Billy Langa, dancer, actor, playwright, and educator Billy Langa is a graduate from Trevor Huddleson Centre and the Market Theatre Lab. Langa takes a curious approach to theatre – puzzling out what it means to those who perform it and those who witness it – that’s deeply relational to the body. A recent interest of Langa’s is the presence of language, and how it fits into the physicality of theatre. For Season 4 of The Centre for The Less Good Idea, Langa will be exploring words and what they mean inside a body, through his new piece SALT. Langa will be producing SALT together with his long-time creative partner, Mahlatsi Mokgonyana, with whom he’s co-founded the theatre collective, The Movement RSA. Most recently, Langa directed and performed in Tswalo, a narrative poem which he debuted at the 2018 National Arts Festival. 

Mahlatsi Mokgonyana prizes, above all else, the inherent truth in a piece of theatre, and the resultant impact it has on its audiences. Born in Dawn Park in the East Rand, Mokgonyana is a writer, poet, director, and the co-founder of theatre collective The Movement RSA. His interest in education and the arts led him to direct My Children! My Africa! which came at the height of student protest action in South Africa in 2016. His accolades include the 2017 Cape Town Fringe Fresh Award for Directing and the Naledi Theatre Award for Best Production. During his time with the Centre for the Less Good Idea, Mokgonyana has been exploring his fascination with the idea of minimalism in a staged piece of theatre and what that can mean in performance, rather than in spectacle. These findings will be presented in a play called SALT which Mokgonyana will be directing, and producing with long-time collaborator Billy Langa.

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi