I appreciate now I should have been
bolder in attempting to articulate the complexity of this work without
resorting to simplistic accounts of a project’s outcomes.
The benefit of Kat’s book is that she takes this dilemma head on. Her
detailed analysis of her practice in the Nyanga township near Cape Town
in South Africa examines those complicated, moving, and diffuse benefits
of a sexual health focused theatre programme, without, in her words,
‘over claiming’. There is no linear cause and effect, but a richer, more
nuanced set of ripple-like effects of her work—unpredictable but still
meaningful; perhaps quiet and subtle, but still significant and gently radi-
cal. It is the presentation of a careful, appreciative enquiry of multiple
powerful hard-to-pin-down outcomes that makes Kat’s book so reward-
ing. While Applied Theatre rarely now assumes a simplistic input-to-­
output paradigm, there are fewer studies that have traced with such care
and precision what might actually be happening during and after a theatre
programme of this nature. Kat’s work is not bewildered—it lays out a clear
set of arguments for practice, demonstrating how through ‘apertures of
possibility’ a range of affective and effective resonances with its partici-
pants were created. But it still does maintain that sense of enquiry and
doubt that I would argue is vital for a more humble, less strident approach
to writing about Applied Theatre.
The second clear benefit of Applied Theatre and Sexual Health
Communication: Apertures of Possibility is that it is structured as what I
would call a triangulated study. In Kat’s case this is the participatory the-
atre project with Etafeni in Nyanga near Cape Town, the particular politi-
cal and economic situation in post-apartheid South Africa and then the
 FOREWORD ix

field of sexual health and HIV/AIDS prevention. Reading this account

made me consider my concerns developed in Performance Affects, where I
made the case that some applied theatre practitioners and writers had
become so adept at speaking on the context and thematic concerns of
their work, they had perhaps lost some of their confidence in speaking
about the theatre practice itself. It wasn’t an argument for a return to
purely aesthetic concerns but a case for rebalancing the thematic and con-
textual with the art form. Before reading Kat’s work I hadn’t seen this as
three elements so clearly—and her study demonstrates the importance of
having a profound understanding of each side of the triangle. In the pages
that follow there is a strong account of the context of South Africa and the
inequalities and violence that affect the country. There is a detailed expla-
nation of the history and practice of sexual health education and the par-
ticular complexities of the HIV/AIDS situation in the post-apartheid
state. And finally—and this is crucial—the discussion of the theatre prac-
tice finds its place within these constraints. Kat’s work, therefore, provides
a model for a three-sided applied theatre analysis—perhaps art, site, sub-
ject; or theatre, context, and theme—that helps focus case-study work in
this field.
My final comment here is a personal connection to this work. In read-
ing about sexual health education through theatre, it makes me reflect on
the work of my eldest daughter who is a sexual health educator and activ-
ist—largely via the medium of YouTube. However, she is also a writer and,
before Kat’s book, the only book I’d read about sexual health education
was by her. Two very different books! However, I was struck by some
similarities, which indicate an ethos that runs through Applied Theatre
and Sexual Health Communication: Apertures of Possibility, powerfully
and dynamically. Kat’s book demonstrates a commitment to the impor-
tance of supporting and stimulating intimate conversations about sexual
health. It is imbued with a trust of its readers and participants, and a con-
fidence that they will find a way to negotiate the complexities of their
sexual health needs. Kat’s book is an outcry against poor sexual health
education and a demand for more open discussion. She sums this up in the
following:

[T]here is something intrinsically exciting about how social networks can

help create spaces where individuals can communicate within their
­community what their understandings of what sexuality and sexual health
mean to them.
x FOREWORD

I agree. The stories in Kat’s book about her young participants owning
the discussion and taking it forward within their immediate community is
exciting—and for me, a highlight of this book. I now need to introduce
Kat to my daughter.

Department of Applied and Social Theatre James Thompson

University of Manchester
Manchester, UK
2018
 Acknowledgements

This book has taken a number of years to write and in the process I have
received support and guidance from many people and organisations.
Tremendous thanks first of all to all the Our Place, Our Stage (OPOS)
participants and to everyone at the Etafeni Trust, particularly Stephanie
Kilroe, Deborah Veleko, Luvuyo Zahele and Audrey Lumley-Sapanski, for
generously hosting the OPOS project.
This book began as my PhD research at the University of Manchester
and I owe a huge debt of thanks to my thoughtful and supportive supervi-
sors, James Thompson, Jenny Hughes and Maia Green.
I also formally acknowledge my thanks to the Drama Department and
the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at the University of Manchester
for both granting me bursaries and awarding me funding for research and
training. In addition, thanks and acknowledgements are due to the Harold
Hyam Wingate Foundation and the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust
for funding part of my practice research.
Along the way, both in the UK and in South Africa, ‘framily’, a wonder-
ful mix of friends and family, supported me during my research in
Nyanga—thank you to all of you, but especially Barbara Hart, Pippa and
Vic Schou, Dave and Gill Legge, Helen Williamson, Nikki and Dave
Willcox, Gay Morris, Gordon Bilbrough, Sara Matchett and Veronica
Baxter. I know that without your hospitality and generosity, much of my
research would not have been possible.
I am deeply indebted to the Research Department at the
Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, especially Maria Delgado, Dan
Hetherington, Josh Abrams and Sally Baggott for their guidance and

xi
xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

advice and through support via sabbatical leave and funding to complete
the book.
Thank you to Tomas René, Paula Kennedy, Vicky Bates and Jack
Heeney at Palgrave Macmillan for their continual support during the writ-
ing process and to Elaine Aston and Brian Singleton as series editors, and
to the anonymous reviewers for their thorough, positive feedback.
To my wonderful colleagues, both at Central and beyond, alongside
whom it is a delight to work, especially the Contemporary Performance
Practice team at Central. Thank you for being excellent critical friends and
offering considered feedback, laughter and gin throughout the writing
process, in particular Kim Solga, Sylvan Baker, Clara Vaughan, Gerard
Bester, Ali Jeffers, Dave Calvert, Sally Mackey, Selina Busby, Steve Farrier,
Gareth White, Adelina Ong, Lisa Woynarski, Ben Buratta, Joe Parslow
and Sara Wiener. Thank you also to students at Central who have heard
me speak about this research and asked pertinent questions.
I wish to give my heartfelt thanks to two exceptional colleagues: Gilli
Bush-Bailey and Tanya Zybutz—thank you both for your sheer brilliance
and generosity of spirit, and for taking the time to painstakingly advise me.
I deeply value your support and encouragement.
This book is my biggest accomplishment since returning from mater-
nity leave and I am hugely thankful to a wonderful group of women near
and far who have helped me celebrate the successes along the way: Ashley
Simpson, Caoimhe McAvinchey, Diana Damian Martin, Gail Babb, Holly
de Vries, Jill McGregor, Kerstin Mercer, Kim Coetzee, Nic Parkes, Rebecca
Selby, Shema Tariq, Sue Mayo, Victoria Edwards and Zoe Zontou.
Thanks are also due to my brother Ted Low, for his beautiful design for
the book cover and his continued encouragement.
To my little Roo and my dearest Steve: thank you both for your patience
as I finished this book and for all the joyous interruptions for more cake
and hugs.
My final thanks are for my parents, Jonathan and Niki. You have sup-
ported my research in so many ways right from the very beginning. I can-
not express how much your unwavering support and love are appreciated.
Thank you.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiii

An earlier version of ‘“If you want to be safe, you must stay at home”:
Dialogical Spaces and Repressive Outcomes’ has been published in
‘Establishing a Moral Discourse: A Limiting Outcome, or an Opportunity
for Tactical Action? An Exploration of Alternative Perspectives on Health
Education in South Africa’, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of
Applied Theatre and Performance 17.3 (July 2012), 355–70. I am grateful
to Taylor & Francis for their permission to use this work.
 Part of a Palgrave Book Series

Contemporary Performance InterActions—Series Editors: Elaine Aston and Brian

Singleton
 Contents

Introduction  1
The Development and Practice of the OPOS Project   8
My Professional Practice: Overview  10
Contentious and Dangerous: The Difficulty of Talking Openly About
Sexual Health  12
The Moral Pitfalls of Effectiveness: The Impact Question  14
Disrupting Notions of Value: A Responsive, Conscious Research
Approach  16
How to Read the Book: A Subtle Something in Practice  19
References  23

Part I Context  29

 Chapter 1 HIV/AIDS and the Challenge for Socially

Engaged Theatre-Making 31
Sexual Health  33
The Global HIV Context with a Specific Focus on the
South African Situation  36
Past Interventions  39
The Potential of Social Communication Around HIV  44
Applied Theatre: Theatre and the Social  47
More Than Transformation: Identifying the Something  52
Justification Anxiety   57

xvii
xviii CONTENTS

Reclaiming and Naming Our Own Values: Apertures

of Possibility  60
References  65

 Chapter 2 The Context for Our Place, Our Stage 77

A Lack of Governance: Challenges Facing South Africa
Today  79
Impact on Health and Poverty  82
Crime and Security  86
South African Theatre  89
Nyanga  98
Welcome to Nyanga  98
Nyanga: A ‘Model’ Township? 101
Etafeni 106
Entering Etafeni 106
Etafeni: ‘At the Open Space’ 108
Our Place, Our Stage (OPOS) 110
‘I was so scared when he told me I had a cold vagina’: The
Impact of the Omnipresent Fear of Crime and Experiences of
Crime 114
References 122

Part II Practice 135

Chapter 3 Applied Theatre: A Space ‘Safe Enough’ to Take

Risks?137
Sex Is Always About Space: The Challenge of Making
the Idea of Safe Sex Tangible 140
Place: Not Necessarily a ‘Safe Space’ 144
Home Is Not a ‘Safe Space’ 152
Moving from Places of Safety to Spaces of Resistance 157
Disharmony: The Outside Space 159
Tangible Connections in the Representational Spaces 166
The First Exercise Sequence 167
The Second Exercise Sequence 169
References 176
 Contents  xix

 Chapter 4 ‘If You Want to Be Safe, You Must Stay at

Home’: Dialogical Spaces and Repressive
Outcomes181
Brenda and Javas: Risky Characterisations 184
The Impact of Playful Risk-Taking 188
Setting Up a Dialogical Space: A ‘Risk-Sharing’
Community? 190
Contagion and Discipline = A Means of Protection? 197
A Moral Tale or an Extension of Contagion? 200
Tactical Action: An Alternative Outcome 203
The Nudge: The Challenge to Me as an Applied Theatre
Practitioner 209
References 216

 Chapter 5 Apertures of Possibility: A Subtle Form of

Resistance?221
Something More Subtle Than Empowerment? 226
Affective, Circulating Emotions 230
Performing Moments of Hope 233
Scrutinising Moments of Hope 239
Visceral Responses 245
Postscript to the Projects 255
References 260

Conclusion265
Making Spaces Towards Conclusions 265
Questions of Value 269
A Point on Hope and Tactics 270
Postscript: Looking Forward and Revelling in a Shared, Felt History 272
References 273

Glossary275

References277

Index311
 Abbreviations

ABC Abstain, Be faithful or use Condoms: HIV-­prevention slogan

AIDS Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
ANC African National Congress
ART Antiretroviral therapy
BDS Bantu Dramatic Society
CADRE Centre for AIDS Development, Research and Evaluation
CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
CSVR Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation
DFL Drama for Life
DIE Drama in Education
DoH Department of Health
ELRU Early Learning Resource Unit
FHI Family Health International
GALA GALA is a centre for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex,
and Queer (LGBTIQ) culture and education in (South)Africa
HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus
KABP Knowledge, attitude, behaviour and practices
NADC Nyanga Arts Development Centre
NGO Non-governmental organisation
NP National Party (ruling party under apartheid, until 1994)
OPOS Our Place, Our Stage project
PAC Pan Africanist Congress
PEPFAR President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (USA)
RDP Reconstruction and Development Programme. Term also used to
describe the government-funded social houses built by the RDP
programme
SACP South African Communist Party

xxi
xxii Abbreviations

SAP South African Police (pre-1994)

SAPS South African Police Service (post-1994)
STI Sexually Transmitted Infection
TAC Treatment Action Campaign
TaPRA Theatre and Performance Research Association
TB Tuberculosis
TfD Theatre for Development
THE Theatre in Health Education
TIE Theatre in Education
TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission
UNAIDS Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS
UNFPA ESARO United Nations Population Fund East and Southern Africa
Regional Office (the UNFPA is the UN’s sexual and
reproductive health agency)
UNICEF United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund
UNODC United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
VCT Voluntary Counselling and Testing
WHO World Health Organisation
 List of Figures

Chapter 2: The Context for Our Place, Our Stage

Fig. 1 Welcome to Nyanga: driving into Nyanga. (Photo by Katharine
E. Low)99
Fig. 2 Colour-coded map of spatial distribution of reported rape by
police precincts (2007/2008) (Gie 2009: 20) (Colour figure
online)105
Fig. 3 The vegetable garden with the canteen and afterschool office
behind it. The training room and Income Generator’s rooms are
out of the picture on the left. (Photo by Katharine E. Low) 107
Fig. 4 Zimkhitha, Siyabonga and Ntombozuko watching their
colleagues perform. (Photo by Katharine E. Low) 111
Fig. 5 The view from the left-hand window in the training room—Table
Mountain in the distance behind the houses. (Photo by Katharine
E. Low)112

Chapter 3: Applied Theatre: A Space ‘Safe Enough’ to Take Risks?

