BLACK PRIVILEGE

Season 4 took place in October 2018

Curated by writer, academic, and playwright Jane Taylor, Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea takes the shape of a Collapsed Conference – a series of talks, presentations and ideas all told through performance.

BLACK PRIVILEGE | MAMELA NYAMZA

Watching Mamela Nyamza’s Black Privilege is in no way a passive act. The dance and physical theatre piece is a wry and stirring performance on contemporary debates about race, identity, and the workings of creative and academic institutions. In this way, the act of viewing Nyamza becomes a part of the show.

Having debuted at the 2018 National Arts Festival (of which Nyamza was the Featured Artist), Black Privilege’s inclusion in The Centre for the Less Good Idea sees the merging of a number of the themes inherent in Season 4’s works, most notably the way in which complex ideas and arguments can be exemplified through the medium of performance.

There is Nyamza who plays the part of the gilded artist, the golden goose, the prized possession who sits atop a golden staircase, muted in her movements, but hyper visible, nonetheless. Then there is Sello Pesa who plays the part of the manager, the academic, the judge, and the auctioneer in an equally reserved manner, although always in charge.

Black Privilege is a performance that is rich in metaphor and meaning. Roped barriers encircling the performance area are not unlike those that keep us, as viewers and consumers, away from celebrities on red carpets or artworks and artifacts on museum walls. The black and white checkerboard floor becomes the basis for a game of snakes and ladders where Nyamza, the main piece, is always one move away from sliding down to the jaws of the serpent. The use of the popular party song ‘Memeza’ is a difficult irony – a song of protest dressed up and watered down with a club-like beat.

Nyamza’s performance throughout the piece is breathtaking. Her body, though restricted and caged, communicates intense moments of pain, hubris, and fear through the simple arch of a shoulder or the curl of a lip. She has made it to the top and she has the medals and the platform to prove it, but how is it possible that one can be simultaneously celebrated and constrained by the same institution? How long will she have to be shaken around and paraded about before she falls?

Then there is us – the audience. We watch Nyamza endure it all, but we say or do nothing. When Pesa, in his cold and matter-of-fact style, tells us to stand, to sit, or to leave, we listen to him. The rest of the time we are only looking on from behind the velvet ropes, simultaneously entertained and horrified.

SURPLUS

Season 4 took place in October 2018

Curated by writer, academic, and playwright Jane Taylor, Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea takes the shape of a Collapsed Conference – a series of talks, presentations and ideas all told through performance.

SURPLUS | VARIOUS SEASON 4 ARTISTS

An overflow of experiences and ideas, a collection of musical, physical fragments, or a space for the ideas that couldn’t quite find a home. Season 4’s performance of the Surplus is one of the perfect opportunities to get to grips with the kind of work produced at The Centre for the Less Good Idea.

Over the course of The Centre’s 4th Season workshops – five days of intensive exploration, play, and free-flowing improvisation – a number of works began to take shape. But what happens to the elements of a performance that don’t quite fit in and are left unfinished, unformed? Rather than let them remain on the workshop floor, Season 4’s performers devised the Surplus.

In the Surplus, many of the performers are exploring elements that are either overlooked or entirely foreign to their practice. Pianist Jill Richards, a master of Western, classical interpretation, applies her talents to sampled field recordings (some of which were made at The Centre) which she uses as the basis for her improvisation.

Actors and theatre-makers Tony Miyambo, Billy Langa, and Mahlatsi Makgonyana dial down their physicality and employ their voices as primary tools of performance, while physical theatre practitioners Thulani Chauke and Themba Mbuli mirror each other’s every move through a compelling piece accompanied by the sounds of Richards and Kyle Shepherd on a single piano. At one brilliantly precarious point, dancer and choreographer Jessica Nupen takes up the practice of Dervish twirling, her skirt replete with long, sharp knives that begin to grow longer and faster as she moves. The resultant dance is at once terrifying and mystifying.

Closing the Surplus is an act that is perhaps one of the best representations of The Centre’s process. Richards and Shepherd, each on a single piano, begin to play. Soon, Miyambo, Chauke, Mbuli, Langa, and Mokgonyana begin to move the pianos around the stage as they are being played. The two pianists do not resist and only continue to play, before their sounds, their ideas, their pianos themselves begin to clash and meld into each other.

It is a similar trajectory that can be traced when an artist arrives at The Centre with an idea. They begin to do what they know, before combining what they know with the talents of another. There is excitement and endless possibility, and then there is the problem-solving and the process of letting go before ideas and mediums begin to merge and take shape, magnificently.

For the full version go to | https://vimeo.com/303054732

PERFORMERS | Jill Richards, Kyle Shepherd, Mahlatsi Mokgonyana, Billy Langa, Tony Miyambo, Thulani Chauke, Themba Mbuli, Jessica Nupen

VI DIE WAT WIL WIET

Season 4 took place in October 2018

Curated by writer, academic, and playwright Jane Taylor, Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea takes the shape of a Collapsed Conference – a series of talks, presentations and ideas all told through performance.

VI DIE WAT WIL WIET | ILZE WOLFF

Research can be a means of uncovering, celebrating, or even rectifying moments in history. And storytelling, across various mediums, can be used to help us better understand the world around us, and our places in it. Ilze Wolff’s Vi Die Wat Wil Wiet is a skilful and engaging performance that merges rigorous research with captivating storytelling to brilliant ends.

Performed as part of The Centre for the Less Good Idea’s 4th Season, Vi Die Wat Wil Wiet is a multifaceted piece that sees the merging of academic, performative, written, and visual work. Through these mediums, Wolff takes her audience through a series of small, forgotten, or overlooked moments in South Africa’s history that range from the sad, the humorous, the obscure, and the inspirational.

Tales of the world’s first human cannonball who operated a successful circus in Maboneng (then City and Suburban), factory owners hellbent on fast-tracking their workers’ down-time through an automated tea-wheel, and imperial (and wildly mis-informed) research on Vaal-river-dwelling elephants and their ‘superior’ cousins in Nebraska are just a few of the stories explored and picked apart by Wolff.

This is done partly through a lecture by Wolff, as well as through projected imagery, performed readings of Wolff’s own correspondence with various friends and fellow researchers, and shrewd soundscapes by Cara Stacey. Donke Veby, a pumflet created by Wolff to accompany the performance features much of this imagery and correspondence, particularly with Joburg-based researcher Amie Soudien.

Throughout the course of the performance, several key themes that run throughout Season 4 are touched on. These include the academic vs the performed, the line between the human and the animal, and the idea of human vs machine. Wolff’s primary focus and area of specialisation, though, lies in her passion for revisiting (or perhaps revisioning) the small, definitive moments in history, told through the built environment. “How do we document the emotional landscape of a place?” asks Wolff in her performance. “The overlooked stories, and the lesser-told stories of the people who form part of this built environment?”

Ultimately, one of the things that Vi Die Wat Wil Wiet does best is to show us what can happen to an academic lecture when it commits itself to the mediums of art and performance. Research can manifest in the simple act of communication, history can find meaning in fragmented collage, and performance can be a part of the every day.

For the full version go to | https://vimeo.com/300943647

PERFORMER | Ilze Wolff
ASSOCIATE INSTITUTIONS | Wolff Architects and UWC Centre for Humanities Research
COMPOSER | Cara Stacey

PAN TROGLODYTE

Season 4 took place in October 2018

Curated by writer, academic, and playwright Jane Taylor, Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea takes the shape of a Collapsed Conference – a series of talks, presentations and ideas all told through performance.

It is on the fine line between academic rigor and fervent performance where you’ll locate The Centre for the Less Good Idea’s Season 4 performance of Pan Troglodyte.

Created by this Season’s curator, Jane Taylor, Pan Troglodyte is the result of a team of brilliant actors and intellectuals who convey, through several modes of performance, a compelling bit of research.

Pan Troglodyte is, first and foremost, a presentation of a paper by Taylor that details her research into primate intelligence, artificial intelligence, and race theory. Throughout the course of the show Taylor is positioned behind a podium from where she presents this research – musings on Wolfgang Kohler’s insight learning, the literary philosophies of Samuel Beckett, and the deliberations of Jane Goodall are a few of the intellectual findings referenced throughout. Taylor makes use of a strong and detailed narrative, peppered with questions and presented problems. How can embodied actions be taken as evidence of consciousness? Where is the threshold of the human, the animal? How do we begin to make sense of ourselves through the study of cats, dogs, rats, pigeons, apes, and the advent of artificial intelligence?

Norton and Miyambo play different characters in the performance, switching from Jane Goodall to the ape, and also serving as dual puppeteers to ‘Monk’, a Handspring Puppet Company creation. Both Goodall and Miyambo excel in their manipulations of the puppet, with Monk becoming a key visual accompaniment to Taylor’s presentation.

If you are to consider the other works on show during The Centre’s 4th Season – the presentations of compelling arguments and lines of thought, and the abstract, free-flowing performances consisting only of music, or movement – then Pan Troglodyte is the work that ties all these key themes and mediums together. This is not only the mark of smart and considered curation, but it also serves as a brilliant example of the kind of work that can be achieved at a space like The Centre.

Because what does happen to the shape, form, and effect of an academic conference if it were to be presented as a piece of art? If Pan Troglodyte alone is anything to go by, a ‘collapsed conference’ is the key to a more universal understanding of research, performance, and everything that exists between the two.

