Unrehearsed Futures: The Many Lives of Red Peter livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv Thursday 22 April 2021 at 4 a.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4) / 9 a.m. BST (London, UTC +1) / 10 a.m. SAST (Cape Town, UTC +2) / 1:30 p.m. IST (Mumbai, UTC +5:30) / 6 p.m. AEST (Hobart, UTC +10).
This conversation will explore questions related to the (re)production and circulation of live performances under the Covid-19 strictures. Reflecting upon Kafka's Ape - an award-winning, one-man play, we look at the turn towards 'adapting' live performances for digital presentations during the pandemic. What effects would this have on a form whose rhetorical effects often rely on the transparency of the body's performance labour, materiality, context, and live-ness? What might we lose and gain as performance practitioners while attempting to approximate the shared live experience of theatre in virtual spaces?
Curator:
Mbongeni N. Mtshali works across a range of performance disciplines, including dance and movement composition and performance, animation and puppetry, and site-specific performance installation among others. He earned a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, as well as the Standard Bank Silver Ovation Award and the Fleur du Cap Theatre Award for his achievements in directing and performance-making. Mtshali is primarily interested in black queer/femme performance in South Africa as well as Africa and its diaspora, turning towards queer genealogies of African decolonial world-making in the Caribbean, South Atlantic and Indian Ocean. These research interests frame his practical and theoretical enquiries - with Unrehearsed Futures, as another venture into understanding the broader landscape of global theatre practice.
Speaker 1: Tony Bonani Miyambo
Organization / School: Independent Actor, Writer.
Tony Bonani Miyambo is a freelancer in the television and theatre industries. He holds a BA (Dramatic Arts) Graduate from the University of the Witwatersrand. A recipient of the 2012 Brett Goldin Award, Tony also studied with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford Upon Avon, UK.
Over his career, he has been part of numerous theatre productions, some of which have toured all over the world. His body of work includes acclaimed solo performances The Cenotaph of Dan Wa Moriri, Commission Continua, and Kafka's Ape which has won several notable theatre awards since it took to the stage in 2015.
Speaker 2: Phala O. Phala
Organization / School: Animateur, The Centre for the Less Good Idea.
Phala Ookeditse Phala is the Animateur at The Centre for the Less Good Idea, an interdisciplinary incubator space for the arts, based in Maboneng, Johannesburg. He is a multi-award-winning theatre-maker and director whose works have won awards in South Africa, USA, Czech Republic and Australia. He holds a Masters in Dramatic Arts from Wits University. His works champion emotional and psychologically-stimulating storytelling as a uniquely African aesthetic. His focus and interest are on methodologies of making and creating work in ways that collapse and disrupt conventional norms.
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