Fig. 1 A snapshot of Luyanda’s end map. (Photo by Katharine E. Low) 147
Fig. 2 Wandisile’s map. (Photo by Katharine E. Low) 148
Fig. 3 Nwabi praying in church: ‘I feel safe because I am in a church
[and] God is with me.’ (Photo by Katharine E. Low) 149
Fig. 4 Refilwe’s first map. (Photo by Katharine E. Low) 150
Fig. 5 Xoliswa’s shack, with the zinc roofing about to collapse. (Photo
by Katharine E. Low) 152
Fig. 6 Refilwe’s safe and unsafe spaces. (Photos by Katharine E. Low) 153

xxiii
xxiv LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 7 Refilwe’s safe and unsafe spaces. (Photos by Katharine E. Low) 154
Fig. 8 Segments from Noxolo’s and Babalwa’s maps. (Photo by
Katharine E. Low) 156

Chapter 4: ‘If You Want to Be Safe, You Must Stay at Home’:

Dialogical Spaces and Repressive Outcomes
Fig. 1 Brenda (Nomvulo) and Javas (Thobela) in Javas’s house. (Photo
by Katharine E. Low) 185

Chapter 5: Apertures of Possibility: A Subtle Form of Resistance?

Fig. 1 Luyanda’s and Nwabisa’s poems 234
Fig. 2 Group Poem—‘I am Possible’ 235
Fig. 3 Xoliswa, Neliswa, Nomvulo (explaining the scene) and
Nontombi. (Photos by Katharine E. Low) 247
Fig. 4 Olwethu (woman with yellow shoes) being attacked by Xoliswa.
Nomlindelo tries to prevent it. (Photo by Katharine E. Low) 249
Fig. 5 Nomvulo demonstrating her ‘techniques’ to Refilwe and
Ntombesine. (Photo by Katharine E. Low) 252
 List of Multimedias

Chapter 3: Applied Theatre: A Space ‘Safe Enough’ to Take Risks?

Multimedia 1 Participants interacting with the objects. Note that the
video has no sound. (Filmed by Katharine E. Low) 170
Multimedia 2 Nwabisa, Luyanda, and Refilwe’s dance. (Filmed by
Katharine E. Low) 172
Multimedia 3 Olwethu, Xoliswa, Nwabi, and Luyanda’s dance.
(Filmed by Katharine E. Low) 172

Chapter 5: Apertures of possibility: A Subtle Form of Resistance?

Multimedia 1 An ideal community. (Filmed by Katharine E. Low) 245

To access the multimedia, please visit http://www.katharinelow.com/apertures.

Login details are provided in the relevant chapters.

xxv
 Introduction

This book focuses on two participatory theatre-led projects designed to

explore and expand understandings of sexual health in the context of the
complex cultural and material conditions of the participants. Using a series
of reflective approaches, including further conversations with some of the
original participants undertaken over a period of ten years, this book not
only offers a nuanced reflection of what it is that occurs in the moment of
the theatrical engagement but also contributes to the debate around ways
of understanding sexual health and sexuality. Radically, these projects
explored what other ways there might be of understanding sexual health
and sexuality and began a discussion of what constitutes safe sexual health
and safe relationships for the participants themselves. Such seemingly
peripheral approaches to health education and communication could
attract criticism within the field of health promotion, especially within the
HIV/AIDS context, where disproportionate emphasis has been placed on
a tick-box list of measurable outcomes which traditionally have been seen
as having intrinsic value. However, within the field of applied theatre,
there exists a complex relationship with the idea of measurable goals. This
book considers such difficulties and challenges, including a growing num-
ber of findings arguing that the ‘measurable outcomes’ approach has not
proved effective within sexual health communication (see Katz 2009;
Kippax 2012; Parker 2004). Applied Theatre & Sexual Health
Communication: Apertures of Possibility unpacks my own professional
practice but does not claim to offer answers; rather it contributes to the

© The Author(s) 2020 1

K. E. Low, Applied Theatre and Sexual Health Communication,
Contemporary Performance InterActions,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95975-4_1
2 K. E. LOW

debates around the practice of performance-led applied theatre in the field

and extends the boundaries of ongoing critical and reflective processes
around this work.
This book is based in South Africa. It is important here to offer a note
on terminology and history to appreciate the complexities inherent in
South Africa and the language used to describe its people. Apartheid was
a systematic dehumanising structure of racialised oppression that deliber-
ately devalued particular cultures and languages of its population. In 1950,
the apartheid government’s Population Registration Act No. 30 required
South Africans to be identified and classified as belonging to one of four
racial groups: ‘Africans’ (people of indigenous African heritage),
‘Coloured’ (people of mixed racial heritage), ‘Indian’ (people of South
Asian heritage), and ‘white’ (people of European heritage), while the
1950 Group Areas Act assigned racial groups to different residential areas.
Zimitri Erasmus explains how these categories ‘made race “real” materi-
ally—by entrenching unequal access to housing, employment, remunera-
tion, education, health and other social services—and also non-materially,
by defining where one could live, what one could aspire to be, and whom
one could love’ (Erasmus 2008: 172).
Yvette Hutchison is right to point out that apartheid’s ‘essentialising of
racial or ethnic difference [...] resulted in both confusion and offense’
(2013: xi) which continues today. Although many people came to see
themselves in terms of these white given categories, these categorisations,
especially that of Coloured identity, continue to be contested. In some
instances these terminologies have been reclaimed with agency and, as
self-descriptors, is political radicalism (see Erasmus 2001 and Ruiters
2009). Today, as Erasmus argues, ‘South Africans’ lived experiences
continue to be shaped by racialised material and subjective realities. This
can be seen in both the continued racialised inequalities and in the ways
South Africans use the concept of race today’ (2008: 172). While racial
terminology remains complicated and complex, these terms are still
commonly used as a demographic variable in South Africa.
The participants in the OPOS projects identified themselves as Black
even though they grew up speaking different languages. In this book, I
use the term ‘Black South Africans’ as articulated by the Black Consciousness
Movement, in the understanding that the phrase refers and links all people
who were oppressed under apartheid. Although now a democracy, the
legacy of the structural racism from enslavement, colonialism, and
apartheid continues to impact the lives of Black South Africans.1
 INTRODUCTION 3

In 2008, I ran the first of two performative arts-based projects called

Our Place, Our Stage (OPOS). These projects, based at the Etafeni Trust
in Nyanga, explored some of the key sexual health concerns facing young
Black South Africans and their community. Nyanga is a South African
township infamous for its violent crime rate (particularly towards women)
and significantly high rates of HIV prevalence.2 A year after the project
concluded, I interviewed 24-year-old Amanda Q, a participant, and asked
what had stood out from the project for her, and what was still pertinent
in her everyday experience. She replied:

I can’t say I talk specifically about those topics3 but it is part of my language.
I don’t say ‘today I must talk about this’. It is part of the language; it is part
of the conversation when I talk to the people. It is part of me.
(Amanda Q 2009)4

The topics Amanda Q is referring to include teenage pregnancy, violence

against women, rape, sexuality, and negotiating safe physical and emo-
tional relationships. During this interview, she shared with me how her
understanding of the sexual health issues discussed in the project has
become embodied and part of her everyday language. Amanda Q contin-
ues to choose to speak about the sexual health matters facing her com-
munity in spite of the social uncertainty, the pervasiveness of the moral
codes, and the negative attention she might garner for doing so.
Five years later, in another interview with me, Amanda Q echoes her
impulse to talk about sexual health matters as her responsibility because
she knows she has important things to say, which need to be heard in her
community (2014). Understanding Amanda Q’s desire to engage in social
communication around sexual health matters became the impetus for the
analysis this book offers. In wanting to talk about sexual health matters
which are both personal and pertinent to her community, Amanda Q’s
approach demonstrates a different kind of project outcome, a different
kind of change that resulted from her experience of engaging with the
OPOS project. Scrutinising such uncurated outcomes and understanding
their significance have become a leitmotif of this book. It is important to
establish here that I am not claiming that the OPOS project changed
Amanda Q’s own sexual behaviour, but rather that, following the project,
she chooses to speak out about her knowledge gained through her engage-
ment in the OPOS project.
4 K. E. LOW

Talking about sexual health matters in South Africa is contentious and

problematic in its many social contexts (Dickinson 2014), from the highly
secured, gated communities in wealthy cities like Johannesburg to the
nearby informal housing settlements. For a person living in one of South
Africa’s townships, where access to adequate healthcare and information is
limited, it is even more difficult to imagine an everyday conversation about
having a sexually transmitted infection (STI) or teenage pregancy, much
less starting a conversation about fears over your HIV status. Therefore,
while recognising the predominant sexual conservatism of South Africa,
the views expressed by Amanda Q can be considered as subtly resisting the
status quo, but also avoiding direct confrontation.
The urgency in terms of considering sexual health matters, particularly
in light of the South African AIDS epidemic and the pervasiveness of the
secrecy, stigma and shame surrounding discussions on sexual health for
young people, remains significant in the South African context.
Furthermore, historically, the countrywide mass communication and
behaviour change-led programmes of the late 1990s and early 2000s
focusing on the ABC approach (Abstain, Be faithful, or use Condoms)
failed to resonate with the people they sought most to reach (Katz 2009;
Kippax 2012; Parker 2004). David Dickinson, a sociologist working in the
field of HIV/AIDS prevention in South Africa in the early 2000s, has tell-
ingly noted: ‘we were trying to help people without knowing much about
them’ (2014: xxii).
While difficulty in discussing sexual health matters is experienced
worldwide, the material conditions in which the participants in the OPOS
project were attempting to do so reflects their contextual societal and
moral constraints. These insights underpinned the OPOS project with the
clear intention to be different, meaningful, and discursive; it was about
knowing the participants as people. The OPOS project facilitated a space
in which participants could feel free to ask questions about sexual health
matters, gain the confidence to ask questions of themselves and others,
and thus to consider their own health and health choices within a group
setting. For anyone, the knowledge that they have a choice and can make
choices, particularly in terms of having safe sexual relationships, is
important.
Finding ways of starting conversations about sexual health is complex.
Within theatre practice that addresses sexual health, allowing time to
develop and build relationships between participants, and with the
 INTRODUCTION 5

facilitator, is essential. Paying attention to the relational and considering

the impact of the work for Amanda Q became the catalyst for a further
stage of the research, where I questioned what lay behind her words.
Through investigating moments of social communication, the networks of
care and the moments of subtle resistance that occurred during and around
the project, I began to pay attention to subtle, discrete revelations which
emerged through the work. Reflecting on the conversations in our inter-
views over the years, I began to realise the need to take a closer look at the
moments and comments that were not easily categorisable. It prompted
me to think what else the work might be doing, other than empowering
young women and men to negotiate condom use. I term this act of notic-
ing seemingly inconsequential moments apertures of possibility. In my
practice, paying attention to these apertures invited me to pause and thus
glimpse other possibilities which here were the ways in which individuals
developed their own understandings of what safe sexual health meant for
them. Engaging in this reconsideration, it became apparent that there
were a myriad of possible, ephemeral outcomes from the practice.
Applied theatre practitioners work in an instinctive way and many of us
have an instinctive response to do something when confronted by experi-
ences or events that concern us. By creating and facilitating work on a
particular issue, we have a deep investment in the work succeeding and
having value, as well as having meaning for the participants involved. But
this desire to do something troubles me and should perhaps continue to
trouble some of the assumed certainties in the applied theatre field.
Understanding what it is that happens in applied theatre practice needs to
come from defining our own values and outcomes if we are to avoid the
potential pitfalls of falling into either the rescue mode or the ‘nudge’ trap
of the neoliberal agenda.5 The need to revise the idea that applied theatre
needed to be transformative—a notion often held within the applied the-
atre field—became essential to the core values of my practice.
Reconsidering the seminal ideas of a field can lead to different ways of
understanding that discipline. For example, in his 1973 analysis of how
anthropologists and ethnographers engage with the theory of culture,
Clifford Geertz (2003) draws from Susanne Langer’s 1941 observation of
the way a grande idée arrives and galvanises the field. Examining the philo-
sophical role of meaning, Geertz describes the process that occurs the
moment a new idea becomes subsumed into theoretical and conceptual
frameworks. He notes how:
6 K. E. LOW