For the full version go to | https://vimeo.com/303661812

DIRECTOR | Jane Taylor
PERFORMERS | Jane Taylor, Tony Miyambo, Terry Norton, and Monk
ASSOCIATE INSTITUTIONS | Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape, and Andrew W Mellon Foundation

COLLAPSED CONCERT | Kyle Shepherd

Season 4 took place in October 2018

Curated by writer, academic, and playwright Jane Taylor, Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea takes the shape of a Collapsed Conference – a series of talks, presentations and ideas all told through performance.

COLLAPSED CONCERT | PART 2 by Kyle Shepherd

The Centre for the Less Good Idea’s Season 4 performance of the Collapsed Concert is, in a sense, a lecture delivered through the medium of performance.

Featuring Jill Richards and Kyle Shepherd, two of the countries most talented and celebrated pianists, the Collapsed Concert is a rich and detailed set of performances carried out on an immaculate Steinway Grand.

Richards was first to take the stage and chose to perform Pierre Boulez’s Piano Sonata No. 2. Richards, who’s performed across five different continents, is a Steinway artist known for her dynamic interests in Bach as well as free-form improvisation. Still, Boulez’s Piano Sonata No. 2 is a notoriously difficult piece to perform, let alone master, but Richards handles the piece with a discipline and precision that can only result from years of performance. Employing Serialism in its composition, the Piano Sonata No. 2 requires a great deal of attention and physicality from its performer – everything from the way a hand touches down on a chord, to the measured breath and metered posture of the pianist.

Listening to Richards is, of course, crucial to the performance, but watching her perform under a single spotlight is a uniquely rich experience, too. Throughout her performance a small, muted light illuminates the inside the piano, reflecting them onto the cover. It is here where you can almost witness each note as it vibrates and rises out of the piano to fill the room around you.

Next up was Shepherd with a counter-example – his own Jazz composition. Shepherd’s career has taken him across the globe and after years of concert piano performance, he’s focussing his attention more on composition. Voices is one of these new compositions and makes use of various spoken, non-musical, and other aural recordings. In Voices, Shepherd is not only using these sounds and recordings to enhance and form part of his own performance, he is also constantly in conversation with them. Through the live use of a sampler, Shepherd cues ambient loops and vocal samples of musicians such as Lionel Loueke and Zim Ngqawana which are incorporated seamlessly into the piece before being responded to through the keys of the piano.

In this musical dialogue with sound and meaning, rhythm and improvisation, Voices invites its audience to listen in on the conversation, and to pay attention to the many shapes and colours sound can become. Strings jammed with sheets of paper take on a sound outside of the piano’s conventional range and long, flourishing moments on the keys form new languages in response to the spoken word.

With both Richards and Shepherd lending their talent to a host of other performances across the Season, getting a chance to see each musician perform solo is a welcome addition to Season 4. The Collapsed Concert not only showcases and contrasts the work of two of the country’s top performing pianists, it also prompts audiences to listen more deeply, and to engage with lines of thought through the medium of sound.

For the full version go to | https://vimeo.com/301815995

PERFORMERS | Jill Richards, Kyle Shepherd

COLLAPSED CONCERT | Jill Richards

Season 4 took place in October 2018

Curated by writer, academic, and playwright Jane Taylor, Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea takes the shape of a Collapsed Conference – a series of talks, presentations and ideas all told through performance.

COLLAPSED CONCERT | PART 1 by JILL RICHARDS

The Centre for the Less Good Idea’s Season 4 performance of the Collapsed Concert is, in a sense, a lecture delivered through the medium of performance.

Featuring Jill Richards and Kyle Shepherd, two of the countries most talented and celebrated pianists, the Collapsed Concert is a rich and detailed set of performances carried out on an immaculate Steinway Grand.

Richards was first to take the stage and chose to perform Pierre Boulez’s Piano Sonata No. 2. Richards, who’s performed across five different continents, is a Steinway artist known for her dynamic interests in Bach as well as free-form improvisation. Still, Boulez’s Piano Sonata No. 2 is a notoriously difficult piece to perform, let alone master, but Richards handles the piece with a discipline and precision that can only result from years of performance. Employing Serialism in its composition, the Piano Sonata No. 2 requires a great deal of attention and physicality from its performer – everything from the way a hand touches down on a chord, to the measured breath and metered posture of the pianist.

Listening to Richards is, of course, crucial to the performance, but watching her perform under a single spotlight is a uniquely rich experience, too. Throughout her performance a small, muted light illuminates the inside the piano, reflecting them onto the cover. It is here where you can almost witness each note as it vibrates and rises out of the piano to fill the room around you.

Next up was Shepherd with a counter-example – his own Jazz composition. Shepherd’s career has taken him across the globe and after years of concert piano performance, he’s focussing his attention more on composition. Voices is one of these new compositions and makes use of various spoken, non-musical, and other aural recordings. In Voices, Shepherd is not only using these sounds and recordings to enhance and form part of his own performance, he is also constantly in conversation with them. Through the live use of a sampler, Shepherd cues ambient loops and vocal samples of musicians such as Lionel Loueke and Zim Ngqawana which are incorporated seamlessly into the piece before being responded to through the keys of the piano.

In this musical dialogue with sound and meaning, rhythm and improvisation, Voices invites its audience to listen in on the conversation, and to pay attention to the many shapes and colours sound can become. Strings jammed with sheets of paper take on a sound outside of the piano’s conventional range and long, flourishing moments on the keys form new languages in response to the spoken word.

With both Richards and Shepherd lending their talent to a host of other performances across the Season, getting a chance to see each musician perform solo is a welcome addition to Season 4. The Collapsed Concert not only showcases and contrasts the work of two of the country’s top performing pianists, it also prompts audiences to listen more deeply, and to engage with lines of thought through the medium of sound.

For the full version go to | https://vimeo.com/301810043

PERFORMERS | Jill Richards, Kyle Shepherd

URSONATE

Season 4 took place in October 2018

Curated by writer, academic, and playwright Jane Taylor, Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea takes the shape of a Collapsed Conference – a series of talks, presentations and ideas all told through performance.

URSONATE | WILLIAM KENTRIDGE

When it comes to the works created and performed for The Centre for the Less Good Idea, it’s not uncommon for audiences to arrive at a performance expecting to witness one thing and experiencing something entirely different. William Kentridge’s Season 4 performance of the Ursonate is such a work.

Making use of Kurt Schwitters’ original Ursonate – a sound poetry performance which was itself inspired by the Raoul Hausmann poem fmsbw – Kentridge’s piece is part performance, part lecture, and part symphony. Watching the Ursonate, however, can also make it seem as if it is none of these things.

On a raised platform backed by a full-scale projection, Kentridge takes his position at a makeshift podium. He opens a book and on the projection behind him, a book opens as well. This is perhaps the last time the performance takes the shape of a conventional lecture. From the opening line of the piece: “Fumms bö wö tää zää Uu, pögiff, kwii Ee”, the Ursonate launches into a symphony of audio-visual performance. Kentridge, who addresses the audience in varying phrases throughout, is backed by stop-motion visual works of his own making, some echoing the words and phrases he is uttering, and others filling in for the gaps in our understanding.

There are text-based pieces flickering on and off screen, renderings of loudhailers morphing into still-life works, and dancers performing improvisational pieces of movement on loop. Kentridge’s own tool, his voice, adopts different tones and pitches throughout, and it is through this combination of seemingly random words and images that the lecture begins to make sense. Gibberish becomes impassioned debate while body language – the slight wag of a finger or the outward extension of the palms – helps form a compelling argument.

Ultimately, the Ursonate builds up to a frenzy before reaching the cadenza – a magnificent collapse of rhyme and reason – which is orchestrated by pianist and composer Kyle Shepherd. Here, you see a wonderful dialogue begin to take place. Performers Billy Langa, Tony Miyambo, and Mahlatsi Mokgonyana take their places beside the podium and join the debate, while pianist Jill Richards and trombonist Dan Selsick chime in with a trill of the keys or a low, languid bit of brass. Amidst the noise, the chaos, and the explosions, conclusions are reached, or abandoned, before being revived anew.

The Ursonate is chaotic, but it also finds a place in the everyday. You could find versions of its form in a speech by a politician, or a talk by an academic. And while its contents may be very much up to interpretation, the Ursonate’s universality are down to those very base forms of communication, like the slight wag of a finger or the outward extension of the palms.

For the full version go to | https://vimeo.com/301783578

PERFORMERS | William Kentridge, Mahlatsi Mokgonyana, Kyle Shepherd, Jill Richards, Dan Selsick, Billy Langa, Tony Miyambo.

VEHICLE

Season 4 took place in October 2018

Curated by writer, academic, and playwright Jane Taylor, Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea takes the shape of a Collapsed Conference – a series of talks, presentations and ideas all told through performance.

VEHICLE | GERHARD MARX

“And the second is over. And my eyes are back on the road, back on autopilot, back to peripheral vision, with my hands here, the vital signs of the car all where they should be. A radio station breaking up and then hissing like water on a hot stove plate” – Toast Coetzer

Gerhard Marx’s Vehicle is as much about sound and its intangibility as it is about objects and their raw materiality. In fact, it is the relationship between the two – sound being generated by an object and subsequently giving life to that object – that gives the piece its grounding.

