Category: Curated vNAF

Using the novel “The Ones With Purpose” by Cynthia Jele as the starting point to inspire writers, Twist Projects invites writers from across Africa to a week-long writer’s workshop, where they receive mentoring and feedback from  other writers, directors and actors as they hone their craft. The result is six finely-tuned short scripts that explore issues of love, loss, family and responsibility from the perspectives of six very different writers. Join us for the recorded readings of these scripts and a facilitated discussion with the writers.

Script mentor:  Kobus Moolman
Directors: Roel Twijnstra, Daniel Maposa and Emma Durden
Writers: Gabriella Pinto, Gideon Wabvuta, Mbasa Tsetsana, Ncumisa Ndimeni, Tammany Barton and Tosin Tume

Composer, Neo Muyanga reconsiders the dark and obscured past of ‘Amazing Grace’ – a beloved hymn often sung to express solidarity with protesters calling for social justice and comradeship across the black diaspora. This new subversion, entitled, ‘aMaking Grace’, features new music and animations by Muyanga, who conducts the Khayelistha-based mezzo soprano, Tina Mene, and the popular São Paolo protest theatre troupe, Legítima Defesa.

Composer/Director – Neo Muyanga
Soprano – Tina Mene
Chorus of We the People – Legítima Defesa
Video and Animations – Neo Muyanga & Bianca Turner

Opera like you have never experienced it. Verdi’s MACBETH – based on Shakespeare’s drama of ambition, treachery and terror – performed by an all-South African cast and a Balkan orchestra, and set amongst the wars and ruthless exploitation that have ravaged the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa for decades. Within a milieu of multinational double-dealings, ethnic conflict, brutal militia, ‘blood minerals’ and glittering Chinese imports, a Congolese warlord and his ambitious wife murder their leader and unleash atrocities on the crumbling African province that they seize. This visually explosive work, with zappy street-wise surtitles, toured 31 cities on 6 continents between 2014 and 2017.  It was produced by Third World Bunfight, directed and designed by Brett Bailey, and the music adapted by Belgium’s Fabrizio Cassol. Serbian Premil Petrovic conducts his No Borders Orchestra along with two South African percussionists. Lady Macbeth is sung by soprano Nobulumko Mngxekeza, Macbeth by Owen Metsileng, and Banquo by Otto Maidi.
“There can be no denying the power and originality of this astonishing appropriation of Verdi’s Macbeth” 5 stars – THE TELEGRAPH, LONDON

Jazz & Opera by the Charl du Plessis Trio is a live recorded performance of standards and opera arias arranged in the signature crossover style of this award-winning jazz trio featuring Werner Spies (bass) and Peter Auret (drums). The project was recorded at Sumo Sound Studios in Johannesburg in June 2020 during level 3 of the National lockdown. Works featured on the programme include famous arias from operas like Tosca, Nabucco and Carmen intertwined with jazz standards like Take the A Train, I Love Paris and Duke Ellington’s C Jam Blues. The Charl du Plessis Trio has won two SAMA awards and recorded seven albums. They regularly perform in Europe and Asia and was founded in 2007.

Piano: Charl du Plessis
Bass: Werner Spies
Drums: Peter Auret
Concept & musical arrangements: Charl du Plessis
Recording, mixing & mastering: Peter Auret
Videography & editing: Charl du Plessis & Peter Auret
Piano Technician: Rudolf Strydom for Piano Industry

From the Producers of ‘The Revlon Girl’ comes an all-new, original production starring Natasha Sutherland, Michelle Douglas and newcomer Lauren Urmson. This year, 2020, marks the centenary anniversary of the passing of Olive Schreiner (died 11 Dec 1920), and Breathing Space celebrates the life of this great ‘daughter of South Africa’ through the lens of excerpts of her own writing, mainly through her letters.
Suffering from severe asthma, Olive Schreiner spent much of her life as a ‘wandering Jew’ in the elusive search for a place where she could, literally and figuratively, breathe more easily. She knew all too well the plight of the displaced, the homeless and the outcast. Deeply moved by the suffering of others, this remarkable visionary, mystic, prophet, activist, social and political reformer ‘wrote with her blood’ and fought the fight of the marginalised. Her quest was not merely one of finding personal ‘breathing space’ but one of finding breathing space for all.
Exploring Olive’s life mainly through her correspondence and journals, Breathing Space delves deeper and gives a glimpse into the greater complexities and subtleties of this woman who was ahead of her time.

Cast:
Rebekah Schreiner Natasha Sutherland
Olive Schreiner Michelle Douglas
Young Olive Schreiner Lauren Urmson

Directed by Alan Farber
Theatre Director Michelle Douglas
Written by Michelle Douglas
Director of Photography Justus de Jager
Editor and Sound Bevan Visser
Production Manager/Stage Manager/Art Department Loren Nel
Make up Sigrid Shaw
Make up Assistant / Runner Carmen Gerber
Production Assistant Gavin Joffe

With special thanks to Dave Robinson, Debbie Joffe, Neil and Linda Urmson

A bot programmed to read parts of “Futurability. The age o impotence and the horizon of possibility” (2019) to other chatbots, who answer and learn from the conversation due to the successive repetitions of the text. In this book, Franco “Bifo” Berardi analyzes the global order that shapes our politics and our imagination, proposing that the key to a radical change lies in our relationship with technologies. “Futurabilities” is an online action that explores human-automatic conversational possibilities around the current context of connected solitudes. It will run during the whole festival as a virtual performance in progress.

This is how the forgetting begins. A child hears a song the adults of the daytime do not know, because the adults do not know it, they tell a child she is singing it wrong. So the child who can still hear the songs in The Great Symphony without needing to say the prayer folds the song away, deep in the back of her throat.

*

We are sick. We cannot undo what has made us sick. We cannot stay the same.
*
There is an old woman across the river.
She is made of sand and fire, carrying a child on her back.
I cannot reach her she has burned the river dry.
The mud is buried turned angry swallows rocks
and children who still believe in water.
*
This interactive meditation is an urgent search for the song folded in the throat of the child. Poets Vangile Gantsho and Toni Giselle Stuart, and filmmaker Vusumzi Ngxande present a 60-minute poetry and film performance, in the form of meditation, ritual and conversation. Working with the four elements, they explore our relationship to the past, asking, what must be remembered, in order to create new futures for us, especially in this moment of global uncertainty and change? The performance will include an interactive component.

Original Script – vangile gantsho & Toni Giselle Stuart

 Poetry Performance – vangile gantsho & Toni Giselle Stuart

Videography – Vusumzi Ngxande

 Sound Design – Vusumzi Ngxande

 Film Directing, Editing & Producing – Vusumzi Ngxande