After we have become familiar with the new idea, however, after it has
become part of our general stock of theoretical concepts, our expectations
are brought more into balance with its actual uses, and its excessive popular-
ity is ended. […] It becomes, if it was, in truth, a seminal idea in the first
place, a permanent and enduring part of our intellectual armory. But it no
longer has the grandiose, all-promising scope, the infinite versatility of
apparent application, it once had. The second law of thermodynamics, or
the principle of natural selection […] does not explain everything, not even
everything human, but it still explains something; and our attention shifts to
isolating just what that something is. (Geertz 2003: 173–4, emphasis added)

Geertz’s idea speaks more broadly to the field of applied theatre, where an
understanding of the impact of theatrical engagement could be, or has
become, in Geertz’s words ‘a permanent and enduring part of our intel-
lectual armory’. Indeed, Geertz’s idea is pertinent to my experience of and
engagement with applied theatre practice and the process I went through
as a practitioner working in the field of sexual health communication. My
beliefs and expectations of what engagement in theatre practices should
achieve began to be more tempered. In particular, Geertz’s theorisation
prompted me to question how impact and transformation as concepts and
as tools could be reinvigorated within the field of applied theatre practice.
While this response echoes existing discussions in the field of applied
theatre (see Hughes and Nicholson 2015: 4–5), in the South African con-
text there is still a focus on transformation. Certain uses of theories of
transformation and empowerment, although radical in their inception, can
be made banal either because of the way they proliferate through various
domains of discourse and practice or because their deployment becomes
far removed from the context of their original enunciation. Rather, I sug-
gest that the power of these theories, which have been somewhat diluted
as they have become pervasive, actually holds an essence that requires a
form of re-inspection, or re-looking. Therefore, borrowing and extending
Geertz’s argument, this book explores the idea that while transformation
does ‘not explain everything’, it may still go some way in explaining what
the something in applied theatre could be. I draw on Dani Snyder-Young’s
thinking when looking at the something that occurs in applied theatre
practice. In particular, she looks at what the impact of the by-products of
the practice can be and how they emerge for the audience member or the
participants involved: ‘[t]hese byproducts are often accidental and
 INTRODUCTION 7

tangential to the original goals of a project or a production—but can have

powerful impacts on participants and audience members’ (2013: 8).
Snyder-Young’s suggestion of the emergence of unanticipated or unin-
tended by-products suggests that despite them not necessarily being the
goal of the work, this is something to be celebrated. Yet my understanding
of what that something is, is qualitatively different to Snyder-Young; my
understanding is about the spaces to see and explore different ways of
being and holding on to that knowledge—about being able to articulate
this knowledge on one’s own terms and recognising these somethings as
significant and of value. What if it is a moment of subtle resistance to the
expectation of behaving in a particular manner? Or to the expectation of
conforming to particular societal codes? Either of which, when coupled
with other similar experiences, can lead to a sense of expertise and a desire
or impetus to discuss your knowledge with others. The potential for estab-
lishing a sense of expertise or a desire to talk about sexual health is exam-
ined within the developing focus on affect and the affective experience
within the field (Thompson 2009; Shaughnessy 2012) and expertise
within the field of pedagogy and interpreting (see Moser-Mercer 2000,
2008). The impulse or compulsion outcome may appear to be a simpler,
less quantifiable outcome, but it is one which is equally, if not more,
important than an overtly measurable outcome. With this in mind, the
scope of this book is not about evaluating the benefits and disadvantages
of using applied theatre in sexual health communication. Rather it is a re-­
examination of what occurs through applied theatre practice and a realisa-
tion of what these somethings that occur could be.
There lies a greater potential, a more stable set of knowledges and
engagements for the participants involved, without such conventionally
measurable goals.6 Rather than engaging with a potentially generalised
target for outcomes, the participants were able to realise that the under-
standings they reached were true and relevant to them as individuals and
as a community. My decision to pursue such an approach facilitated the act
of participating and engaging in meaningful, dialogical theatrical experi-
ences. This led to moments where participants could question and see
alternative ways of both being and interacting. The OPOS project was an
opportunity for a new approach to sexual health communication and,
through a reflective return to the project, a deeper understanding devel-
oped of what it is that happens in the moment of theatre-making.
8 K. E. LOW

The Development and Practice of the OPOS Project

The OPOS project was developed in response to the limited success of
HIV communications and the perceived need for different approaches to
sexual health education in South Africa in the mid-2000s. The conun-
drum of HIV education in South Africa was that although well-­considered,
the practices were ineffective because young people did not have the space
or time to think about what safe sexual health meant for them within the
context in which they lived. The OPOS project ran twice; both projects
took place in the Nyanga township on the outskirts of Cape Town, in
2008. Participants were recruited by the Etafeni Trust, a charity organisa-
tion that aims to support the community in the fight against HIV. The
project was independently resourced and supported with no terms, nor
outcomes needing to be met. This freedom allowed a space in which we
could take the time to explore and question new ways of starting conversa-
tions and examine ideas of sexual health in a manner that was responsive
to the participants’ needs above any other consideration.
Each project lasted two months with three to four half-day workshops
per week. The projects began with group-building games and activities,
gradually introducing the overall theme of sexual health and highlighting
key issues through the use of image theatre techniques and improvisation.
We used instant image games as a way of brainstorming possible topics
to explore during the project.7 It was through these exercises that it
became clear that the participants had other concerns besides sexual
health, a realisation that refocused the research questions. With each
group, topics were not restricted to health concerns. The high rates of
crime, violence and unemployment were frequently noted, alongside
images of teenage pregnancy, alcohol and drug abuse and fears for
personal safety. It was evident that when considering the context of the
townships in which the participants lived, fears of violence and crime,
and for personal safety, were intrinsically linked with the participants’
perceptions and experiences of their own sexual health. For example, an
improvised scene about two young people negotiating safe sex became a
scenario where the male character was a gang leader who could not be
crossed because the repercussions of such a challenge would be too
great. Thus, recognition of the fears produced by the threat of crime or
violence became paramount in any realistic discussion regarding sexual
health, as well as the need to reflect on the broader picture of any given
situation. Accordingly, two of the research questions became focused on
 INTRODUCTION 9

discussing safe sexual health in an unsafe environment and considering

risk-taking in such contexts.
Having chosen the topics (the first group chose teenage pregnancy and
sexuality; the second group teenage pregnancy and crime), the partici-
pants then investigated these subjects in depth by interviewing members
of their community about the topics, discussing them amongst themselves
and discovering different ideas through theatre and dance-based activities
(such as monologues, activating scenes, storytelling through images and
dance, and forum theatre). This approach was informed by James
Thompson’s Theatre Action Research (TAR) theory (2006). Thompson
argues that by participating in a TAR process, practitioners and partici-
pants can employ the ‘action’, ‘the use of body and speech to demonstrate
and explain—to “critically examine”’ issues that are raised by the group
(2006: 152, emphasis in original). By participating in these different the-
atre, creative-writing and dance exercises, the young people explored their
ideas around the topics, returning to key moments in particular scenes and
unpicking the actions and words that led to a particular situation.
Ensuring there are opportunities to move beyond initial responses and
interpretations of collectively chosen topics is key for meaningful work. It
is important, as Ross Kidd notes describing his theatre work in Zimbabwe,
for practitioners and participants to shift from ‘moralising to a more com-
plex interpretation of the issues involved’ (1985: 186). This too was the
aim of this practice: to provide an environment in which the participants
could use the process (the drama, dancing, and singing exercises) to
explore and interpret the topic in depth. Thus, within specific moments in
a particular scene, certain exercises, such as spaces of safety, were employed
to heighten the understandings and discoveries that were happening in
that moment.8 These explorations formed part of the participants’ research
into the reasons why there are high rates of teenage pregnancy in their
community, but were also part of this research’s methodology. Finally,
having researched a topic for a few weeks, the group would perform
aspects of their explorations and discoveries to the community members
present at Etafeni and the Etafeni staff. This process was then repeated
with the second topic, eventually ending in a second performance that also
included a celebration of the end of the project. The last days of both
projects were focused on evaluations and celebratory games.
During the projects, I was acutely conscious that some of the tech-
niques and exercises may have been problematic. The participants may
have felt inhibited performing certain sexual health storylines (Gordon
10 K. E. LOW

1997: 2), or become ‘confus[ed] and hurt’ (Salverson 1996: 181) by the
experience of telling their story, or concerned that an observer would have
associated them with the character they were portraying (White 2006: 5).
Throughout our practice, therefore, the participants were regularly
reminded and provided with opportunities to opt out of the exercise or
the project without needing to give an explanation. In addition, using
other research techniques such as reflective writing, in-depth interviews
and visual mapping (see MacKian 2000; MacKian et al. 2003) helped to
create a space where the participants could debate the topics using their
own terms.
Not having to meet predetermined targets, particularly as I was free
from the demands of an external funding body, allowed an openness to
our exploration.9 The most striking of these outcomes were the social
communication around sexual health and the development of networks
of care, which unexpectedly included me. This is evident in the follow-up
interviews with participants. These networks of care continue to matter
to the participants, as shared by Noxi in an interview we conducted
in 2014:

you know what I liked, is that after all those years, you still thinking of us,
you never forgot about us—you still think about us. I appreciate that. It is a
good thing. […] Thank you very much Kat of thinking of me—that means
that I am very important. [laughs] I really appreciate that you are still think-
ing of us as a group at Etafeni. (2014)

These networks are hugely significant to me too; the connections, the

laughter, the sharing of stories extend beyond the practice and I value the
relationships we continue to have. Each individual has helped me develop
my thinking and my applied practice and these connections continue to
resonate into my current research and teaching. This book is a coming
together of all the conversations we undertook together.