Performed as part of The Centre for the Less Good Idea’s 4th Season, Vehicle is the collaborative efforts of Shane Cooper, Kyle Shepherd, Toast Coetzer, and, of course, Marx. By making use of core fragments of classical string instruments – a cello, two violins and an upright bass – that have been grafted onto the body parts of a car, Marx’s performance creates a rich, transportive sonic world – a rich and immersive road-trip. Through this musical and material bit of forensics, car doors act as resonators, indicators and windscreen wipers become metronomes, and headlights become spotlights.

Cooper and Shepherd serve as the two constants in this piece, each musician situated at a car-door-turned-instrument and creating the immersive journey. There are long, low strokes of the double bass and short, sharp moments of the violin like a car moving along through high winds or crawling along dimly-lit dirt roads. Coetzer, who penned the accompanying prose for the piece adds a gravelly, almost droning sound to the performance as a recording of his prose, broken up and strewn throughout key moments of the piece, plays out. This spoken word element both anchors the performance and enhances it. Coetzer, Cooper, and Shepherd will take you “Through the spinning dervishes of Johannesburg, the metered-out mundanity of Midrand, the ridgetop strongholds of Pretoria and all the towns that follow.” You are on dark, endless roads surrounded by silent hills, and you are moving through bustling towns and cities, luminous plazas and roadside garages.

In Vehicle Marx picks apart pre-existing conventions, practices and found objects to explore and affect their inherent poetic and philosophical languages and assumptions. Abandoned car parts become narrative tools – musical instruments used to communicate complex and universal stories through the deft hands of some of South Africa’s most talented musicians.

For the full version go to | https://vimeo.com/300121521

ARTIST/DIRECTOR | Gerhard Marx
PERFROMERS | Kyle Shepherd, Shane Cooper
PROSE | Toast Coetzer

GOODBYE

Season 4 took place in October 2018

Curated by writer, academic, and playwright Jane Taylor, Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea takes the shape of a Collapsed Conference – a series of talks, presentations and ideas all told through performance.

GOODBYE | Michikazu Matsune

What do we gain by playing witness to the loss of others? Is it sadness or sympathy we feel when hearing another person saying goodbye to someone or something they love, or is it relief or fear that our own goodbyes are behind us, or still to come?

Goodbye, performance-artist and choreographer Michikazu Matsune’s work for Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, is full of parting words, primarily told through goodbye letters from across the globe. Some are written in anger, others are written from a place of deep sadness, and many of them contain a profound way of thinking about our relationships to people, places, and objects in the world through the simple act of saying goodbye.

All of these parting words are read out by Matsune who, seated at a desk containing only a pile of letters and a clock, manages to construct a gripping performance out of a charmingly simple act – the slow cutting open of the envelope, the dry crinkling of paper being unfolded, and the quick, courteous clearing of the throat serve as a brilliant entrance to each story.

There are letters from a cancer patient to her long and soon-to-be-lost hair, a mother giving her daughter away to the constructions and ideals of marriage, and an acerbic resignation letter from a disgruntled, but liberated employee. A letter from a Kamikaze pilot to his children is prosaic in its content, but harrowing when considering its context. Stories about Matsune’s own farewell to his first car or to his parents are at once personal and universal.

Watching a performance such as this one involves a difficult negotiation between vulnerability and voyeurism, empathy and remorse. Much of Matsune’s work is concerned with these relationships between emotional and factual statements and their inherent affective meaning. His practice employs criticality and playfulness in equal measure to examine the body and the object, action and language, place and behaviour. What better way to tease out and interrogate these notions, than through of a series of farewell letters sourced from individuals across time and place?

As much of Season 4’s work proves, some stories can only find full meaning when run through the confines of other mediums, and Matsune makes good use of popular music as well as humour, dance, and performance to convey the themes present in Goodbye.

SALT

Season 4 took place in October 2018

Curated by writer, academic, and playwright Jane Taylor, Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea takes the shape of a Collapsed Conference – a series of talks, presentations and ideas all told through performance.

SALT | Billy Langa and Mahlatsi Mokgonyana

The use of a minimal set is an often-overlooked element in theatre. Some good lighting, a strong script, and a compelling performance often show us how an empty stage can become the site of some truly brilliant theatre. Salt, a performance for Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, proves this on multiple levels.

Written and performed by collaborative theatre-making duo Billy Langa and Mahlatsi Mokgonyana, Salt is a performed presentation on the history of the white crystalline substance that finds reference and meaning in biblical texts, historic wars, global currencies, and everyday events. These histories are told through a text that is both dense and abstract, but nonetheless comprehensive.

Langa, who penned the piece, makes use of restrained humour to undercut both the performance, as well as the sometimes-overwhelming contents of the text. The physical performance itself – a restricted, but refined use of the body that takes place on a chair positioned on a small wooden sphere-turned-stage – is used by Langa to both mimic and replace the text. Mokgonyana’s direction of the work is key, and on multiple occasions sees the convergence of text and performance. A perfect example sees Langa, lying flat on the chair before raising his body slowly, almost painfully, while delivering an uninterrupted reading of the moment Edith – the woman referred to only as ‘Lot’s wife’ in the Bible – is turned to a rigid and bound pillar of salt.

Lighting and sound are crucial to the performance, with Langa purposefully drawings the audience’s attention to both elements. Soundtracks are muted, almost non-existent throughout, before rising to near-cacophonic ends. Stage lights produce shadows, silhouettes, or floods of white, hot light that themselves appear to be crystal pillars or divine scripts.

Ultimately, Salt is as much a performance about history and information as it is about the act of restraint and struggle. It’s a performance that examines what happens to an argument or a line of thought when broken out of their conventional mediums, and it captures the difficult and often infuriating practice of conveying things such as raw emotion or spoken language through language and the body, respectively. And it is in this process that many things are lost or left behind, but it is also through the witnessing of such a struggle that you begin to adopt new languages and means of interpretation – the way the human body can become a vehicle for stories, rather than acting as a tool to convey fragments of that same story.

For the full version of SALT please go to | https://vimeo.com/300947383

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

WALID RAAD and WILLIAM KENTRIDGE

Season 4 took place in October 2018

Curated by writer, academic, and playwright Jane Taylor, Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea takes the shape of a Collapsed Conference – a series of talks, presentations and ideas all told through performance.

Walid Raad | Performance and In Conversation | Double Bill

It’s difficult to imagine a more fitting start to The Centre for the Less Good Idea’s 4th season than a double bill featuring Lebanon-born, New York-based artist and academic Walid Raad.

Comprised of an artist talk followed by a public conversation between Raad and founder of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, William Kentridge, Raad’s performance served as the perfect primer to the season 4’s overarching theme of the ‘collapsed conference’ curated by academic and theatre-maker Jane Taylor.

Raad who’s well-known for his work on the contemporary history of Lebanon, with a specific focus on the country’s wars between 1975 and 1991, conducted a talk in the form of a lecture, the contents of which were largely formulated through fictional archives while being dotted with moments of truth. The artist delved into historical accounts of car bombs, the practice of betting on horses, and more. Seemingly watertight arguments and findings were presented to the audience before collapsing in on themselves and leaving only fragments of fact and fiction.

As you watch Raad, you are taking notes – unconsciously or otherwise – about the validity of the information you are being fed, and of the performance itself. ‘This bit must be true,’ you find yourself thinking, ‘But this can’t be true.’ But prospecting truth from muddied or fabricated versions of history is beside the point with Raad’s performance. His lecture essentially calls into question the nature of truth and of fiction, rather than the differences between the two. By taking the structure of a performance, it also calls attention to the integrity of performance itself and, ultimately, uses fiction to highlight the obscurity, the audacity, and the incomprehensibility of the truth – something that’s all too relatable when it comes to South Africa’s own fixation with the archive.

In the discussion between Kentridge and Raad which followed the performance, the two discuss the use of archival information, found media, and the artist’s own creations to deliberate on the idea of history as a construction, and the archive as a collection of disjointed truths and realities, skewed by time, language, and medium.

One of the core questions being put forward through the various performances of Season 4 is: What happens to an academic argument when it’s channeled through, or constrained by, the medium of performance? Raad’s performance, then, was an excellent way to begin puzzling it all out.

For the full conversation between Walid Raad and William Kentridge go to | https://vimeo.com/300123940

DON’T TRUST THE BORDER

Season 4 took place in October 2018

Curated by writer, academic, and playwright Jane Taylor, Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea takes the shape of a Collapsed Conference – a series of talks, presentations and ideas all told through performance.

DON’T TRUST THE BORDER | JESSICA NUPEN

Staging Jessica Nupen’s Don’t Trust the Border in Johannesburg is a homecoming of sorts. The work, performed for Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, may have been debuted in Hamburg with a message that aspires to a global mentality, but it is in Joburg that the idea for the work was born.

In Don’t Trust the Border, there are a number of questions and ideas around the concept of borders in both our minds and our physical realities. There are the more overt examples – geographical boundaries, Brexit, Trump’s wall – and then there are the psychological and intrinsic examples of borders that exist, such as cultural crossovers and divides, fear of new ideas, or phases of one’s own life. In Don’t Trust the Border, both the visible and the invisible borders are examined through a striking display of physical theatre.

The piece opens with a semi-transparent curtain separating audience and stage and, in this way, you are introduced to your first border before the performers have even begun. Other borders throughout the show take the form of well-placed lighting, considered stage direction, and the clever use of props and materials. Coming in at just over an hour, and with an extraordinary number of different scenes and thematic shifts, Don’t Trust the Border could be a difficult show to follow, but it is these aforementioned manifestations of borders throughout the performance that help to both contain and lend a fluidity to the contents of the show.

It is the performers themselves who shine through, however. For every presented problem, idea, or line of thought In Don’t Trust the Border, there is a physical counterpart. Be it the jubilant group dance scenes or the painful, tense interactions between two silhouettes, Nupen and her co-performers – who are both SA and Berlin-based – serve as a brilliant reminder of how seemingly incomprehensible issues can find clarity through the simple act of a body in motion.

For the full version go to | https://vimeo.com/303012061

DIRECTOR | Jessica Nupen
DRAMATURGY | Phala Ookeditse Phala
DANCERS | Themba Mbuli, Thulani Chauke, Jessica Nupen, Lorin Sokol, Thamsanqa Masoka, Olivia Papoli Barawati, Eugene Mashiane
VISUAL ARTIST | Peter Mammes
MUSIC COMPOSITION | Luca Hinrichs & Lucinee Der KaraPetian
COSTUME AND PROP DESIGN | Joel Janse Van Vuuren
LIGHTING AND SET | Wilhelm Disbergen
FILM AND ILLUSTRATION | Leila El-Kayem
ASSOCIATE INSTITUTIONS | Freeeye-TV, Kampagnel, Lufthansa, Hamburg,Universitat Hamburg, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany and Mantombaz Foundation

VIDEO COUNTDOWN 1/6

Season 4 features 14 outstanding live performance events taking place from 16 -21 October.

16 October at 7pm : WALID RAAD performance lecture followed by IN CONVERSATION with Raad & Kentridge

17 & 18 October at 7pm :
Double Bill | Michikazu Matsune's "Goodbye" & "Salt" by Billy Langa & Mahlatsi Mokgonyana

17 October at 8:30pm
William Kentridge's "Ursonate"

18 October at 8:30pm
Kyle Shepard & Jill Richards in "Collapsed Concert"

19 & 20 October at 6pm "Vehicle" by Gerhard Marx with collaborators Kyle Shepard, Shane Cooper & Toast Coetzer

19 & 20 October at 7pm
Double Bill | Ilze Wolff's "Vi die wat wil wiet" & "Pan Troglodyte" with Tony Miyambo, Jane Taylor & Terry Norton

19 October at 8:30pm & 20 October at 12pm
Jessica Nupen's "Don't Trust the Border"

20 October at 8pm
THE SURPLUS
with Mahlatsi Mokgonyana, Thulani Chauke, Jessica Nupen, Billy Langa, Tony Miyambo, Themba Mdluli, Kyle Shepard & Jill Richards

21 October at 4pm
Mamela Nyamza's "Black Privilege"

The Surplus

This Season of The Centre for the Less Good Idea concludes with an improvisational piece that draws on the resources of many of its performances and participating artists.

Initially framed as something of a circus, this Season’s concluding performance shifted and evolved as a result of its creative resources, to become The Surplus – a parade of performance, a conference of creative collaboration.

In The Surplus many of Season 4’s themes and lines of thought will converge through a series of devised and improvised, free-flowing performances. Thematic inquiries into the notions of human vs machine, and alternate views of history will be presented through dances with paper, and choruses of megaphones. Dervish dances involving long, precarious knives will take over the floor, before giving way to the keys of a piano, sounding out across various mediums, fighting to be heard amidst the din of information, the collapsed conference.

Ultimately, as Season 4’s curator and ringmaster Jane Taylor explains, The Surplus hints at a question of true significance in our time – which is the surplus? Is the Machine a surplus to the Human? Is the Human a surplus to the Machine?

VIDEO COUNTDOWN 2/6

See extracts for upcoming performances hosted in the The Centre space at Arts on Main over the course of the Season.

How does art influence the way we engage with information?

What shape would an academic conference take if its participants were made to present their research and ideas through the mediums of art and performance?

Season 4 of The Centre of the Less Good Idea, curated by writer, academic, and theatre-maker Jane Taylor who currently holds the Andrew W Mellon Chair in Aesthetic Theory at the CHR at UWC, explores these ideas through the form of a collapsed conference.

DOUBLE BILL | Michikazu Matsune's "Goodbye" & "Salt" by Billy Langa & Mahlatsi Mokgonyana

DOUBLE BILL | Ilze Woolf's "Vi die wat wil wiet" & "Pan Troglodyte" with Tony Miyambo, Jane Taylor & Terry Norton

Collapsed Concert

Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea features a number of pianos in various states of disrepair, as well as a single, pristinely-kept Steinway grand piano. The season also features two of the country’s best pianists, Jill Richards and Kyle Shepherd. While Shepherd and Richards will engage with almost all of the pianos over the course of the Season, they will also make use of the Steinway in a spectacular double bill piano programme.

The Piano programme is, in some senses, a lecture through the means of performance. Richards, who is a great interpreter of the Western tradition – from Classical through Romantics and Modernists – will perform Pierre Boulez’s Piano Sonata No. 2. A notoriously difficult piece to perform, Boulez’s Sonato No. 2 employs Serialism as a method of composition and will require Richards to exercise an incredible amount of discipline while also allowing her to place an emphasis on the physicality of her work as a pianist – something she’s been exploring throughout Season 4’s workshops.

This interpretation will be followed by a counter-example – Shepherd’s own Jazz composition. Having arrived at the Season 4 workshops with a desire to experiment beyond the realms of concert piano performance, Shepherd’s work will make use of spoken, non-musical, and other aural recordings that both exemplify and challenge his profound history of engagement with the piano.

By including recorded vocal samples of musicians such as Lionel Loueke and Zim Ngqawana, as well as ambient loops, Shepherd’s piece will be as much of a performance as it is an improvised conversation with these select sounds.

This double bill will provide audiences with some of the best piano playing in the country, while also allowing for each musician to access and engage the work of the other.

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

VIDEO COUNTDOWN 3/6

Initially framed as something of a circus, this Season’s concluding performance shifted and evolved as a result of its creative resources, to become The Surplus – a parade of performance, a conference of creative collaboration.

In The Surplus many of Season 4’s themes and lines of thought will converge through a series of devised and improvised, free-flowing performances. Thematic inquiries into the notions of human vs machine, and alternate views of history will be presented through dances with paper, and choruses of megaphones. Dervish dances involving long, precarious knives will take over the floor, before giving way to the keys of a piano, sounding out across various mediums, fighting to be heard amidst the din of information, the collapsed conference.

Ultimately, as Season 4’s curator and ringmaster Jane Taylor explains, The Surplus hints at a question of true significance in our time – which is the surplus? Is the Machine a surplus to the Human? Is the Human a surplus to the Machine?

The Surplus

Initially framed as something of a circus, this Season’s concluding performance shifted and evolved as a result of its creative resources, to become The Surplus – a parade of performance, a conference of creative collaboration.

In The Surplus many of Season 4’s themes and lines of thought will converge through a series of devised and improvised, free-flowing performances. Thematic inquiries into the notions of human vs machine, and alternate views of history will be presented through dances with paper, and choruses of megaphones. Dervish dances involving long, precarious knives will take over the floor, before giving way to the keys of a piano, sounding out across various mediums, fighting to be heard amidst the din of information, the collapsed conference.

Ultimately, as Season 4’s curator and ringmaster Jane Taylor explains, The Surplus hints at a question of true significance in our time – which is the surplus? Is the Machine a surplus to the Human? Is the Human a surplus to the Machine?

Monk

Monk is a wooden carved puppet designed and made by Adrian Kohler from Handspring Puppet Company. He is no stranger to the stage, having performed for almost twenty years. His first role was in The Chimp Project, a work that travelled to several countries internationally. In that production he worked closely with Gerhard Marx, who is currently staging his work, Vehicle, at the Centre. Most recently, Monk has been performing in a lecture/performance with Tony Miyambo, Terry Norton and Jane Taylor. He is an activist, interested in provoking public imaginations to consider the precarious plight of his species. He recently travelled to Perth, Australia, where he took part in a conference on the History of The Emotions. In the coming month he will be traveling to France, in a new set of creative enquiries.

A versatile performer, Monk is very gifted in dramatic roles, though he is interested in exploring the comedic repertoire.

PHOTOGRAPHER | Thusi Vukani

VIDEO COUNTDOWN 4/6

Goodbye | Michikazu Matsune

Austria-based Japanese performance-artist and choreographer Michikazu Matsune will be forming a part of The Centre for the Less Good Idea’s Season 4 with and enigmatic piece titled Goodbye.

Through the performing of numerous goodbye letters from the global archive, Matsune will explore the curious relationship between statements of fact and emotional, or affective meaning. Is it a sadness or anger that we feel when listening in on other people’s parting words, or is it more of a relief that our own goodbyes have yet to come?

