The Centre for the Less Good Idea is an interdisciplinary incubator space for the arts based in Maboneng, Johannesburg

Salt

"Flee for your life! Do not look behind you, nor stop anywhere in the Plain; flee to the hills, lest you be swept away."

What happened to Edith, the woman who the Bible refers to only as ‘Lot’s wife’, before she was turned into a pillar of salt? And what does salt – that now commonplace mineral that was once the source of the world’s wars – mean to us today?

In Salt, collaborative theatre-making duo Billy Langa and Mahlatsi Mokgonyana present a performance rooted in questions, executed through the minimal use of the body as a tool, leaving only words to convey meaning and narrative. This restricted use of the physical form results in a crucial relationship between the spoken word and its relation to the body. What do words mean inside a body, and how can the performer meet the body and make those words theirs?

Through the use of a minimal, rotating stage as well as a somewhat muted soundtrack, the duo interrogates the role of the performer as object – something to be gazed upon, engaged with, appreciated, or consumed. By limiting and constraining both the use of the body and the space it occupies, Salt seeks to explore the idea of minimalism and what it means in performance rather than in spectacle, ultimately refining performance to its simplest form, that of the truth.

WRITER AND PERFORMER | Billy Langa
DIRECTOR AND PERFORMER Director | Mahlatsi Mokgonyana
SOUND | Ntuthuko Mbuyazi
ASSOCIATED INSTITUTIONS | Junkets Publishers, Arts and Culture Trust, Theatre arts admin collective, Market Theatre Laboratory