My Professional Practice: Overview

I am a white Swiss South African woman; I was born in Johannesburg but
grew up in Geneva. As a student from the University of Glasgow, an
opportunity arose to work in Sibasa, South Africa, in 2003. Here, I worked
with 50 young people at a high school and local performance groups for
over two months, undertaking practical research into the role of theatre-
making and HIV/AIDS Awareness. Researching with the young people
and the artists, we explored what safe sexual health meant for young
 INTRODUCTION 11

people in Sibasa. This is when I started to struggle with articulating the

small somethings which occurred alongside what was considered to be the
main outcomes of the theatre practice. My practice continued to develop
following research on arepp: Theatre for Life and DramAidE in 2003 and
the research I undertook in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 2006 and 2007.
Here, I observed how Tanzanian-based responses and Theatre for
Development (TfD) were being used to address questions of safe sex and
female genital mutilation. I returned to South Africa in 2008 to undertake
this practice research because I felt that there was something awry in how
interventions addressed the topics of sexual health. Furthermore, for
many, there lacked places for any conversations to happen. I had the sense
that, at the time, some of the sexual health communication initiatives were
not working, and what governmental responses there were had a tone that
was dismissive and blaming and seemed to be solely founded on the
assumption that something was wrong and needed fixing.
When I first started working in the field, the advance of the HIV epi-
demic and the lack of acknowledgement and action from the South African
government in supporting people living with HIV, were alarming to me.
Tracing back my involvement in the field of sexual health communication,
the OPOS project originated from my intentions, my ideas, and my need
to do something to respond to the high rates of HIV infection and gender-­
based violence in South Africa. A radio debate in 2008 illustrates some of
the pressing needs presented by the South African HIV epidemic and
formed part of the impetus for this book’s research. The debate was hosted
by SAfm, the national broadcaster. One panellist, Mark Heywood—at the
time the deputy chair of the South African National AIDS Council and
director of the AIDS Law Project—emphasised how much more work was
still required in HIV prevention. He referred to the daily infection rates of
between 1000 and 1500 people as an indication of the scale of the chal-
lenge. Another panellist, Dr. Sue Goldstein, the Programme Director at
the Soul City Institute,10 drew attention to the effort required in order to
improve communication around HIV treatment by illustrating the diffi-
culties faced under the then Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-­
Msimang: ‘[i]n the communication sense, we have taken one step forward
and three steps back, because each time we tried to communicate about
treatment, for example, our minister came out and said treatment was
poisonous, don’t take it’ (cited in Ross 2008).
As the media reported at the time: ‘The past eight years—or even lon-
ger—of AIDS denialism in South Africa have been tragic and have cost
12 K. E. LOW

many lives, but the time has now come for a new and positive approach to the
pandemic’ (Ross 2008, emphasis added). I saw different ways of having
conversations around sexual health, sexuality and sexual desire, and HIV
prevention beginning to occur in other theatre organisations and media-­
based responses to HIV. These included Pieter Dirk Uys’s For Fact’s Sake,
which I saw in 2003 in various schools in Port Elizabeth,11 loveLife,12 and
Soul City, which all informed the OPOS project’s purpose, which was also
about offering a new way of having these very conversations.
With the traditional health education interventions in the past
appearing to be stigmatising and ineffective, it became apparent to me
that there was an urgent need to find different ways of having these
conversations. The ideas and suggestions offered in this book trace a
journey through my original intentions, developments, and later reflec-
tions to offer different ways to discuss sex, sexuality and sexual health
within a South African context. The OPOS project outlines ways of
starting conversations that are more flexible for individuals to develop,
think, and articulate what it is that sexual health and safe sex means to
them. A central tenet of this book is that within this urgent and complex
field of sexual health communication, there is no one-size-fits-all
approach.

Contentious and Dangerous: The Difficulty

of Talking Openly About Sexual Health

When I use the phrase ‘discussing sexual health matters’, I am working

from the understanding that this is not an everyday topic of conversation.
This type of communication is especially delicate because talking about
sexual health matters has a history of being secretive, and for many shame-
ful, irrespective of where a person lives. Questions or behaviours that do
not conform, in that they do not demonstrate normal or normative behav-
iour (for example, heterosexual relations), might be judged as morally
degenerate and lead to social stigmatisation, especially within a traditional-
ist context. Thus information is shared furtively, between friends, to avoid
any social repercussions. For those who do pose questions, there is the risk
that such questioning may be dangerous and can, following social anthro-
pologist Mary Douglas’s 1979 theorisation of the social construction of
dirt, lead to them being ostracised or tainted and hence at risk of being
associated with such social disorder or deviant behaviours.13 It thus
becomes shameful and potentially dangerous to vocalise and discuss topics
 INTRODUCTION 13

such as sexual preferences, contraception, abortions or Pre-exposure

Prophylaxis (PrEP).
At the time of the OPOS project, global safe sex programmes were
both didactic and physically focused; sexual health was taught mechani-
cally, whereby the prevention of sexually transmitted infections was a result
of using a physical barrier (using a condom) or abstaining from sexual
relations.14 Such programmes often took a ‘bootstrap prevention’ approach
(Schulman 2012: 44) and, as a result, tended to medicalise, de-humanise,
and thus stigmatise sexual activity and sexuality. Indeed, until recently,
much of sexual health education work has stemmed from a message-driven
approach to raise awareness, often initiated by the NGOs or the national
health departments that fund education programmes. Such approaches
have been neither particularly successful nor emancipating, and have given
little attention to gender inequalities (Katz 2009: 3–4). Furthermore, tra-
ditionally, Theatre in Health Education (THE) projects often anticipated
visible changes in health behaviour that would have been planned and
worked towards by the organisers, the facilitators, and the funders. For
example, in conventional HIV/AIDS awareness theatre projects in South
Africa, participants were encouraged to understand how their ways of liv-
ing were problematic, risky or unhealthy, and taught to change their sex-
ual behaviour patterns accordingly. Crucially, these desired changes in
sexual behaviour were outcomes that could be measured and impacts that
could be observed.
The poverty, health and violence statistics of Nyanga and the surround-
ing townships in the Western Cape can appear devastating, but it is not the
complete picture. From a big picture perspective, Nyanga has significantly
higher rates of HIV prevalence compared with the national average.
Unemployment stands at 45%, with over 74% of households on a monthly
income of less than R320015 (City of Cape Town 2013: 4, 2). Following
the release of the South African National Crime Statistics for 2016–2017,
Nyanga has remained the ‘murder capital’ of South Africa for the sixth
year in a row (Head 2017) and is top of the list of worst precincts for
sexual crimes (Crime Stats SA 2014). While fear of crime is high for
all South Africans, it is particularly so for Black South Africans residing
in townships and informal dwellings, even though fear of crime is in fact
higher than the actual incidence of reported criminal activity. Nevertheless,
the fears of the population remain real and relevant (Centre for the Study
of Violence and Reconciliation 2007). Benjamin Roberts, a researcher at
the Human Sciences Research Council, suggests that fear of crime is often
14 K. E. LOW

ignored and is something which, he argues, fails to take into account the
‘complex and detrimental effects’ fear can have on a person’s quality of life
and ‘the sense of trust and social cohesion within communities’ (2008: 9).
The culture of fear which exists in South Africa can sometimes operate as
a form of behaviour control. People make decisions based on fear of attack
or remain concerned about their choices based on the risks to which they
might be exposing themselves. While it is necessary to understand the
context, it is important not to lose sight of lived lives of individuals who
also fall in love, parent, study for qualifications and have meaningful jobs.16
Viewing Nyanga’s statistics as solely debilitating neglects the legacy
of racialised abuse committed by the successive colonial and apartheid
governments before the new South Africa was established. Globally, a lack
of investment and infrastructure, continued inequality and the actual dis-
parity between rich and poor can be linked to increased violent crime
(United Nations 2006, cited in Gie 2009: 4). Specifically, the fears for
safety amongst Nyanga residents are real; it is the spatial injustice and
social uncertainty created through the ghettoisation of sections of the
population that have the greatest impact on the levels of poverty, health
and violence (Achmat 2014; Sefali 2014a).17 Such social uncertainty can
lead to the creation of tightly networked and self-governing communities
where particular social mores and codes are established and lived by. Acts
of vigilantism and social justice are condoned in Nyanga and there are risks
involved if you deviate from the norm or socially accepted behaviours
(Sefali 2014b; Martin 2010; Swanepoel and Duvenhage 2007). The act of
speaking about sexual health sets up the potential for increasing the vul-
nerability of an individual’s social position and can put them at risk.

The Moral Pitfalls of Effectiveness:

The Impact Question
Before OPOS began, I planned to measure the ‘effectiveness’ of the
research by following the evaluation approaches from behaviour change
and health education studies. I felt a professional and personal pressure to
prove that some positive behaviour change would occur, thereby demon-
strating the potential positive impact of the OPOS practice. One way of
demonstrating impact is to examine how participants are influenced or
‘nudged’ into making desirable choices, which is something that Richard
Thaler and Cass Sunstein (2009) argue in their definition and use of choice
 INTRODUCTION 15

architecture (discussed in “Chapter 4: ‘If You Want to be Safe, You Must

Stay at Home’: Dialogical Spaces and Repressive Outcomes”). At the
time, and on reflection, such an approach falls into a neoliberal push to
impose pre-­determined outcomes on a particular group of participants. As
I began the practice, it also did not feel appropriate to chart people’s pro-
fessed changes in behaviour (in terms of keeping themselves safe).
Furthermore, the material and topics discussed in our practice were so
much richer and more complex than mere behaviour change. To narrow
the results of the work into choices of whether to wear a condom or to not
fall pregnant, felt redundant and not a truthful representation of the com-
plexity of our explorations within the project.
Evidencing impact is the perennial challenge for the applied theatre
researcher. Within the field, we have historically seen how understandings
of what the practice results in are quickly linked to claims of transforma-
tion, change or empowerment (Schechner 1981; Taylor 2003; Bourgault
2003; Odhiambo 2005). Indeed, transformation in terms of changed
behaviours or empowerment to take control over one’s health has been a
key aspect of most sexual health campaigns. Of course, this is understand-
ably so within a context of preventing infection from HIV, but claims of
transformation and impact through project engagement remain challenges
within the field of applied practice. My dis-ease with the concept of trans-
formation and empowerment in the field of sexual health awareness work
emerged from observing and engaging with applied practice in South
Africa (in 2003 and between 2007 and 200918) and in Tanzania (in 2006
and 2007) which did not seem to be resulting in the changes or ‘empow-
erments’ that were being claimed by the facilitators and organisations.
Part of this claim-culture was funder-driven, as the organisations needed
to evidence change and value for the investments that fund their work
(Low 2006). The practice I observed in these settings did not appear to
demonstrate signs of transformation or empowerment for the participants,
and changes were sometimes claimed with little evidence of any shifts in
behaviours. There was, perhaps, a wider acknowledgement of the context
in which the participants were living, but with little critique of the diffi-
culty of asking people to change their own particular behaviours. However,
I recognise that today the language of outcomes has shifted with regard to
sexual health communication in South Africa; projects are now talking
about more complex outcomes in diverse ways. This consideration of
existing practice led to one of the main drivers behind the development of
16 K. E. LOW

the OPOS project: to explore different approaches to beginning

conversations about sex and sexual health with young people in South
Africa by acknowledging the ethical difficulty that lies behind telling
young people to change their sexual behaviour choices.

Disrupting Notions of Value: A Responsive,

Conscious Research Approach
The OPOS project was led by action research questions that could only be
researched through practice. Accordingly, OPOS was both a project and
an approach to practice research.19 The project had two purposes: firstly,
as practice, it was intended to use the theatre space as an opportunity for
the individual to express their ideas on sexual health concerns in their
community. Secondly, as research, the project was designed to examine
the use of applied theatre in a particular field (sexual health communica-
tion) and context (Nyanga) in order to reflect on the practice and wider
research questions emerging from it. Consequently, this book also offers
an articulation of a practice research project within the field of applied
theatre.
As the practice of the OPOS project was participatory theatre, the prac-
tice research was not solely conducted by me—the participants’ ideas and
interests have also contributed to this book. Here, I mean that the research
process itself was participatory, because during the projects the partici-
pants conducted research themselves, bringing their views and findings
back into the workshops where we explored these ideas through the the-
atre practice. A further layer of the practice was that the participants took
these ideas out of the workshop space and into their communities. Practice
research is an integral part of my applied theatre practice and, as a research
approach, it is of particular interest to the field (Kershaw and Nicholson
2011; Nelson 2013; Smith and Dean 2009). For example, discussing the
importance of practice-based research for applied theatre, Jenny Hughes,
Jenny Kidd and Catherine McNamara note that while the methods of
research are ‘subject to multiple pressures’, the participatory ethos of the
practice ‘often means that the participants are integrated into the research’
(2011: 186). Drawing on their own research case studies, Hughes et al.
argue that such a practice-focused research approach, one which is
responsive to the questions emerging from the practice, can challenge the
‘knowledge discourses concomitant with their contexts’ (2011: 187).
Specifically, they suggest that such an approach ‘accommodates as well as
 INTRODUCTION 17