Much of Matsune’s interests lies in testing poetic absurdity to reflect our society, both critically and playfully. Themes such as the relationship between the body and the object, action and language, place and behaviour form crucial roles in his conceptual practice.
Delivered as a series of statements, Goodbye provokes audiences to puzzle out the transaction of universal feelings through deeply personal records.

Deliberately bringing together his ability to play and critique, choreographer and performance artist, Michikazu Matsune is not shy to explore a range of spaces, from homes to stages to public museums. His work is an interdisciplinary approach which allows him to investigate themes such as the relationship between subject and object, and action and language. His performances also include visual art such as hand painted posters which still resonate with his signature playful critique. His most notable work has been the provocative piece titled Dance If You Want To Enter My Country which is based on the true story of Adbur Rahim Jackson who had to prove his profession as a dancer to officers at airport security interrogations. In continuing his artistic practice, Matsune teaches performance in Austria and Germany. He is originally from Japan and currently based in Vienna. For Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, the artist will perform a reading of numerous ‘goodbye’ letters from the global archive. In doing so, the enigmatic relationship between statements of fact, and emotional, or affective meaning will be explored.

Michikazu Matsune

Austria-based Japanese performance-artist and choreographer Michikazu Matsune will be forming a part of The Centre for the Less Good Idea’s Season 4 with and enigmatic piece titled Goodbye.

Through the performing of numerous goodbye letters from the global archive, Matsune will explore the curious relationship between statements of fact and emotional, or affective meaning. Is it a sadness or anger that we feel when listening in on other people’s parting words, or is it more of a relief that our own goodbyes have yet to come?

Much of Matsune’s interests lies in testing poetic absurdity to reflect our society, both critically and playfully. Themes such as the relationship between the body and the object, action and language, place and behaviour form crucial roles in his conceptual practice.
Delivered as a series of statements, Goodbye provokes audiences to puzzle out the transaction of universal feelings through deeply personal records.

Deliberately bringing together his ability to play and critique, choreographer and performance artist, Michikazu Matsune is not shy to explore a range of spaces, from homes to stages to public museums. His work is an interdisciplinary approach which allows him to investigate themes such as the relationship between subject and object, and action and language. His performances also include visual art such as hand painted posters which still resonate with his signature playful critique. His most notable work has been the provocative piece titled Dance If You Want To Enter My Country which is based on the true story of Adbur Rahim Jackson who had to prove his profession as a dancer to officers at airport security interrogations. In continuing his artistic practice, Matsune teaches performance in Austria and Germany. He is originally from Japan and currently based in Vienna. For Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, the artist will perform a reading of numerous ‘goodbye’ letters from the global archive. In doing so, the enigmatic relationship between statements of fact, and emotional, or affective meaning will be explored.

VIDEO COUNTDOWN 5/6

VEHICLE

Gerhard Marx with collaborators Shane Cooper, Kyle Shepherd, vocals and prose by Toast Coetzer.

To give something ‘a voice’, is to give it some form of agency. To ‘take a voice away’, is to do the opposite. To make something ‘sing’ describes an ecstasy of that object.

Gerhard Marx’s enigmatic ‘Vehicle’ explores how the immateriality of sound relates to the physicality of objects. In the pursuit of drawing a voice (and narrative) from ‘things’, Marx has grafted fragments of classical string instruments; a cello, two violins and an upright bass, onto the body parts of a car. As a result the automotive body becomes the resonator box from which a rich, broody, and immersive sound world is drawn.

For many years artist Gerhard Marx has been considering the entanglement of meaning and material. Beginning with pre-existing conventions, practices and found objects, Marx dissembles these to explore and affect their inherent poetic and philosophical languages and assumptions.

Vehicle works through a similar strategy of dissection, reassembly and hybridization. It is a project of ‘musical forensics’ in which strings are used to see beyond the immediacy of the object, to peep below its surface, to ‘sound things out’. This is done through the extraordinary improvisational exploration of celebrated musicians and collaborators Shane Cooper and Kyle Shepherd. Writer and performer Toast Coetzer’s evocative prose and vocals further layers Vehicle’s rich, moving and transportative sound world.

Shane Cooper

Shane Cooper playing Gerhard Marx’s Vehicle during workshops towards Season 4.

Vehicle works through a similar strategy of dissection, reassembly and hybridization. It is a project of ‘musical forensics’ in which strings are used to see beyond the immediacy of the object, to peep below its surface, to ‘sound things out’. This is done through the extraordinary improvisational exploration of celebrated musicians and collaborators Shane Cooper and Kyle Shepherd. Writer and performer Toast Coetzer’s evocative prose and vocals further layers Vehicle’s rich, moving and transportative sound world.

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Kyle and Shane playing VEHICLE

An aerial view of Kyle Shepherd and Shane Cooper playing the Vehicle during development workshops for Season 4

Vehicle works through a similar strategy of dissection, reassembly and hybridization. It is a project of ‘musical forensics’ in which strings are used to see beyond the immediacy of the object, to peep below its surface, to ‘sound things out’. This is done through the extraordinary improvisational exploration of celebrated musicians and collaborators Shane Cooper and Kyle Shepherd. Writer and performer Toast Coetzer’s evocative prose and vocals further layers Vehicle’s rich, moving and transportative sound world

PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

VIDEO COUNTDOWN 6/6

See extracts for upcoming performances hosted in the William Kentridge studio at Arts on Main over the course of the Season.

URSONATE
Performed by Willliam Kentridge
Running Time: 60mins

William Kentridge’s Ursonate is, essentially, a lecture about music and language, in four parts.

Date | 17 October at 8:30pm
_____

COLLAPSED CONCERT
Performed by Kyle Shepherd and Jill Richards
Running Time: 60mins

This Piano programme is, in some senses, a lecture through the means of performance. Richards, who is a great interpreter of the Western tradition – from Classical through Romantics and Modernists – will perform Pierre Boulez’s Piano Sonata No. 2. A notoriously difficult piece to perform.

This interpretation will be followed by a counter-example – Shepherd’s own Jazz composition. Shepherd’s work will make use of spoken, non-musical, and other aural recordings that both exemplify and challenge his profound history of engagement with the piano.

Date | 18 October at 8:30pm
_____

DON'T TRUST THE BORDER
Director | Jessica Nupen
Collaborators | Dramaturgy: Phala Ookeditse Phala, Dancers: Themba Mbuli, Thulani Chauke, Jessica Nupen, Lorin Sokol, Thamsanqa Masoka, Olivia Papoli Barawati, Eugene Mashiane, Visual Artist: Peter Mammes, Music Composition: Luca Hinrichs & Lucinee Der KaraPetian, Costume & Prop Design: Joel Janse Van Vuuren, Light & Set: Wilhelm Disbergen, Film & Illustration: Leila El-Kayem, Production Management: Fanny Roy, PR and Marketing: Ulrike Steffel / Kampnage, Photography: Tanya Hall

Associate institutions | Centre for the Less Good Idea, Film recording and post-production: Freeeye-TV, Kampnagel, Lufthansa, Hamburg, Universitat Hamburg, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, Moving Into Dance Mophatong and Mantombaz Foundation
Running Time: 60mins

Jessica Nupen’s Dance ensemble work Don’t Trust the Border uses bodies in order to investigate and explore the circumstances of migrancy, relocation, exile; longing and belonging.

Date | 19 October at 8:30pm & 20 October at 12pm
_____

BLACK PRIVILEGE
Performed by @Mamela Nyamza
Running Time: 50mins

Mamela Nyamza, easily one of the most active and skilled artists in the realms of dance and physical theatre in the country, brings her solo dance piece, Black Privilege to Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea.

Director and performer | Mamela Nyamza

Collaborators | Sello Pesa | Lighting & Stage Designer: Wilhelm Disbergen, Body Paint Artist & Costume Designer: Linda Mandela-Sejosingoe, and Production Manager: Buntu Tyali

Date | 21 October at 4pm
_____

Jill on piano

The piano is a key instrument in Season 4.

The two immensely gifted pianists, Kyle Shepherd and Jill Richards, while each is esteemed within their own sphere, are unlikely to have ever performed in a shared program, because one (Richards) generally plays the repertoire of western work (broadly defined, often rather inadequately described as 'classical) while the other is a renowned Jazz pianist. We are delighted to have them perform together (at times on the same piano); because of what we learn about both traditions from the dialogues between them. It is also a joy to watch their engagement with one another's practices.

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Black Privilege

Mamela Nyamza, easily one of the most active and skilled artists in the realms of dance and physical theatre in the country, brings her solo dance piece, Black Privilege to Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea.

Black Privilege is a wry and stirring performance on contemporary debates about race, identity, and the workings of creative and academic institutions which debuted at the 2018 National Arts Festival to packed theatres.

Informed by the ideas and experiences of rejection by mainstream institutions, the work is a celebration of South Africa’s unsung or rejected heroines, while also dealing with conflicting notions of patronage and judgement, education and unemployment. What does it mean to be jobless with a PhD, asks Nyamza, and how does one become simultaneously celebrated and limited by the same institution or group of people?

While Nyamza’s physical style is well-known and has grown into something of a signature for the artist, her conceptual process is equally experimental and free-flowing. For Black Privilege¸ Nyamza first conceptualised the piece as taking place inside a courtroom before moving onto discussions on the notion of ‘trash’, which led to a deliberation on the idea of snakes and ladders, finally becoming Black Privilege which, ultimately, embodies all of the aforementioned processes in its performance.

Mahlatsi Mokgonyana

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

Season 4 | VIDEO PROFILE | Jane Taylor

Jane Taylor is the core curator of Season 4.

With two published novels and more recently, a scholarly monograph that articulates the behind the scenes process of the artistic genius that is William Kentridge, Jane Taylor is the epitome of theatre performance meets academic theory. South Africa’s political, social and cultural transformation has inspired both her academic and artistic interests. Her play ‘Ubu and the Truth Commission’ in collaboration with William Kentridge, has gained phenomenal international recognition and is just one of many examples of her meticulous ability to bring the art of puppetry in conversation with the human subject. She has written extensively on the history of the human subject and the limits and intersection of its performativity. For Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Taylor will be performing Pan Troglodyte – a performed presentation of a paper developing the argument about primate intelligence, AI, and race theory – with actors Terry Norton and Tony Bonani Miyambo. Taylor currently holds the Andrew W Mellon Chair of Aesthetic Theory and Material Performance.

Jane Taylor

Jane Taylor is the core curator of Season 4.

With two published novels and more recently, a scholarly monograph that articulates the behind the scenes process of the artistic genius that is William Kentridge, Jane Taylor is the epitome of theatre performance meets academic theory. South Africa’s political, social and cultural transformation has inspired both her academic and artistic interests. Her play ‘Ubu and the Truth Commission’ in collaboration with William Kentridge, has gained phenomenal international recognition and is just one of many examples of her meticulous ability to bring the art of puppetry in conversation with the human subject. She has written extensively on the history of the human subject and the limits and intersection of its performativity. For Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Taylor will be performing Pan Troglodyte – a performed presentation of a paper developing the argument about primate intelligence, AI, and race theory – with actors Terry Norton and Tony Bonani Miyambo. Taylor currently holds the Andrew W Mellon Chair of Aesthetic Theory and Material Performance.

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Workshopping

SEASON 4 includes installations and performances by Walid Raad, William Kentridge, Billy Langa, Mahlatsi Mokgonyana, Mitchikazu Matsune, Terry Norton, Tony Miyambo, Jill Richards, Kyle Shepard, Ilze Wolff, Gerhard Marx, Shane Cooper, Jessica Nupen, Thulani Chauke, Fana Tshabalala, Themba Mbuli and Mamela Nyamza taking place in 3 venues at Arts on Main, The Maboneng Precinct.

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Season 4 | VIDEO PROFILE | Thulani, Fana and Themba

Thulani Chauke is a performing artist, choreographer, and dancer. Chauke has learned from and worked with companies and schools such as Moving into Dance Mophatong, Vuyani Dance Theatre, and Forgotten Angle Theatre Collective. He is also a co-founder of The Broken Borders Art Project and formed part of Season 1 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea with his production titled History of the Main Complaint. For Season 4, Chauke infuses his innate curiosity in abstract forms of communication – the inherent languages in everyday expressions and movements of the body – into a host of collaborative performances with various musicians, actors, and visual artists. This Season also sees Chauke working with long-time collaborators Fana Tshabalala and Themba Mbuli to further explore the possibilities of movement, and to embrace the challenges that come with placing the body in unfamiliar contexts and forms of communication.

Fana Tshabalala was born in Sebokeng, Johannesburg, Fana Tshabalala’s passion for dancing has seen him take up the positions of dancer, teacher and choreographer over the years, and has taken him to locations across the globe. He has held positions of Assistant Director for the Vuku Zenzele Cultural Group,Dance director for Vuka African Artists, and is a co-founder of the Broken Borders Art Project. Tshabalala’s practice for Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea is that of an improvisational one, stemming from his belief in the amazing memory inherent in the body. In this way, improvisation is something of a natural act for Tshabalala – a process involving the performer opening their mind, and allowing the body to lead the way. Having embraced confusion as a means of discovery in the period leading up to these final performances, Tshabalala will be participating in a number of collaborative pieces for Season 4, seeing him work with musicians, dancers, objects, and more.

Themba Mbuli is a dancer, activist, performer, and choreographer Themba Mbuli began his journey with dance when he joined Soweto-based youth club, Zola Musical Drama, almost 20 years ago. He went on to become the 2016 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Dance and has made a name for himself in the performing arts as one of South Africa’s brilliant storytellers. Mbuli has co-founded the projects Broken Borders Arts Project as well as the Unmute Dance Company in Cape Town, the only remaining theatre company for performers with disabilities to come together and create new work. Mbuli is interested in reflecting his observations on the global mistreatment of women, and takes much of his creative inspiration from the works of poets, musicians, and dancers. For Season 4 of the Less Good Idea, the performer is interested in making himself as available as possible to his fellow artists and collaborators, and will lend his practice to a number of the Season’s pieces, including dancer and choreographer Jessica Nupen’s Don’t Trust The Border. For Mbuli, this is the first time he’s collaborated with artists who work across such a variety of genres, and will incorporate the challenges he encountered during the workshopping process in much of his work for Season 4.

Thulani Chauke

Thulani Chauke is a performing artist, choreographer, and dancer. Chauke has learned from and worked with companies and schools such as Moving into Dance Mophatong, Vuyani Dance Theatre, and Forgotten Angle Theatre Collective. He is also a co-founder of The Broken Borders Art Project and formed part of Season 1 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea with his production titled History of the Main Complaint. For Season 4, Chauke infuses his innate curiosity in abstract forms of communication – the inherent languages in everyday expressions and movements of the body – into a host of collaborative performances with various musicians, actors, and visual artists. This Season also sees Chauke working with long-time collaborators Fana Tshabalala and Themba Mbuli to further explore the possibilities of movement, and to embrace the challenges that come with placing the body in unfamiliar contexts and forms of communication.

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Themba Mbuli

Themba Mbuli is a dancer, activist, performer, and choreographer Themba Mbuli began his journey with dance when he joined Soweto-based youth club, Zola Musical Drama, almost 20 years ago. He went on to become the 2016 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Dance and has made a name for himself in the performing arts as one of South Africa’s brilliant storytellers. Mbuli has co-founded the projects Broken Borders Arts Project as well as the Unmute Dance Company in Cape Town, the only remaining theatre company for performers with disabilities to come together and create new work. Mbuli is interested in reflecting his observations on the global mistreatment of women, and takes much of his creative inspiration from the works of poets, musicians, and dancers. For Season 4 of the Less Good Idea, the performer is interested in making himself as available as possible to his fellow artists and collaborators, and will lend his practice to a number of the Season’s pieces, including dancer and choreographer Jessica Nupen’s Don’t Trust The Border. For Mbuli, this is the first time he’s collaborated with artists who work across such a variety of genres, and will incorporate the challenges he encountered during the workshopping process in much of his work for Season 4.

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Season 4 | VIDEO PROFILE | Jessica Nupen

Jessica Nupen is choreographer, performer and creator based in Germany. Born in South African to anti-apartheid activist parents, Nupen’s work is heavily inspired by her South African background. Her pieces have received features in publications and organisations such as CNN Inside Africa, Business Day, and Forbes Woman Africa. Nupen’s work seeks to rebel against the physical, emotional and structural oppression that still exists in South Africa today, and she cites Johannesburg as a hugely inspirational space for her work.
For Season 4 of the Centre for the Less Good Idea, Nupen is using the limitless possibilities available to her through the Centre’s resources and other artists, and is embracing failed and fleeting ideas as a means of generating new work. Nupen will also be working with fellow Season 4 performers to present her dance piece Don’t Trust The Border which will include performers from both South Africa and Germany.

WRITING | Dave Mann
SOUND | From Don’t Trust the Border
CINEMATOGRAPHY AND EDITING | Noah Cohen

Jessica and the knife skirt

Jessica in Season 4 workshops developing a dervish style knife skirt dance for SURPLUS, the performance piece taking place on Saturday 20 October at 20h30 in the William Kentridge studio.

In The Surplus Circus many of Season 4’s themes and lines of thought will converge through a series of devised and improvised, free-flowing performances. Thematic inquiries into the notions of human vs machine, and alternate views of history will be presented through dances with paper, and choruses of megaphones. Dervish dances involving long, precarious knives will take over the floor, before giving way to the keys of a piano, sounding out across various mediums, fighting to be heard amidst the din of information, the collapsed conference.

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Jessica Nupen

Jessica Nupen is choreographer, performer and creator based in Germany. Born in South African to anti-apartheid activist parents, Nupen’s work is heavily inspired by her South African background. Her pieces have received features in publications and organisations such as CNN Inside Africa, Business Day, and Forbes Woman Africa. Nupen’s work seeks to rebel against the physical, emotional and structural oppression that still exists in South Africa today, and she cites Johannesburg as a hugely inspirational space for her work. For Season 4 of the Centre for the Less Good Idea, Nupen is using the limitless possibilities available to her through the Centre’s resources and other artists, and is embracing failed and fleeting ideas as a means of generating new work. Nupen will also be working with fellow Season 4 performers to present her dance piece Don’t Trust The Border which will include performers from both South Africa and Germany.

