CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: THINKING IN | EXPLOSION OF A MEMORY
A MENTORSHIP WITH CAMILLE DE BONHOME
Camille de Bonhome will be at The Centre from 8 to 12 June 2026. Photo supplied.
In June 2026, The Centre for the Less Good Idea welcomes Belgian artist and theatremaker Camille de Bonhome to its spaces in Johannesburg, where she will lead a Thinking In mentorship with Johannesburg-based artists and collaborators.
Having first encountered De Bonhome’s practice in 2021 through The TalentLAB in Luxembourg, The Centre is delighted to host De Bonhome for a mentorship that will see her exploring the1984 play Explosion of a memory by Heiner Müller.
Explosion of a memory, or Bildbeschreibung in German, is a one-sentence, nine-page "landscape play". The text consists of a description of an image drawn by a stage design student from Sophia, Bulgaria. At the centre of the image are three fixed points: a woman, a man and a tree, whose presence Müller constantly reinterprets. One thing is certain: the woman is injured, dead or dying, and the man is partly to blame. What has happened to freeze the image at this moment? Who is responsible for this end? Whose end is it?
At The Centre, De Bonhome will workshop with artists to further test the play through, repetition, exhaustion, and multiple languages to question, among other things, the relationship between violence and its representation, how we build images and how we change the meaning of an image, and how meaning is changed through the body. This mentorship is as much about De Bonhome extending her research through her engagement with the participants as it is about the participants growing through their encounter with her process.
THINKING IN | EXPLOSION OF A MEMORY
SO | The Academy for the Less Good Idea calls 12 Johannesburg-based artists to apply for THINKING IN | EXPLOSION OF A MEMORY, a five-day mentorship led by Belgian artist and theatremaker Camille de Bonhome.
The mentorship takes place from 8 to 12 June 2026 at The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Arts on Main, Maboneng, and culminates in an Open Moment on Friday 12 June.
The Open Moment will take the form of a public showing and will be an opportunity for an audience to witness and participate in the material and experiments explored throughout the mentorship.
Camille de Bonhome, Chair de ma Chair, 2026.
WHO SHOULD APPLY:
We are looking for a combination of actors, movers, directors, scenographers, and choreographers.
Participants will receive an honorarium for participation in the mentorship.
HOW TO APPLY FOR THINKING IN | EXPLOSION OF A MEMORY
Please send an expression of interest to: lessgoodidea@gmail.com
Your expression of interest should be compiled as ONE PDF DOCUMENT that contains:
A letter of motivation as to why you should be part of this programme (250 words)
A summary of your professional practice (350 words)
Links to video documentation of your professional practice (max 5 links with timecodes of specific sections to be viewed). Please note: only include links to online material that can be streamed. Do NOT send videos via WeTransfer or any other platform that requires downloading of files
Contact details (email and phone number)
Applying artists MUST be available for ALL of these times:
Monday 8 June: 09h30 - 17h00
Tuesday 9 June: 09h30 - 17h00
Wednesday 10 June: 09h30 - 17h00
Thursday 11 June: 09h30 - 17h00
Friday 12 June: 09h30 - 20h30 (Includes The Open Moment)
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOUR APPLICATION IS NOT COMPILED AS ONE PDF DOCUMENT, YOUR APPLICATION WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED
The subject line of the email should read: APPLICATION: THINKING IN | EXPLOSION OF A MEMORY
DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: 17h00 (SAST) MONDAY 4 MAY 2026
Camille de Bonhome is a director and artist from Liège. She studied acting (EICAR) and theatre studies (Sorbonne Nouvelle) in Paris and undertook internships with Rosalba Torres (Ballets C de la B) and director Jan Lauwers (Needcompany). After completing her studies, she returned to Belgium, where she worked as an assistant, costume designer and dramaturg with several Belgian companies (Peeping Tom, KoudVuur, Guy Cassiers). At the same time, she began creating her own projects based on a strong stage-centred approach. Although her practice is multidisciplinary (music, performance, video and theory), her starting point is always based on dramaturgical research. In this sense, she works with the repertoire and mythology as material to challenge the source of theatricality and explore the relationship between the creative process and the result. The process – that space where creating together makes sense – thus often becomes part of the performance and fiction, in all its complexity, imperfection, incompleteness and romanticism. Yet within this attempt at hyperrealistic storytelling lurk the ghosts of an archaic theatre in which she deeply believes.