disrupts rigidly predetermined notions of value’ (2011: 190). Arguments

in favour of employing participatory theatre for research purposes empha-
sise how the data produced is more accessible to the participants because
the drama provides a space that acknowledges different forms of commu-
nication (Fitzgerald 2007). By working collaboratively with the partici-
pants, the research can become ‘co-produced’ (McCammon 2007: 950).
Overall, the key aspect is that using participatory theatre or applied theatre
techniques creates the possibility of different forms of knowledge produc-
tion. Maria Stuttaford et al. argue that applied theatre is ‘a medium that
offers clarification […], not only using the spoken word but also the eru-
dition of signed meaning through images and the universal language of
physical theatre’ (2006: 33).
Following the need to consider alternative forms of ‘knowing and rep-
resenting research’ (Conrad 2004: 15), participatory theatre is often used
as a research method for numerous purposes, including: advocacy
(McCammon 2007); investigating issues such as questions of asylum and
refuge in the UK (Norris 1997; Jeffers 2011); data validation (Stuttaford
et al. 2006); and dissemination of research findings (Gray 2003).
Participatory theatre practice, particularly Michael Rohd’s Hope is Vital
project (1998), Julie McCarthy’s Enacting Participatory Development
(2004), Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed approaches to practice
(2002), and Thompson’s theory of ‘theatre action research’ (2006:
147–72), were drawn on for the development of my research. The work
of these practitioners was influential because they employ a collaborative
ethos and emphasise different forms of knowledge production, thereby
giving credibility to emotive and sensual knowledge alongside more objec-
tive understandings, and valuing different kinds of data.
This book is not a how-to guide for practice research, but it introduces
some ways of approaching practice research. I remain conscious of the
tone of this research, particularly of my own subjectivity and the potential
for the lives of the participants to be sensationalised and also categorised.
The fact that the findings from this project were messy, complicated, and
embedded demanded that I re-examined my practice to consider what I
was noticing. After the project formally concluded, a group of us have
remained in contact, meeting when possible and sharing stories about our
lives. The project was and remains about opportunities to interact with
each other. Embedded research is an approach that sociologist Dickinson
describes as getting to know the participants, not solely by ‘spending time
listening to their life history’ but by hearing about the participants’ lived
18 K. E. LOW

experiences, by getting ‘to know some of the people and places that make
up their lives’ (2014: 330–1). In this project, embedded research involved
crossing, naming and acknowledging the social distances and differences
in privilege between the participants and me, generating a space in which
a complex understanding could be created and shared about the lives and
experiences of everyone in the project: a space to explore and understand
what safe sexual health means for each individual. In this instance, the
research was about building a deep understanding of the participants’
lives, experiences, and ideas through meaningful engagement, as illus-
trated in Noxi’s comment where she expresses surprise that I am still
thinking about them all, long after the project has concluded. My research
findings do not lend themselves to neat categorisations, nor can they be
readily identified as ‘successes’ because the longer I engage with the par-
ticipants, the more complex their ‘data’ becomes. As the participants
encounter different events or circumstances, their views and understand-
ings continue to change, highlighting the constantly evolving nature of
these research findings.
I acknowledge the privilege of the time I have been able to have to sit
in a reflective thinking space. While I remain aware of my professional
gains from working on OPOS, I value the work beyond the boundaries of
an academic research project and I acknowledge that I appreciate hearing
that some of the participants also valued the relationship outside the
domain of the project. We speak together, enjoying the mutually pleasur-
able act of laughing about our children’s antics and taking joy from the
milestones in each other’s lives: Siyabonga becoming a dad, getting mar-
ried, and having a job that comes with health insurance; Pam studying
music at university; Olwethu working as an occupational therapist in a care
facility for people with severe disabilities and loving it. Our conversations
have brought about a deeper reinforcement of the fundamental reciproc-
ity implicit within applied work, of how much I have gained personally
and professionally from working with the participants of OPOS. These
ongoing conversations, coupled with the time and space for my reflection,
have helped me articulate why it is so fundamentally important for
individuals to have creative spaces within which to discuss, explore and
articulate, on their own terms, their health needs and desires.
I also remain conscious of my ethics of practice which, in essence, are
to analyse and engage in research as objectively as possible; an idea which
prompted the focus of this research in the first instance—to consider more
honestly and simply what it is that occurs (if anything) in that moment of
 INTRODUCTION 19

theatre-making? Thus, while I refuse to claim outright improvement or

transformation, I believe that there is something that occurs in the process
of taking part in applied theatre practice. Specifically in the context of
sexual health communication, I argue that it is about creating opportuni-
ties to consider the whole person, of having a space for sense-making on
one’s own terms which can sometimes create an impulse for discussion or
subtle resistance, which in these contexts can be seen as radical acts.
The outcome of the theatre project was not, for Amanda Q and some
of the participants, a change in their sexual behaviour. Rather there was a
subtle difference in that some of the participants were quietly talking and
discussing the sexual health concerns facing their community because they
felt it was important, because they knew what they were talking about, and
because it formed part of their hopes for their futures. Thus, drawing from
this understanding, and using the three ideas which emerged as key areas
during the practice—notions of safe spaces, creative risk-taking and its
outcomes, and my discomfort with the concepts of empowerment and
transformation—this book offers suggestions as to what the something
might be that takes place through an analysis of the OPOS practice.
Ultimately, this study argues that in terms of sexual health communica-
tion, one significant outcome that emerged throughout the practice was
the opportunity to explore and discuss sexual health topics in an individual
embodied manner which created the start of social communication net-
works about sexual health for individuals within their communities.

How to Read the Book: A Subtle Something

in Practice

This book is structured in two parts: a conceptual and contextual frame

(Part I) and an in-depth analysis of my practice (Part II). Part I sets out
the fields of study—sexual health and applied theatre—and frames the
research within a specific context through its two chapters. “Chapter 1:
HIV/AIDS and the Challenge for Socially Engaged Theatre-Making”
situates the challenge of needing to do something in applied theatre
within the context of the sexual health field and introduces theories of
social communication and networks. It also engages with the applied and
social theatre and performance literature and the influences of theatre for
development and health education theatre, with specific reference to
South Africa. “Chapter 2: The Context for Our Place, Our Stage”, then
moves on to explore the context in which OPOS was based, beginning
20 K. E. LOW

with an outline of the history of South Africa, noting in particular the

long-lasting effects of apartheid on the health of the nation. This chapter
elucidates the specific context of the project by outlining the historical
narratives surrounding the Nyanga township, discussing Etafeni, the NGO
where OPOS was based and, finally, introducing the participants who
worked on OPOS.
Part II drills down to consider what it is that occurs in the moment of
performative engagement, starting with “Chapter 3: Applied Theatre: A
Space ‘Safe Enough’ to Take Risks?”, which examines the concept of a safe
space within which to practice theatre and facilitates discussions about
sexual health concerns. Through an analysis of the concept of safety and
how the participants viewed their own safety, I show that incorporating
the sensations and emotions associated with unsafe spaces outside the
workshop room can make discussions around safe sex more tangible.20
Using bell hooks’s idea of a site of resistance (1990), I introduce the
notion that a space in which subtle moments of resistance can occur places
a new emphasis on the importance of a space for sense-making on one’s
own terms. Here, resistance emerges from a space within which to tangi-
bly discuss what safe sex could be and this discussion informs “Chapter 4:
‘If You Want to be Safe, You Must Stay at Home’: Dialogical Spaces and
Repressive Outcomes”, which examines risk-taking and considers the
problems when outcomes of the theatre practice feed the development of
a moral narrative used as a form of behavioural discipline. I explore the
possible dangers of creative risk-taking for the participants and consider
the opportunities for tactical actions which in some contexts can be seen
as radical acts, as they allowed participants to develop subtler means of
deviating or resisting the status quo. “Chapter 5: Apertures of Possibility: A
Subtle Form of Resistance?” examines the struggle to identify what
occurred in the practice and returns to the notion of sense-making, with a
special focus on the individual and her or his body. Examining performa-
tive utterances and bodily marking, I suggest that the act of embodying
particular actions through performance may be, first, a subtle form of
resistance (by doing something through performance that is not possible
in reality, such as the opportunity to devise and perform hoped-for situa-
tions) and, second, may lead to an impetus or desire to continue question-
ing and discussing sexual health outside the space of the workshop.
Ultimately I conclude that through noticing and paying attention to the
apertures of possibility, the something which occurred was subtle forms of
resistance through which the participants were able to make sense on their
own terms.
 INTRODUCTION 21

My book offers different examples as to what this something could be,

what sense-making or subtle resistance could look like for individual par-
ticipants. These forms of resistance can either be an individual moment or
be comprised of different effects, such as a tangible discussion, an oppor-
tunity for tactical action, a subtle statement of resistance, an impetus to
discuss sexual health, or something else entirely. However, they can be
none of these things too—there may be no long-term affect, bar a tempo-
rary moment of joy, hope, excitement, or embarrassment at performing.
These moments may not appear to be radical or significant to the reader,
but for the OPOS participants involved, such actions were quietly radical.
And in hindsight, revolutionary for my practice.

Notes
1. For further discussion and theorisation of this, see Pumla Gqola’s, What is
Slavery to Me? Postcolonial/Slave Memory in Post-Apartheid South Africa
(2010), and Zimitri Erasmus’s Race Otherwise: Forging a New Humanism
for South Africa (2017).
2. Around the time of the project, Nyanga had an HIV prevalence rate of
28.1%, significantly higher than the City of Cape Town’s prevalence of
5.7% (City of Cape Town 2006b: 2; Department of Health 2007: 7–8).
3. Those topics were sexual health, sexuality, HIV, and teenage pregnancy,
which the participants chose to focus on during the OPOS projects.
4. Today, Amanda Q is a geriatric nurse working in a government-run care
home in Khayelitsha, a township on the edges of Cape Town, South
Africa. The OPOS participants are named with their permission, while
other people who were interviewed as part of the project, like audience
members, have not been identified by their real names.
5. The concept of ‘nudge’ is discussed in more detail below.
6. This idea fits with current thinking around the ‘often questionable rhetoric
of the arts’ “socio-economic impact”, and their role in local development’
and the challenges to the notion of impact as debated by Eleonora Belfiore
(2015: 96), amongst others.
7. Discussing image theatre, Augusto Boal explains that it is ‘based on the
multiple mirror of the gaze of others—a number of people looking at the
same image, and offering their feelings, what is evoked for them, what
their imaginations throw up around that image’ (2002: 175, emphasis in
original).
8. For example, working from an improvised scene in which a couple is trying
to negotiate safe sex, the participants examined different status positions
through playing the game of power. Then, returning to the scene, some of
22 K. E. LOW

the participants took turns trying to incorporate the different power posi-
tions into the improvisation, while the rest of the group observed what the
impact was.
9. This is discussed further in “Chapter 1: HIV/AIDS and the Challenge for
Socially Engaged Theatre-Making” and “Chapter 5: Apertures of Possibility:
A Subtle Form of Resistance?”.
10. The AIDS Law Project was a non-profit legal and research organisation set
up to support people living with HIV who face discrimination due to the
stigma around AIDS. The AIDS Law Project was relaunched as part of
SECTION27 in 2010. SECTION27 is a public interest law centre which
works towards equality and social justice (SECTION27 2010). The Soul
City Institute was an NGO dedicated to health and development commu-
nication across Africa. In 2016 it was relaunched as the Soul City Institute
for Social Justice to focus on equality for young women and girls (Soul City
Institute for Social Justice 2016).
11. For more information see Uys (2002, 2018).
12. Established in 1999 to focus on the prevention of youth HIV infection,
loveLife continues this drive alongside holistic youth development. For
more information, please see loveLife (2019).
13. For further discussion on Douglas’s theorisation of dirt, please see
“Chapter 4: ‘If You Want to be Safe, You Must Stay at Home’: Dialogical
Spaces and Repressive Outcomes”.
14. This is debated further in “Chapter 1: HIV/AIDS and the Challenge for
Socially Engaged Theatre-Making”.
15. R3200 is approximately £187 and the cost of living in South Africa is high.
For example, a loaf of bread costs between R10 and R15 (60p–85p) and
two litres of milk cost approximately R25–R30 (£1.50–£1.75). These fig-
ures are based on the exchange rate in April 2018.
16. This is examined in more depth in “Chapter 2: The Context for Our Place,
Our Stage” and “Chapter 3: Applied Theatre: A Space ‘Safe Enough’ to
Take Risks?”.
17. The segregation of South African society began with the colonial govern-
ment, worsened throughout apartheid in South Africa and remains in place
today predominately due to economics. This is discussed in more detail in
“Chapter 2: The Context for Our Place, Our Stage”.
18. Here I am not including the practices of arepp:Theatre for Life or
DramAidE as their epic reach of participants and their in-depth projects
were, and remain, sensitive and responsive to shifts and focus and the needs
of their participants.
19. Practice research is used here to embrace the sometimes distracting defini-
tion between practice as research and practice-based research. I use prac-
tice research to mark a move forward in the discussion that sees all theatre
and performance research to be actively engaged with practice.
 INTRODUCTION 23

20. The term ‘tangible’, defined as that which ‘can be grasped by the mind or
dealt with as fact; definite, objective; substantial’ (Shorter Oxford English
Dictionary 2007: 3175), is employed here to describe how the elusive
notion of ‘safe’ sexual health (and what this could mean) was momentarily
made definite and distinct (i.e. tangible) through the drama and dance-­
based explorations of safe and unsafe spaces.