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Season 4 | VIDEO PROFILE | Theatre Duo

Here we have Theatreduo, Billy Edward and Mahlatsi Mokgonyana

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
SOUND | Gavan Eckhart, Zain Vally & SoulFire Studio
CINEMATOGRAPHY & EDITING | Noah Cohen

Billy Langa

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

Theatre Duo

In this season there is an exemplification of performance in the voice and the body by the 'theatre duo' Billy Lange and Mahlatsi Mokgonyana. Together they are developing SALT, in which they 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?

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Season 4 | VIDEO PROFILE | Jill Richards

The piano is a key instrument in Season 4.

The two immensely gifted pianists, Kyle Shepherd and Jill Richards, while each is esteemed within their own sphere, are unlikely to have ever performed in a shared program, because one (Richards) generally plays the repertoire of western work (broadly defined, often rather inadequately described as 'classical) while the other is a renowned Jazz pianist.We are delighted to have them perform together (at times on the same piano); because of what we learn about both traditions from the dialogues between them. It is also a joy to watch their engagement with one another's practices.

In this video we feature Jill Richards, a Steinway artist, is a classical pianist who’s known both locally and internationally. Having received her Bachelor of Music degree at the University of South Africa, she later went on to earn her Postgraduate Diploma at the Royal College of Music in London. Richards is known for her dynamic interests in Bach but she excels at her own improvised compositions which she’ll be further exploring for Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea. Having used her time with The Centre to explore and collaborate with new genres and mediums of art as much as possible, Richards will be featuring in a few this Season’s performances, be it teaching a monkey to play the piano, soundtracking live improvised physical theatre, or even a bit of acting. This experimentation and free-flowing improvisation will also be contrasted in Richards’ solo piece, a performance of French composer Pierre Boulez’s Piano Sonata No. 2 which forms part of a double bill with pianist and composer Kyle Shepherd.

CINEMATOGRAPHY AND EDITING | Noah Cohen
WRITING | Dave Mann

Jill Richards

Jill Richards is a Steinway artist, is a classical pianist who’s known both locally and internationally. Having received her Bachelor of Music degree at the University of South Africa, she later went on to earn her Postgraduate Diploma at the Royal College of Music in London. Richards is known for her dynamic interests in Bach but she excels at her own improvised compositions which she’ll be further exploring for Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea. Having used her time with The Centre to explore and collaborate with new genres and mediums of art as much as possible, Richards will be featuring in a few this Season’s performances, be it teaching a monkey to play the piano, soundtracking live improvised physical theatre, or even a bit of acting. This experimentation and free-flowing improvisation will also be contrasted in Richards’ solo piece, a performance of French composer Pierre Boulez’s Piano Sonata No. 2 which forms part of a double bill with pianist and composer Kyle Shepherd.

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Jill during workshops

In the build up to any season the invited artists are given an opportunity to play and experiment with ideas.

Here we see Jill Richards, Tony Miyambo, William Kentridge and Monk the puppet exploring the piano as tool. Fellow pianist and musician Kyle Shepherd looks on in the background.

PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Season 4 | VIDEO PROFILE | Tony Miyambo

Tony Miyambo is an actor and theatre-maker with a BA in Dramatic Arts from the University of Witwatersrand. He’s best known for his role in Wonder Boy for President alongside comedian Kagiso Lediga and actor Akin Omotoso. If you ask him, however, he’ll tell you he’s more of a ‘creative cultural resource’ – a storyteller across various formats. Having started his acting career after the passing of his father, Miyambo draws on the memory of his late father which sees him incorporating a strong element of play into his performances, for both himself and the audience. Last year audiences at the Centre would have seen his performance of Kafka’s Ape, a work directed by collaborator Phala O Phala, based on Kafka’s Lecture to An Academy. This season of the Centre for the Less Good Idea sees Miyambo making his puppeteering debut with a Handspring Puppet Company original piece, in a play by Season 4 curator Jane Taylor. Miyambo will also be lending his talents to several other performances across the Season, which will see him further exploring his brand of clown-centric physicality in a way that’s at once improvisational and collaborative.

CINEMATOGRAPHY AND EDITING | Noah Cohen
WRITING | Dave Mann

Tony Miyambo and Jill Richards

During workshops towards the season Tony Miyambo and Jill Richards explore the piano as tool together with Monk the puppet

PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Tony Miyambo

Tony Miyambo is an actor and theatre-maker with a BA in Dramatic Arts from the University of Witwatersrand. He’s best known for his role in Wonder Boy for President alongside comedian Kagiso Lediga and actor Akin Omotoso. If you ask him, however, he’ll tell you he’s more of a ‘creative cultural resource’ – a storyteller across various formats. Having started his acting career after the passing of his father, Miyambo draws on the memory of his late father which sees him incorporating a strong element of play into his performances, for both himself and the audience. Last year audiences at the Centre would have seen his performance of Kafka’s Ape, a work directed by collaborator Phala O Phala, based on Kafka’s Lecture to An Academy. This season of the Centre for the Less Good Idea sees Miyambo making his puppeteering debut with a Handspring Puppet Company original piece, in a play by Season 4 curator Jane Taylor. Miyambo will also be lending his talents to several other performances across the Season, which will see him further exploring his brand of clown-centric physicality in a way that’s at once improvisational and collaborative.

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Tony and Monk

The ape has provided a long-standing metaphor for our own obsessions and definitions of humanity. In Pan Troglodyte, theatre-maker, academic, and Season 4 curator Jane Taylor teams up with actors Tony Miyambo and Terry Norton to present a performed presentation of a paper developing the argument about primate intelligence, AI, and race theory.

PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Season 4 | VIDEO PROFILE | Kyle Shepherd

Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea features a number of pianos in various states of disrepair, as well as a single, pristinely-kept Steinway grand piano. The season also features two of the country’s best pianists, Jill Richards and Kyle Shepherd. While Shepherd and Richards will engage with almost all of the pianos over the course of the Season, they will also make use of the Steinway in a spectacular double bill piano programme.

Shepherd brings his own Jazz composition. Having arrived at the Season 4 workshops with a desire to experiment beyond the realms of concert piano performance, Shepherd’s work will make use of spoken, non-musical, and other aural recordings that both exemplify and challenge his profound history of engagement with the piano.

By including recorded vocal samples of musicians such as Lionel Loueke and Zim Ngqawana, as well as ambient loops, Shepherd’s piece will be as much of a performance as it is an improvised conversation with these select sounds.
This double bill will provide audiences with some of the best piano playing in the country, while also allowing for each musician to access and engage the work of the other.

Kyle Shepherd is a pianist and composer whose work has seen him compose film scores, collaborate on visual art exhibitions, and earn him awards and titles such as the Standard Bank Young Artist Award, and the South African Humanities and Social Sciences Awards. After an extensive career involving local and international concert performances and collaborations, Shepherd is now focusing his attention on composition and has used his time with The Centre for the Less Good Idea to experiment with music and creativity outside of a single instrument, and to create works involving non-musical materials. This has resulted in the musician teaming up with fellow artists Gerhard Marx and Shane Cooper to create a sonic performance using repurposed car parts and instruments, as well as extensive collaborative pieces with the Season’s various dancers, researchers, and actors. In addition to this, Shepherd will be performing Voices – a composition for pre-recorded samples, synthesizers and acoustic piano – which will be performed as part of a double bill with pianist Jill Richards.

CINEMATOGRAPHY AND EDITING | Noah Cohen
WRITING | Dave Mann

Kyle Shepherd

Kyle Shepherd is a pianist and composer whose work has seen him compose film scores, collaborate on visual art exhibitions, and earn him awards and titles such as the Standard Bank Young Artist Award, and the South African Humanities and Social Sciences Awards. After an extensive career involving local and international concert performances and collaborations, Shepherd is now focusing his attention on composition and has used his time with The Centre for the Less Good Idea to experiment with music and creativity outside of a single instrument, and to create works involving non-musical materials. This has resulted in the musician teaming up with fellow artists Gerhard Marx and Shane Cooper to create a sonic performance using repurposed car parts and instruments, as well as extensive collaborative pieces with the Season’s various dancers, researchers, and actors. In addition to this, Shepherd will be performing Voices – a composition for pre-recorded samples, synthesizers and acoustic piano – which will be performed as part of a double bill with pianist Jill Richards.

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

The piano

Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea features a number of pianos in various states of disrepair, as well as a single, pristinely-kept Steinway grand piano. The season also features two of the country’s best pianists, Jill Richards and Kyle Shepherd. While Shepherd and Richards will engage with almost all of the pianos over the course of the Season, they will also make use of the Steinway in a spectacular double bill piano programme.

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Kyle composing

Shepherd brings his own Jazz composition. Having arrived at the Season 4 workshops with a desire to experiment beyond the realms of concert piano performance, Shepherd’s work will make use of spoken, non-musical, and other aural recordings that both exemplify and challenge his profound history of engagement with the piano.

By including recorded vocal samples of musicians such as Lionel Loueke and Zim Ngqawana, as well as ambient loops, Shepherd’s piece will be as much of a performance as it is an improvised conversation with these select sounds.

This double bill will provide audiences with some of the best piano playing in the country, while also allowing for each musician to access and engage the work of the other.

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Season 4 | VIDEO PROFILE | Mamela Nyamza

Mamela Nyamza, easily one of the most active and skilled artists in the realms of dance and physical theatre in the country, brings her solo dance piece, Black Privilege to Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea.

