The Saartjie Project

Company Mission The Saartjie Project (pronounced Sar-Key) A progressive ensemble theatre company using story and collaborative performance to encourage civic engagement and collective action. We explore the intersections of gender, race, and power through the voices and bodies of black women. We believe that when we tell our stories - ones that often go untold, edited or dismissed by the mainstream - we blur the margins and roles of actor and spectator.

Our methodology is steeped in Cultural Arts Direct Action; the belief that transformation and justice happens through community-based action, cultural and creative arts.

About our Namesake: Saartjie Baartman was a 19th-century South African woman (Khoi San) taken on tour throughout Europe like a circus animal from 1810 –1815. Dubbed “Hottentot Venus” she was caged to display her pronounced buttocks – which was “hypersexual and exotic”. Upon death her body was dissected and displayed in a museum in Paris until 1974. After much international discourse over where she “belonged”, her remains were flown back to SA in 2002.