References
Achmat, Z. 2014. “South Africa: Apartheid Geography and Murder in Cape
Town.” GroundUp. September 30, 2014. http://allafrica.com/sto-
ries/201409300427.html. Accessed on October 28, 2014.
Amanda Q. 2009. Interview with the author on November 4. Etafeni, Nyanga,
Cape Town. (Digital recording in possession of author).
Amanda Q. 2014. Interview with the author on August 11. Long Street, Cape
Town. (Digital recording in possession of author).
Belfiore, E. 2015. “‘Impact,’ ‘Value’ and ‘Bad Economics’: Making Sense of the
Problem of Value in the Arts and Humanities.” Arts and Humanities in Higher
Education 14, no. 1: 95–110.
Boal, A. 2002. Games for actors and non-actors. 2nd ed. Translated by Adrian
Jackson. London and New York: Routledge.
Bourgault, L. M. 2003. Playing for life: Performance in Africa in the age of
AIDS. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR). 2007. The Violent
Nature of Crime in South Africa: A Concept Paper for the Justice, Crime
Prevention and Security Cluster. Braamfontein: CSVR. https://www.csvr.org.
za/docs/crime/compatibility_mode.pdf. Accessed on February 11, 2010.
City of Cape Town. 2006b. Western Cape: Socio-Economic Profile: City of Cape
Town. Compiled by PGWC, Cape Town. https://www.westerncape.gov.za/
text/2007/1/city_of_cape_town_se_profile_optimised.pdf. Accessed on
June 16, 2019.
City of Cape Town. 2013. City of Cape Town—2011 Census Suburb Nyanga. July
2013. Report compiled by Strategic Development Information and GIS
Department (SDI & GIS), City of Cape Town. http://resource.capetown.gov.
za/documentcentre/Documents/Maps%20and%20statistics/2011_Census_
CT_Suburb_Nyanga_Profile.pdf. Accessed on June 2, 2019.
Conrad, D. 2004. “Exploring Risky Youth Experiences: Popular Theatre as a
Participatory, Performative Research Method.” International Journal of
Qualitative Methods 3, no. 1: 12–25.
Crime Stats SA. 2014. “Worst Ten Precincts: Largest Number of Reported Crimes
in Western Cape.” Crime Stats SA. http://www.crimestatssa.com/toptenby-
province.php?ShowProvince=Western%20Cape. Accessed on October 24, 2014.
Another random document with
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Mrs. Charteris spoke with a kindling eye and the color suffused her
smooth cheek. Isabey looked at her admiringly. Her matronly beauty
was resplendent, and the high courage which made her eager to
give this darling only son to her country was worthy of the brave
days of old. Then Isabey spoke again of Angela, but evidently under
restraint.
“I wish,” he said, “that you, with your determination and high-
handedness, would stand by Mrs. Neville Tremaine and help to
disprove this horrid suspicion against her. It is ridiculous, as I say.
She has nothing to tell about military matters that would be worth
any man’s listening. She knows nothing; how can she?”
“One can hear a good many things,” replied Mrs. Charteris.
“My dear madam, you can depend upon it, the military authorities at
the North know quite as much as Mrs. Neville Tremaine or any other
girl in this county can tell them. Her position is painful enough, God
knows, and this frightful suspicion makes it that much worse. Only
exercise your own sound sense for a moment, Mrs. Charteris, and
see how impossible it is that Angela—that Mrs. Neville Tremaine
should be able to communicate anything.”
But Mrs. Charteris was obstinate. She was not a military critic, and
was well convinced, as she said, that people knew a great many
things. At last, however, she heard Isabey say under his breath:
“Poor, poor Angela!” Then Mrs. Charteris’s excellent heart was
touched. She put her hand impulsively into Isabey’s and said:
“After all, it may not be true, and I will stand Angela’s friend.”
Isabey pressed her plump hand softly and said in his musical,
insinuating voice:
“I knew you would be intelligent enough to see the absurdity of the
story, and kind enough not to hound that poor girl with the rest. I feel
for her very deeply. My strong attachment to Richard Tremaine since
our university days and the kindness of the Tremaines to my
stepmother and her daughter has touched me deeply. The thought of
the grief and mortification this story might bring to them is very
painful to me.”
Mrs. Charteris, being a woman, suspected that there were other
reasons than the attachment to Richard Tremaine and Colonel and
Mrs. Tremaine’s kindness which accounted for Isabey’s interest in
Angela. The novel thought pierced her mind that it was possible for a
man to feel a deep personal and secret interest in a married woman,
but he must be a very peculiar man, thought Mrs. Charteris, for she
had never known such a thing to be in Virginia. She looked at
Isabey, therefore, with new interest, and concluded that the French
Creoles were very different from the Virginians.
“Now,” she said triumphantly, “you must have snack.”
Isabey gracefully submitted, and drank a couple of glasses of
blackberry wine, and ate some cakes with coriander seeds in them
and sweetened with molasses, handed by the successor of the ex-
plowman. When Isabey was leaving, Mrs. Charteris went with him
out upon the porch and pointed to a great snow-covered field which
the year before had been down in clover and which another season
would grow cotton. She uttered at the same time the axiom of the
whole South:
“As long as we can raise cotton we can whip the North. Cotton is
king!”
Isabey returned to Harrowby uncertain whether or not Angela had an
ally in Mrs. Charteris.
After a month of storm and snow and sleet, Nature smiled once
more. The days grew long, the sun shone with the ardor of spring,
and under the melting snow the first tender shoots of grass made a
bold stand. Isabey watched for the first time the drama of the
development of the garden—a drama interpreted by Angela.
On a still, sunny March day he limped up and down the garden path
with Angela, who talked with lips and eyes to him. She examined the
tracks her little feet made along the path and laughed at them.
“You see,” she said, “I am wearing a pair of new shoes made by
Uncle Mat, the shoemaker who makes for the servants. I haven’t had
any new shoes for more than a year, not since the war began. So I
had Uncle Mat make me a pair in order to save my best shoes for
the time when I shall go to Neville. Uncle Mat can’t sew shoes—he
only pegs them; and see what funny marks the pegs leave in the
damp ground.”
Isabey looked at the tracks of the clumsy little shoes, but not even
Uncle Mat could wholly disguise the high-bred beauty of Angela’s
feet.
“Last night,” she continued, “I forgot all about the shoes being
pegged, and after I went upstairs sat for a long time with my feet to
the fire. The heat drew every blessed peg out of the soles, and this
morning Uncle Mat had to drive them back again, to stay until I put
my feet to the fire again. Oh, I don’t mind this; it is just like Marie
Antoinette and the Princess Elizabeth in the Temple!”
Pacing slowly up and down the broad, bright walk, she told with a
grave and serious air the story of the garden.
“Now,” she said, “in the springtime the overture begins. I have never
been to an opera, but I know exactly how it all goes; Mr. Lyddon and
Richard and Neville have told me. First the flutes and violins begin
softly, you know, and their odor is delicate. Then presently the other
flowers join in this silent music; the snowballs and the syringas are
added to the orchestra. I always think the big lilac bushes and the
calycanthus, that delicious sweet-smelling shrub which grows all
over the place, are like the bass viol and the violoncello in the
orchestra, they are so strong and overpowering. And the great pink
crape-myrtle is like the big drum; it blooms so loudly. The little
flowers, like the lilies of the valley and the violets and the hyacinths,
are like the new prima donnas, who are young and timid and afraid
to sing out loud. But then come the roses. They are the great prima
donnas, who are confident of themselves and know they will be
applauded and come out smiling and sing as loud as ever they
please. And the whole opera begins: June, July, August, September,
October, and November, when the curtain comes down and the
music stops until the next performance, which begins again in
March.”
Isabey smiled. After all, in many ways she was only a poetic and
fanciful child. Her imagination, stimulated by the reading of many
books, was vigorous, but she had in her the spirit of daring and
adventure, and her eyes and cheeks quickly kindled into flame at the
mere mention of action. He wondered what was to be the path her
delicate feet were to tread through life. If only he might walk beside
her forever!
The snow was all gone from the garden and the lane, but lingered in
patches in the woods, and in the old graveyard in the field there were
still white drifts upon the graves.
“In a week or two,” said Angela, “I will take you into the woods and
you can see the pink buds of the chestnut trees. They have the most
delicious fragrance of all the trees.”
“I shan’t be here by that time,” replied Isabey quietly. “When I am
able to walk as far as the woods I shall be able to return to duty.”
He watched her as he spoke, knowing well that at the mention of
separation the blood would drop out of her cheeks and her eyes
would become dark and troubled, like a pool over which a cloud is
passing. Nevertheless, Angela spoke quickly the thought in her
heart:
“Of course. A soldier can’t shirk his duty—you least of all. I could just
as soon imagine Neville or Richard seeking inglorious ease as you.
Though Neville is with the North, it makes me proud to feel that no
Southern man skulks at home.”
“That is true,” remarked Isabey. “Most of them want to go, and the
others dare not remain behind; the ladies won’t let them.”
“Do you mean to say,” indignantly asked Angela, “that any Southern
man would stay at home now?”
“A few would,” coolly replied Isabey. “But they are more afraid of
their womenkind than they are of Northern bullets. I know several
men of my own age in New Orleans who would have been very glad
to find business in Paris until this little zephyr blows over, but not one
of them ever dared to mention as much to his wife or mother or
sisters.”
“How long will the war last?” asked Angela.
“Until there is not enough lead in the Confederacy to fire another
round. We are not only fighting for our independence but for our
whole social and economic structure. No people ever had so great a
stake in war. How do we know what will happen if the war goes
against us? A military despotism may be established; we may be
reduced to a position like Carthage!”
Angela paused awhile and then asked:
“When will you go away from Harrowby?”
“Next week, I think. You see, although I am not able to go out on the
firing line just yet, I can do a great many things in camp. I have
written, therefore, to General Farrington at the camp of instruction,
offering my services for ordinary regimental duties and saying I can
report next week. And I have written my servant, whom I left with a
brother officer in my battery, to report at the instruction camp as soon
as possible; so you see I am preparing to break up my winter
quarters.”
“Then,” said Angela, “we must do everything we can to get you in
good condition and supply you with some comforts as soon as you
are in camp. I shall give you some tallow candles and blackberry
wine and everything else a soldier can use.”
How well fitted she was, thought Isabey, to be a soldier’s wife! No
idle repining, no tears to make the parting harder, no timid
apprehensions to be combated, were in this girl, but calm courage,
hope, cheerfulness, and faith.
That day a letter was received from Mrs. Tremaine. Richard was well
recovered and able to join his battery. His mother and Archie were
then in Richmond, staying at the hotel with Madame Isabey and
Adrienne. Adrienne was a great belle, and their little drawing-room
was full of officers every evening, riding in from the surrounding
country for an hour or two, to listen to Adrienne’s pretty French
songs and delightful conversation.
Mrs. Tremaine fully expected Adrienne and Madame Isabey to return
with her, but they had received a pressing invitation from some
friends above Richmond to spend a month or two, and had accepted
it. They promised, however, to return to Harrowby in the early
summer and to remain during the war. Archie was much
disappointed because Madame Isabey would not return to Harrowby
with them, and declared he admired her more than any of the pretty
girls he had seen so far in his career. Mrs. Tremaine hoped that
Captain Isabey was improving and that Angela had omitted nothing
to make him comfortable. Hard as the parting had been with Richard,
Mrs. Tremaine wrote she could no longer be satisfied away from
Colonel Tremaine, and hoped, as this was the longest separation of
their married life, that they would never be apart again.
Colonel Tremaine was like a lover expecting his mistress, and
Angela busied herself more than ever in training the green hands
about the house, so that Mrs. Tremaine should not miss the familiar
servants who had gone to the Yankees. There were no longer
twenty-five of them to be called by the bell on the back porch. Ten
only answered to the call, and most of these were half-grown boys
and girls.
A few days before Mrs. Tremaine arrived Isabey left Harrowby. On
the morning of his departure he lingered for a moment in the old
study, recalling the exquisite hours he had spent there listening to
Angela’s voice, watching her slight and supple figure and delicate
hands as she ministered to him. The sweetness and pain of it was so
sharp that he could not linger, and, going out, he began his farewells.
The servants were all sorry to part with him. Mammy Tulip, who had
“nursed him like a baby,” as she expressed it, called down blessings
on his head and warned him to keep well away from Yankee bullets,
which Isabey gravely promised her he would do.
Hector declared that the parting reminded him of when he bade a
last farewell to General Scott at the end of the Mexican War.
“De gineral when he shook my han’ say: ‘Hector, dis heah partin’ is
de hardest I ever see, but, thank Gord, I had you while I need you
most—when we was fightin’ dem damn, infernal, low-lived Mexicans.
An’ as fur dat scoundrel, Gineral Santa Anna, I never would ha’
cotch him ef it hadn’t been fur you.’”
Out on the porch in the spring morning stood Angela, Colonel
Tremaine, and Lyddon. Nothing could exceed the kindness of their
parting words. Colonel Tremaine urged Isabey to come to see them
whenever the pressure of his military duties relaxed, and especially if
he fell ill to remember that Harrowby was his home. Lyddon said with
truth that Isabey’s presence during the stormy winter had brightened
Harrowby. When Angela bade him farewell, Isabey thanked her with
French ceremony for her kindness to him and said truly it had helped
more than anything else toward his recovery.
“I hope it did,” replied Angela. “You were a very good patient, and I
liked to attend upon you.”
“Pray when you write to Neville give him my warm regards,” said
Isabey boldly, “and tell him that I respect his course while I lament it.”
“Thank you,” answered Angela with dignity. “I shall have pleasure in
writing this to Neville.”
Isabey still halted a little in his walk, but was able to mount and ride
gallantly away. As he cantered down the cedar lane Angela stood
watching him. All had left the porch except herself. At the end of the
lane, half a mile away, she saw Isabey stop his horse and turn in his
saddle and look long at the hospitable roof which had sheltered him.
Far in the distance though he was, she waved the corner of her
scarlet mantle to him and he took off his cap in reply. Angela turned
toward the garden with a strange feeling in her breast as if a chord
had snapped, like the breaking of the G string on a violin. No other
chord could replace it.
 CHAPTER XVII
LIKE THE LITTLE TRIANON

