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Described by African theater producers as "one of the most defining and deserving festivals of our time with a slant on Pan-Africanism", the Market Theatre's Kaza Kamba Pan-African Theater Festival is making its third return to Newtown, Johannesburg.
Pan-African-themed theatre
The festival's third edition draws from France-based, Czech-Republic-born writer Milan Kundera's novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting , and will be staged from 20 to 23 August . The novel's ability to balance the weight and responsibility of remembering the past is symbolic of the current geopolitical climate being navigated by present-day South Africans and foreign nationals occupying this land.
The festival was conceived through a partnership between the theater and mehlo-maya (eye-to-the-sun), and weaves together theater, music, film, and workshops. There is also a market where guests can lose themselves in the goodies available for purchase.
What to expect
True to Pan-African cultural integration, the festival is multidisciplinary and features music, poetry, film, protest theater, and other spheres of creative expression.
Kaza Kamba is headlined by South African music outfit iPhupho L'ka Biko's infusion of indigenous sound with experimental jazz and gospel. The band revisits the August 2012 massacre with the genre-defying Marikana Still...fontein , which intermarries music, poetry, movement, and theatre.
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Protest theater has always been central to the African story, and Phillip Dikotla's piece, Skierlik , builds on the Marikana momentum by depicting a husband's recollection of the 2008 incident where his wife and young daughter were killed in a racially motivated shooting at the North West Province's Skierlik informal settlement.
Pianist Yonela Mnana is joined by poet Lesego Rampolokeng and percussionist Gontse Makhene in a moving display of harmony, spoken word, and drums titled Sounding the Sound . Guests can also look forward to the Windybrow Arts Centre's piece, A Season in Hillbrow —which borrows from Arthur Rimbaud's A Season in Hell —as well as book launches and a variety of films.
- What: Kaza Kamba Pan-African Theater Festival
- Where: The Market Theatre, Newtown
- When: 20 to 23 August
- Cost: R140-275, free entrance to workshops, masterclasses and documentary film screenings
Tickets : https://www.webtickets.co.za/v2/event.aspx?itemid=
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