When the audience at the Spazju Kreattiv theatre was asked if we ever felt afraid while walking home, there were only answers in the affirmative. An activity whereby we return to our place of comfort and safety can quickly, as we know too well, transfigure into a state of pure horror.

Indeed, Walking Home, a work of theatre devised by Prickly Pear Productions and directed by Chantelle Micallef Grimaud, explores the politics and tensions within the issue of sexual violence against women. Following its run at the Astra Theatre in Gozo, it previewed at Spazju Kreattiv between July 21 and 23 before heading to this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August.

The company says the play was a reaction to Sarah Everard’s journey home, Sabina Nessa’s murder in London and Paulina Dembska’s murder in Malta.

Alex Weenink

Part of the set at Spazju Kreattiv were artworks by Emma Attard, a sexual assault survivor. The production encompassed the global outpouring of shared grief and anger that has followed these brutal tragedies, based on more than 40 true stories of real experiences collected from people around the world.

The indignation provoked by sexual violence along one’s journey home is nothing new − ‘Take Back the Night’ or ‘Reclaim the Night’ marches had begun back in the mid-1970s, each time asserting women’s right to occupy public space, including after dark.

Walking Home, however, does not hold indignation as its central premise. Rather, it seeks to challenge dominant cultural stereotypes to capture the lived, bodily experience of the rape survivor, and in so doing put into perspective the role and responsibly of the community in the conversation about rape.

Sean Borg

The show starred actors Sean Borg, Michela Farrugia, Alex Weenink and Zoë Alba Farrugia. They play co-workers in a media house about to have a meeting, when they receive news that a colleague has been sexually assaulted. Each character they represent is an archetype of the manner by which we may respond to the tragedy of rape.

Zoë Alba Farrugia’s character comes closest to indignation − “Why are you so angry? Where do I start…”. In an aside, she addresses the audience and takes us to the Red Room − the place in her head where she shelters from the instances of harassment that come here way, from catcalling to groping, often by perpetrators she considers feeble-minded. The nexus of her anger is the social and cultural pressure on women to minimise sexual aggression against them.

From left, Zoë Alba Farrugia, Sean Borg, Alex Weenink and Michela Farrugia.

Borg’s character responds to the news by wondering what more he could have done to prevent his colleague’s rape, considering he knew she potentially had a stalker. “Aren’t we all responsible to some degree?” he asks, seeing as despite her having a stalker lurking outside the office for months, this somehow caught no one’s attention. In an aside, he recounts a P.E. teacher’s paedophilic interactions with his six-year-old sister in exchange for chocolates she shared with him. He holds onto the old wrappers in the way sexual deviance adheres to its victims − perennially and weightily.

Women’s experiences of verbal harassment in public spaces are often brushed off as facts of life

Weenink’s character at first gives hints of possible misgiving. He reacts to the news shiftily and suspiciously, lying to his co-workers about going to watch a film the night before. Zoë Alba Farrugia’s character is quick to accuse him of wrongdoing; Michela Farrugia’s prefers to ask instead.

Michela Farrugia’s character reacts pragmatically to the news. She doesn’t dwell on the fact despite her concern and urges her colleagues to get on with the meeting.

Throughout the play, in brief interludes, a story was told in footsteps.

Progressing with each stage, the sequence took place in the dark, illuminated by torchlight. It depicted a woman walking in the dark, of whom we only see her shoes, her fretful pace and hints of the sexual violence she eventually undergoes. My skin crawled and heart raced every time the lights went out.

Michela Farrugia

The play sometimes implies that sexual violence is systemic − a phenomenon perpetuated by societally sanctioned forms of harassment (like catcalling) and ineffective mechanisms to combat these systemic failings: “Report him? Why would anyone want to prolong their suffering, relive the experience and have to explain themselves to countless people, half of which will berate you and the other half will shame you?”

Other times, the play expresses sexual assault as a case of interpersonal violence − the transgression (to put it mildly) of a rapist who, although likely enabled by systemic failures, does not speak for all men in all instances.

Weenink’s character served to put this point into perspective, using his aside to contend with the inner turmoil the news of his colleague’s rape provoked, especially given his relationship with her, but also to highlight the cultural, alienating effects of sexual violence on men at large, despite them being told “this is not about you”. In so doing, I felt the producers demonstrated a certain astuteness − a capacity for reflection beyond ideological blinkers.

Zoë Alba Farrugia

Concurrently, the play is critical of the “pacification” women are expected to promote in an effort of “self-preservation”. Women’s experiences of verbal harassment in public spaces or unwanted touching, among other intimidating behaviours, are often invalidated or brushed off as facts of life.

In what transpired to be a frank and well-rounded theatrical conversation on the tragedy of sexual assault, it was evidently important for the producers to put the victim’s voice, which is often erased, at its centre. Sexual assault is expressed as a lived, personal, embodied experience, with Walking Home seeking to reinstate the victim’s subjectivity amid cultural efforts to invalidate it.

I left the theatre reaffirmed in my belief that when a rape happens to one of us, it somehow happens to all of us.

Walking Home, devised by Prickly Pear Productions, is taking part in this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival at the Gilded Balloon Teviot – Wine Bar between August 3-13, 15-20, 22-28 at 5.30pm.