FOUR days after Isabey left Mrs. Tremaine and Archie returned.
Colonel Tremaine had met them on the road halfway between
Richmond and Harrowby.
Mrs. Tremaine was full of courage and cheerfulness. Richard’s
recovery had been complete, and as she said the first night the
family were assembled around the supper table:
“I have never seen our son look so strong and so handsome as he
did when I parted from him the day before we reached Richmond. At
first it was terrible to me to see him ill. I have been spared the
anxieties on that account which most mothers endure, for you well
know, my dear, how hardy our sons have been from their birth. But
Richard’s spirits were so good, his determination to become
thoroughly well so contagious, that I really never felt any anxiety on
his account except that he would return to the army before he was
able. However, with the help of the surgeons I managed to keep him
in his bed long enough to cure him, and I assure you, my dear,” she
continued, smiling at Colonel Tremaine, “there is a kind of
lovemaking between a mother and son which is almost as sweet as
that between lovers.”
At which Colonel Tremaine, flourishing his hand dramatically, replied:
“My dearest Sophie, I have ever felt our sons to be my only rivals.”
The only fly in the colonel’s ointment was that he felt compelled as
soon as Mrs. Tremaine arrived to resume his suit of homespun,
which he regarded very much as Nessus did his celebrated shirt.
At prayers that night the name of one son was omitted, and Neville’s
name was no longer mentioned after Angela ceased to fill Mrs.
Tremaine’s place.
Everything had gone on in an orderly manner, and Mrs. Tremaine
was particularly gratified that Angela had taken as good care of
Isabey as could be desired.
“I feel,” she said to Angela, “that in caring for Captain Isabey we
perform a patriotic as well as a pious duty. Some day during this
dreadful war it may be returned to my sons.”
“I hope so, if the occasion should come,” answered Angela. “But if I
should hear that Neville were wounded he would not be dependent
upon strangers. I should go to him whether he sent for me or not, or
even if he sent me word not to come, still I should go.”
Mrs. Tremaine turned away pale and silent, as she always was at the
rare mention of her eldest-born.
In a day or two letters arrived from Isabey, one to Colonel Tremaine
and another to Angela. Lyddon brought them on a bright spring
noontime from the post office, where there was an intermittent
delivery of letters.
She read the letter and then handed it to Mrs. Tremaine. It was
graceful and cordial and full of gratitude. After being passed around it
was returned to Angela. Half an hour afterwards Lyddon saw her
walk across the lawn and down to where the river ran wine-colored
in the old Homeric phrase.
Angela’s right hand was closed, and as she reached the shore,
lapped by the bright water, she opened her hand and dropped a
hundred tiny bits of paper into the clear green-and-gold water, and
stood watching them as they were tossed in the crystalline spray.
“It is Isabey’s letter,” said Lyddon to himself.
The orchestra of spring, as Angela had called it, was now playing
gloriously, and it seemed to her as if the ice-bound winter were but a
dream with all the beautiful unreality of a dream. She resolved to put
Isabey out of her mind, but who ever yet put the thing beloved out of
mind? All she could do whenever she thought of Isabey was to call
up a passionate loyalty to Neville Tremaine and to make herself the
most solemn of promises that never should any woman exceed her
in the kindness, tenderness, devotion, consideration that she would
give Neville Tremaine, not having the greater gift to bestow upon
him.
Isabey in a camp of five thousand men found plenty for a man to do
who had not full use of his right arm and leg.
His sanguine expectation of being able to join his battery in the field
was not borne out. In riding he wrenched his arm painfully, which
revived the whole trouble, and the doctors gave him no hope that his
arm would sufficiently recover for him to rejoin his battery before the
late autumn or early winter.
Meanwhile the ugly suspicion against Angela, of which Mrs.
Charteris had told him, came back in a hundred ways. It was
undoubtedly true that information concerning the Confederates was
mysteriously conveyed to the Federal commanders.
The charge that Angela Tremaine had supplied this information was
hinted at rather than spoken before Isabey. Once only had it been
said outright—at the officers’ mess by a raw young lieutenant
ignorant of most things. Isabey had turned upon him meaning to
contradict the story in a manner as cool as it was convincing. But
suddenly an impulse of rage seized him and before he knew it he
had dashed a glass of water in the face of the offender.
At once there was a fierce uproar, and Isabey ended the brief but
painful scene by rising and saying with some agitation:
“I have no apology to make for resenting a shocking charge against
an innocent and defenseless woman. I believe it has never yet been
known that any man in Virginia was ever called to account for
defending the name and fame of a woman.”
With that Isabey left the mess tent. The ranking officer at once
administered a stern rebuke to the young lieutenant and forbade that
he should demand the satisfaction, common enough in those days,
from Isabey for his act. Nevertheless, when the matter had been
arranged, the officers exchanged significant glances which said: “It
won’t do to speak of it, but—” and that “but” meant that it was
believed Angela Tremaine was playing the spy. Isabey felt this and
his soul was wrung by it.
With only thirty-five miles between the two great opposing forces,
each side began to throw out feelers before the actual shock of arms
commenced. The Federals made raids and reconnoissances through
the country at unexpected times.
Incidentally, the farmsteads and estates were swept clear of horses,
mules, cattle, and sheep, and the houses were searched for
Confederate soldiers. This last was done rather in the nature of a
warning than in expectation of making any captures. Occasionally
private soldiers, who had got leave on various pretexts and slipped
home for a few hours, were picked up by the Federals; but the
Confederates were wary and no important captures were made.
Small Federal gunboats ventured up the broad, salt, shallow rivers
which made in from the seas and intersected the low-lying, fertile
country. But these expeditions, like those by land, were rather for
investigation and warning than of a punitive nature. It might be
supposed that these raids by land and water were alarming to the
women and children left alone in their homes while their husbands,
sons, and brothers were in the Confederate army. On the contrary,
the Virginia ladies appear to have struck terror to the hearts of the
Northern officers, who, however bold their stand might be against the
Confederate soldiers, were pretty sure to beat a quick retreat before
the sharp language and indignant glances of the Virginia ladies.
Mrs. Charteris, when waked in the middle of the night by a horde of
Federal soldiers around her house and a fierce pounding at the hall
door, rose and, arraying herself in her dressing gown and with a
candle in her hand, went down surrounded by her excited servants,
and opened the hall door herself.
There stood a Federal officer, who politely desired her not to be
alarmed, as he had merely come to search the place for a
Confederate officer supposed to be in hiding there.
“Thank you very much,” tartly replied Mrs. Charteris, thrusting her
candle into the officer’s face and causing him to jump back a yard or
so. “I see nothing to frighten anybody in you or any of your men.
There is no Confederate officer here; they are all waiting for you with
arms in their hands outside of Richmond.”
In vain the officer endeavored to stop the torrent of Mrs. Charteris’s
wrathful eloquence and to escape the proximity of the candle which
she persistently thrust under his nose. It ended by his beating an
ignominious retreat to the gunboat lying in the river.
A few souvenirs in the way of ducks and turkeys and Mrs. Charteris’s
coach horses were carried off, but, as she triumphantly recounted at
church the next Sunday, “It was worth losing a pair of old carriage
horses—for both of mine were getting shaky on their legs—for the
pleasure of speaking my mind to that Yankee officer and see him run
away from me!”
Nearly every place on the river was visited at some time during the
spring by the gunboats, and the inland plantations were also raided
at different times by detachments of cavalry. Harrowby, however, by
a singular chance, escaped.
This was strange in itself and mightily helped the story floating about
concerning Angela’s supposed communication with the Federal
lines. The flight of the negroes to the Yankees had come to an end
because practically all of the young and able-bodied had gone. Only
the older, feebler, and more conservative ones, and the young
children and their mothers remained. There was no doubt that the
negroes who stayed at home had advance notice of the Federal
incursions and kept up a continual intercourse with those who had
fled to the Federal camp. No one realized this more than Angela,
who suddenly began to get letters with considerable regularity from
Neville.
He had been sent East and was then for a short time at Fort Monroe,
but knew not how long he would be there. It was easy enough to get
his letters as far as the Federal lines, and then there was always
opportunity of passing them from hand to hand among the negroes
until they reached Mammy Tulip, who, in turn, gave them to Angela.
Neville wrote in a spirit of sadness and even bitterness.
“I could be useful here,” he wrote, “far more than recruiting in the
West. We are as short of trained artillerists as the Confederates are,
and ordinarily I should have already had an opportunity to distinguish
myself. But I am distrusted by all except the few of my classmates of
West Point, who know me well. If ever I can get to the front then I
can prove to all that I am a true man and as ready to die for the
Union as any soldier who follows the flag. For yourself, make ready
to come to me at any day, for you may be assured that at the first
possible moment I shall send for you, the sweetest comfort left me.”
Then came a few words of deep tenderness which Angela read with
tears dropping upon the page. How hard a fate was Neville
Tremaine’s, after all!
She hastened to write to him, and would have put the letter then in
Mammy Tulip’s hands, but the old woman nervously refused it. She
seemed to have some vague and terrifying fear of keeping Angela’s
letters in her possession.
“De Cornfeds,” she whispered mysteriously to Angela, “might find out
dat I’se got a letter for a Yankee officer, an’ den—good Gord
A’might’! Dey might tek me up an’ k’yar me off to Richmun’ an’ hang
me ’fore Jeff Davis’s door. Naw, honey; you watch out to-night an’
when I kin tek dat letter, I light de candle in de window an’ wave it up
an’ down. An’ den you drap de letter on de groun’ an’ it will git to
Marse Neville, sho’. But I fear to tek it now.”
It was in vain to reason with Mammy Tulip, and Angela had to follow
the same routine whenever she wrote to Neville.
Meanwhile, the changes within the one year of the war concerning
the negroes had been very great at Harrowby. There was no longer
that superabundant life and motion made by the two hundred black
people, of whom now scarcely seventy remained. As each one had
left, Colonel Tremaine reiterated with stern emphasis his
determination to exact full compensation to the last farthing from the
Government at Washington for the loss of his negroes. The remnant
of servants left at Harrowby was made up of the very old, the very
young, and the mothers of the children. Not a single young man
remained on the place, although ten or twelve of the older ones,
headed by Hector, were still too loyal to the old régime or too
indifferent to the new to run away. Peter, Richard Tremaine’s body
servant, stood loyally by his young master.
Hector’s assistants in the dining room had gradually decreased in
size until by midsummer of 1862 they were two small boys of fifteen,
who were almost as skillful in eluding work as Hector himself.
Mrs. Tremaine, for all her executive ability, was totally unequal to
doing any of the work of the household. She was accustomed to
planning and contriving, ordering and directing, but her delicate
hands were unable to do the smallest task requiring manual
dexterity.
Not so Angela. The places of Mirandy and Sally and their colleagues
had been taken by small black girls whom Angela trained with tact
and patience but whose childish powers were unequal to women’s
work. Angela, however, was equal to anything, and Lyddon
complimented her in classic phrase the first morning he saw her with
her cotton skirts pinned up, her beautiful slender arms bare to the
elbow, and a red handkerchief tied with unconscious coquetry
around her fair hair as she wielded the broom and swept the
drawing-room.
Mrs. Tremaine nearly wept at the sight, and Colonel Tremaine
groaned aloud. Angela, however, was in high spirits. She was too
young, too full of vitality, too humorous to be depressed at this new
turn of Fate.
“The fact is,” she cried, sweeping industriously, while Colonel and
Mrs. Tremaine watched from the hall and Lyddon peered in from the
window, “all we have to do is just to imagine that we are noble
émigrés in England about 1793. You, Uncle Tremaine and Aunt
Sophia, can do the sentimental part of the business. Archie and I
with Mr. Lyddon will do the work. Archie, you know, is chopping wood
at the woodpile, and I have a job for you, Mr. Lyddon.”
“What is it?” asked Lyddon helplessly. “If it’s dusting, well, I can dust
books. As for chopping wood like Archie, I should not only chop off
both of my feet, but my head as well. However, I will do anything in
God’s name I can.”
“I can find you something,” knowingly replied Angela, “and something
I dare say those old Greek ragamuffins, of whom you think so much,
did in Thessaly and thereabouts.”
“My dearest Sophie and my dear Angela,” cried Colonel Tremaine
valiantly, “I feel that I must do my share in this domestic cataclysm. I
cannot chop wood—I am seventy-two years old—but I believe that I
could wind off the reels the cotton for the looms. I will do my best, my
dear Angela, if you will kindly instruct me.”
Angela stopped her sweeping and ran and fetched a cotton reel—a
rude contrivance consisting of a slender stick of wood about two feet
high stuck in a wooden box, with a large reel at the top on which the
hanks of cotton, fresh from the spinning wheels, were wound into
balls for the old-fashioned hand looms in the loom house.
“I think,” said Colonel Tremaine, with profound interest in the subject,
“that it would be better to carry the paraphernalia in the drawing-
room. Like most of my sex, I dislike extraneous objects in my library.”
Just then Archie appeared, red, perspiring, but grinning with delight
at his wood-chopping performance. He was charmed with the
thought of seeing his father wind cotton, and ran with the reel, which
he placed in the drawing-room. Then Angela put a hank of cotton on
it, found the end, started the ball, and instructed Colonel Tremaine in
his new employment. Mrs. Tremaine, quite woe-begone, yet
complimented Angela and Archie upon their readiness and industry.
It was as if the two were again children.
Hector and Mammy Tulip both came in to see the extraordinary sight
of “ole Marse wukkin’.” Hector was indignant at the turn of affairs.
“I ’clare, Marse,” he said, with solemn disapproval, “I never speck fur
to see you wukkin’ like Saul an’ de witch uv Endaw in de Bible. I tho’t
you was proud enough fur to lay down an’ starve ’fore you demean
you’sef wid wuk.”
“That is what you would do, you black scoundrel,” inadvertently
responded Colonel Tremaine, forgetting that others were present,
and then hastily adding: “Not that I have ever observed in you any
serious disinclination to do your proper work.” Which showed a very
great want of observation on Colonel Tremaine’s part.
The Colonel, sitting in a large pink satin armchair with the reel before
him, began his self-imposed domestic labors, remarking grimly to
Mrs. Tremaine: “It can no longer be said, my dearest Sophie, that
there is a distaff side to our family.”
“My dear,” replied Mrs. Tremaine in pathetic admiration, “the
spectacle of you, at your time of life, eager to assist in the household
labors and to lighten our tasks as much as possible is truly a lesson
to be commended.”
Colonel Tremaine, thus encouraged, sat up straight in the pink satin
armchair and proceeded to what Angela wickedly called his
“Herculean task.”
The reel, however, was refractory, and it took Archie to mend it and
Mammy Tulip to show him how. Hector, totally unable to tear himself
away from the spectacle of Colonel Tremaine at work, remained as
critic and devil’s advocate. In the end it required the services of Mrs.
Tremaine and nearly the whole domestic staff, including an awe-
stricken circle of negro boys and girls, to assist Colonel Tremaine in
winding half a hank of cotton.
Angela was as good as her word in providing work for Lyddon. When
Colonel Tremaine was thoroughly started upon his undertaking,
Angela triumphantly called Lyddon out on the dining-room porch.
There stood a great churn with a stool by it.
“Come, Daphius,” she cried, “your Chloe has work for you to do.”
She produced a huge apron of Hector’s, and, tying it around
Lyddon’s neck and making him roll up his sleeves, duly instructed
him in the art and mystery of churning. Lyddon thought he had not
seen her in such spirits for a long time, and as she stood laughing
before him, her cotton skirts still tucked up and her beautiful bare
arms crossed and the coquettish red silk handkerchief knotted high
upon her head, she was a captivating picture.
“Now,” she cried, “you must sing in order to make the butter come.”
“I sing!” cried Lyddon, wrathfully, but beginning to wield the dasher.
“When I sing pigs will fly.”
“But you must sing, ‘Come, butter, come,’ like the negro children
sing, and then if the butter won’t come you must get up and dance
the back step.”
She flung into a pretty dancing step, singing the old churning song
meanwhile.
Lyddon suddenly stopped churning and looked over Angela’s
shoulder on to the green lawn beyond. He laughed, but he was not
looking at Angela. When she finished she turned around, and there
was Isabey standing with his foot on the first step of the porch.
 CHAPTER XVIII
THE VISITATIONS OF WAR