Mamela Nyamza is a dancer, choreographer, director, and performing artist who’s been trained in ballet, modern dance, African dance, and the Horton technique, and has ventured into the realms of Spanish, gumboot, and Butoh dance. Nyamza’s choreography is firmly rooted in autobiographical, political and social works which have garnered her a national and international audience. Most recently, she held the title of the 2018 Featured Artist for the National Arts Festival and has been appointed as the curator for the newly re-instated Dance Umbrella, South Africa. Much of the process of Nyamza’s work for Season 4 has taken the shape of intellectual and performed experimentation, allowing ideas to take shape before falling away and giving rise to new, improvised solutions. Nyamza will be working with artists from varying genres to present a physical deliberation on the act and concept of giving thanks. Her solo work Black Privilege – a work informed by the notion and experience of rejection of the other by mainstream gate-keeping institutions – will also be performed for Season 4.

CINEMATOGRAPHY AND EDITING | Noah Cohen
WRITING | Dave Mann

Mamela Nyamza

Mamela Nyamza is a dancer, choreographer, director, and performing artist who’s been trained in ballet, modern dance, African dance, and the Horton technique, and has ventured into the realms of Spanish, gumboot, and Butoh dance. Nyamza’s choreography is firmly rooted in autobiographical, political and social works which have garnered her a national and international audience. Most recently, she held the title of the 2018 Featured Artist for the National Arts Festival and has been appointed as the curator for the newly re-instated Dance Umbrella, South Africa. Much of the process of Nyamza’s work for Season 4 has taken the shape of intellectual and performed experimentation, allowing ideas to take shape before falling away and giving rise to new, improvised solutions. Nyamza will be working with artists from varying genres to present a physical deliberation on the act and concept of giving thanks. Her solo work Black Privilege – a work informed by the notion and experience of rejection of the other by mainstream gate-keeping institutions – will also be performed for Season 4.

PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

Season 4 | VIDEO PROFILE | Ilze Wolff

Ilze Wolff is an architect, a scholar, and a writer who is the founder of the research and documenting organisation Open House Architecture, and has featured as the curator for Architecture and Built Environment at the Design Indaba Expo in 2015. She has an intersectional approach to architecture which has led her to pursue a Masters in African Studies where she looked at heritage, architectural history and public culture. She also directs Cape Town-based design studio Wolff Architects with Heinrich Wolff. Wolff believes that there are many ways to be an architect and is constantly inspired by how people inhabit spaces and the narratives that come out of those contexts. For Season 4, Wolff combines her love for research, zine-making, and the built environment to produce a piece titled Vi die wat wil wiet / for those who need knowing. Produced in collaboration with theatre-maker Francesco Nassimbeni and musicologist Cara Stacey, and with additional research by writer and researcher Amy Soudien, the piece seeks to present a previously undocumented history of the area of Maboneng.

CINEMATOGRAPHY AND EDITING | Noah Cohen
WRITING | Dave Mann

Ilze Wolff

Ilze Wolff is an architect, a scholar, and a writer who is the founder of the research and documenting organisation Open House Architecture, and has featured as the curator for Architecture and Built Environment at the Design Indaba Expo in 2015. She has an intersectional approach to architecture which has led her to pursue a Masters in African Studies where she looked at heritage, architectural history and public culture. She also directs Cape Town-based design studio Wolff Architects with Heinrich Wolff. Wolff believes that there are many ways to be an architect and is constantly inspired by how people inhabit spaces and the narratives that come out of those contexts. For Season 4, Wolff combines her love for research, zine-making, and the built environment to produce a piece titled Vi die wat wil wiet / for those who need knowing. Produced in collaboration with theatre-maker Francesco Nassimbeni and musicologist Cara Stacey, and with additional research by writer and researcher Amy Soudien, the piece seeks to present a previously undocumented history of the area of Maboneng.

CINEMATOGRAPHY AND EDITING | Noah Cohen
WRITING | Dave Mann

Ilze testing ideas

Ilze Wolff testing ideas collaboratively in Season 4 workshops

Ilze will perform Vi die wat wil wiet / for those who need knowing in the Season

Physical collaborations on the piece come in the form of musicologist Cara Stacey with whom Wolff has co-composed a musical soundscape taken from film and audio footage gathered as part of research interventions and archival documentation. Theatre-maker Francesco Nassimbeni, contributed in the form of collaboration with drawings and in a visual response to Wolff’s research and visual style, adding to the piece’s overarching theme of lightness and darkness

While Vi die wat wil wiet / for those who need knowing presents itself in the form of a lecture, various anecdotal and eccentric elements, as well as the production of the accompanying pumflet give the piece its true shape, allowing for Wolff’s research to reach audiences in varying degrees of interpretation.

COLLABORATORS | Amie Soudien (co-researcher and publication contributor), Cara Stacey (musician and composer), Francesco Nassimbeni (theatre consultant)
ASSOCIATED INSTITUTIONS | Wolff Architects and UWC Centre for Humanities Research

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zavanai Matangi

Season 4 | VIDEO PROFILE | Gerhard Marx

Gerhard Marx is known for the development of drawing and sculptural techniques in which he engages with pre-existing conventions, practices and found objects. Careful acts of dissection and rearrangement affects and transforms his chosen materials in order to access and engage their inherent poetic potential and philosophical assumptions. With a Masters of Fine Arts (cum laude) from the University of Witwatersrand, his work has been shown at the Venice Biennale, and is represented internationally by the Goodman Gallery.

He has produced a number of large scale public sculptures, including Vertical Aerial: Jhb (Old Ford, Constitution Hill, Johannesburg), The Fire Walker, a collaboration with William Kentridge (Queen Elizabeth Bridge, Johannesburg) and Paper Pigeon, collaboration with Maja Marx (Pigeon Square, Johannesburg). Marx is not new to theatre, as has collaborated widely as scenographer, director, and filmmaker. Notable projects includes his direction and design of Philip Miller’s Rewind; a Cantata for Voice and Testimony and the award winning design for Lara Foot Newton’s Tshepang.

Season 4 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea sees Marx once again working with pre-existing objects and materials, this time pursuing his interest in the relationship between sound and object by immersing himself in the dissonant worlds of instrument-making and automotive repair. Through embracing the discomfort of the unknown, and in collaboration with the exceptional talents of improvisational-jazz musicians Shane Cooper and Kyle Shepherd, as well as prose and vocals by poet Toast Coetzer, Marx will be merging these two specialisations in creating a sonic and performative piece entitled Vehicle. The work is a site specific installation that will be available for viewing throughout the Season, but the performances of the sound-installation are scheduled and need to be booked.

CINEMATOGRAPHY AND EDITING | Noah Cohen
WRITING | Dave Mann

Gerhard Marx

To give something ‘a voice’, is to give it some form of agency. To ‘take a voice away’, is to do the opposite. To make something ‘sing’ describes an ecstasy of that object.

Gerhard Marx’s enigmatic ‘Vehicle’ explores how the immateriality of sound relates to the physicality of objects. In the pursuit of drawing a voice (and narrative) from ‘things’, Marx has grafted fragments of classical string instruments; a cello, two violins and an upright bass, onto the body parts of a car. As a result the automotive body becomes the resonator box from which a rich, brooding, and immersive sound world is drawn.

For many years artist Gerhard Marx has been considering the entanglement of meaning and material. Beginning with pre-existing conventions, practices and found objects, Marx dissembles these to explore and affect their inherent poetic and philosophical languages and assumptions.

Vehicle works through a similar strategy of dissection, reassembly and hybridization. It is a project of ‘musical forensics’ in which strings are used to see beyond the immediacy of the object, to peep below its surface, to ‘sound things out’. This is done through the extraordinary improvisational exploration of celebrated musicians and collaborators Shane Cooper and Kyle Shepherd. Writer and performer Toast Coetzer’s evocative prose and vocals further layers Vehicle’s rich, moving and transportative sound world.

WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi

The Surplus

Initially framed as something of a circus, this Season’s concluding performance shifted and evolved as a result of its creative resources, to become The Surplus – a parade of performance, a conference of creative collaboration.

In The Surplus many of Season 4’s themes and lines of thought will converge through a series of devised and improvised, free-flowing performances. Thematic inquiries into the notions of human vs machine, and alternate views of history will be presented through dances with paper, and choruses of megaphones. Dervish dances involving long, precarious knives will take over the floor, before giving way to the keys of a piano, sounding out across various mediums, fighting to be heard amidst the din of information, the collapsed conference.

Ultimately, as Season 4’s curator and ringmaster Jane Taylor explains, The Surplus hints at a question of true significance in our time – which is the surplus? Is the Machine a surplus to the Human? Is the Human a surplus to the Machine?

SEASON 4 CURATOR | Jane Taylor
ANIMATEUR FOR THE CENTRE | Bronwyn Lace
CINEMATOGRAPHY AND EDITING | Noah Cohen
PROJECT MANAGER | Shruthi Nair
LIGHTING | Wesley France and Guy Nelson
SOUND | SoulFire Studios and Zain Vally
STAGE MANAGEMENT | Hayleigh Evans and PopArt Productions
WRITING | Dave Mann
PHOTOGRAPHER | Zivanai Matangi