Market Theatre hosts Andizi, performed by Mamela Nyamza, Lulu Mlangeni, and Thandazile Sonia Radebe

By CityLife Arts Writer

The Market Theatre Laboratory’s TheatreThinkTankThursday 17 March 2022 seeks to widen conversations on the contemporary art practices and processes of artists in/from South Africa. For the final event, “Performing Andizi”, the theatre will host Mamela Nyamza, Lulu Mlangeni, and Thandazile Sonia Radebe. “Performing Andizi”, the work of these audacious, award-winning, artists can cross the borders between dance, dramaturgy, installation, and performance art. Each artist holds their own by creating a unique space in the world of performance. They do not give in to expectations of dance, or the ways black women are expected to perform.

“Performing Andizi” is to compose work in ways that say, ‘You will not tell me what to do. Andizi, mntase!’These artists create in such refreshing and often surprising ways that their visual languages break the ground of what we imagine is possible. Using objects or costumes in political and playful ways, using words to dance and not just speak, and charging the space between us and them so that our presence is felt at higher intensities.

“Andizi”: A refusal to do anything other than what one chooses to do. ‘A refusal to explain, a refusal to capitulate’, as Tina Campt says about the practice of refusal. To perform andizi is to perform a rejection of living in the limited ways that black people, women, and queer people are often forced to. Nyamza, Mlangeni, and Radebe have a way of seeing people’s everyday behaviours and turning them into creative commentary on what is unacceptable in our world. “Performing Andizi” is to question who we are- to ask what we will not accept. To say, ‘Andizi!’ is to refuse to be un-made by the world. It is to exist no matter what. To perform ‘Andizi’ is stand one’s ground.

Mamela Nyamza shows her in-progress work GROUNDED at this Theatre Think Tank event. Debuting in Germany, in June, from a special commission by, Theater der Welt im Düsseldorfer Shauspielhaus.The showing includes a retrospective look at how Mamela comes to create this work as a dramaturge; making a composition that she says is more intimate than her previous performances.

Lulu Mlangeni dances into her unflinching work Kganya, crafted as part of her Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Dance 2020. Kganya presents an existential work of birds born into darkness and yet have the boldness to refuse to be captured. Lulu charts the path of her work, and also collaborates with Thandazile.

Thandazile Sonia Radebe confronts us with When Dori(s) Takes Her Place. A work that puts its audience indiscomforting complicity. Thandazile explores her monument of Doris and the contradictions of the name. In Dori(s), she creates a game where the character/s are “Performing Andizi”.

The Theatre Think Tankis curated by NondumisoLwazi Msimanga.

Tickets are only R50.00! To book your seats please call contact Anthony Ezeoke 011 832 1641ext 203/ 083 246 4950 or Bandile Luvalo 078 4344 860.