The play details the life of Helen Martins, South Africa's Mary Nohl - an outsider artist content with filling her life, her world and her home with artworks inspired from within. Her home became known as "the owl house" to the locals - locals who unfortunately shunned her as an outsider, a devil-worshipper, etc. Along with the help of a local sheep herder, Martins filled her home and its surrounding yard with hundreds of concrete forms - a Noah Arc of sorts, and the owl came to be the predominant form for Martins, as she felt it was her "totem spirit."
True to that spirit, Martin committed to making several hundred owl sculptures to fill the walls of the theater lobby and to be given out to theater-goers as a take-home gift. To make the owls, she enlisted hte help of Pearls Girls and anyone else in the community who wanted to help. Last August, 30 middle school girls worked with Martin in creating owl sculptures, and more community members joined her in another owl-making session this December. Check out more photos from the event here.