ANGELA’S shock of delight at seeing him was obvious to Isabey,

and the two poor souls looked into each other’s eyes with love and
longing for one brief moment. Then reason and good sense resumed
their sway.
Isabey came up the steps and held out his hand, and Angela,
scarcely knowing what she did, put hers within it.
“I couldn’t imagine what was the matter,” he said, laughing and
shaking hands with Lyddon, who stopped churning long enough to
do so. “I rode up to the front of the house, and saw not a soul; then I
ventured around to the back and witnessed the present inspiring
spectacle.”
“Angela put me to it,” replied Lyddon. “Of all the house servants only
Hector and Mammy Tulip are left and some small blacks whose
names I never have found out. Colonel Tremaine, Archie, and I
couldn’t let Angela do all the work, so we have ventured to assist.”
“Hercules churned, I’m sure,” cried Angela, recovering herself, and
once more adopting an arch and merry tone. “Perhaps I shall put Mr.
Lyddon to spinning yet.”
“If you dance for him,” responded Isabey, smiling, “he will do better
than Herod and give you his own, not another man’s head upon a
charger, if you ask it.”
As he spoke Angela became suddenly conscious of her pinned-up
skirts, her bare arms, and the gay silk handkerchief around her hair.
In a moment her skirts were unpinned, her sleeves rolled down, her
bright hair uncovered, and she was a picture of demureness.
Then, examining the churn and seeing the butter had come, Angela
called Aunty Tulip to take charge of it, and they all went into the
drawing-room.
Mrs. Tremaine greeted Isabey with the utmost cordiality, as did
Colonel Tremaine. The Colonel, however, did not rise from his satin
chair, but, quickly releasing Isabey’s hand after grasping it, said
solemnly:
“My dear fellow, will you excuse me for two minutes until I finish this
hank of cotton? I have undertaken to assist the ladies of my family in
the tasks made necessary by the departure of our house servants,
and I feel that nothing, not even the arrival of a friend so valued as
yourself, can interfere with my nearly completed labor. Just a
moment more.”
He returned to his winding. Isabey then inquired about Richard, and
afterwards, turning to Angela, asked with calm courtesy when she
had heard from Neville and if he were well. Angela answered readily,
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine maintaining, as always when Neville’s
name was spoken, a cold silence.
Then, as the last winding of the hank of cotton was finished, the reel
was removed and Colonel Tremaine was prepared to entertain his
guest.
Isabey looked fairly well but still limped slightly, and said that the
accident to his arm which occurred a month before had prevented
his coming to Harrowby. He mentioned that the general commanding
at camp had sent him down to get certain topographical information
which he would ask privately of Colonel Tremaine, and that he would
spend the day, preferring to return to camp by night.
There were some county maps in the old study, and thither Colonel
Tremaine, Lyddon, and Isabey repaired and spent nearly the whole
day in studying them.
The evening came, soft and sweet as July evenings are. Angela had
been busy all day long and had seen Isabey only at the three-o’clock
dinner. But the consciousness that she was in sound of his voice
was like wine in her veins.
In the afternoon she dressed herself carefully in a fresh white gown
and went out upon the lawn. Her afternoons were usually spent on
the lawn and in the old garden, which was now in its glory. All was a
wealth of bloom and perfume.
She remained in the garden thinking, hoping, fearing, and believing
that Isabey would seek her there.
When the shadows grew long and the sun hung low behind the
purple woods he came to her. She was standing before a great bed
of hollyhocks which flaunted their merry faces boldly in the soft air.
“How changed it is since we were last in this garden!” Isabey said;
“but I am not changed;” and then cursed himself for having been
betrayed into something dangerously near to sentiment. Angela, as
the case had ever been, passed with proud unconsciousness over
his words.
“The garden has not gone back this year as much as one would
think,” she said, moving toward the broad main walk. “As you know,
we have only two or three small boys to work it now, but it is so old
and so well conducted that it seems impossible for it to become wild
or irregular.”
They walked up and down the garden path a few times, and Angela
gathered some of the July roses, those princesses of the garden.
Isabey spoke with impatience of his being still unable to rejoin his
battery and called the surgeons fools for not curing his arm quickly.
Then, in an unguarded moment, he spoke of the delicious hours of
those snowbound days six months before.
Angela said little, but Isabey saw the quick rising and falling of her
fast-beating heart.
Presently they went back to the house and soon supper was served.
At table the conversation turned upon Colonel Gratiot, then on duty
at the camp of instruction, whom Colonel Tremaine had known as a
brother officer during the Mexican War.
“Gratiot is sixty years old, if he is a day,” complained Colonel
Tremaine bitterly, “and always was a puny fellow; yet he can serve
his country, while I, who never knew a day’s illness in my life and can
stand twelve hours in the saddle as well as I ever could——”