In efforts to keep the arts and culture alive during the national lock down due to Covid-19, The Centre for the Less Good Idea is proud to announce a new selection of collaborative and interdisciplinary work for its 7th Season, which is currently showcasing on their digital platforms.
The program which premiered on Wednesday, April 1, will run till Wednesday, April 8.
"Season 7" is co-curated by the founder of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, William Kentridge, and animateur for the centre, Phala Ookeditse Phala.
“As with all of the other Seasons, we have privileged the fragment, the short epic, finding new ways of thinking and making, rather than feeling the need to make conventional 90 minute pieces of theatre,” says Kentridge.
Many of the participants in "Season 7" have produced pieces based on texts by writers such as Joseph Conrad, Ben Okri, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Antjie Krog, Ferdinand Oyono, Franz Kafka, and Sol T. Plaatje. Books, poems, court transcripts, songs, commission reports and more serve as points of departure for "Season 7" of The Centre for the Less Good Idea.
“This Season sees a return to text as the basis of an exploration. This is not to privilege text but to find innovative ways to per(form) it, untangle, respond, grapple and interrogate its performative elements whether it be its sound, its silence, its emotion, its movement or its im- mobility.
“With text as the basis, this season takes us into the performance mode of ‘staging as a response’. In this Season the world of the story occupies our imagination through costume, illusion, and staging,” explains Phala.
Below are some of the selective work that will be showing online:
Africa My Africa
A performance poem that plays with the notion of presence and absence in writing while also casting a sideways glance at the enduring effects of rainbow nation-ism in contemporary South Africa.
Bogologolo Tala
Physicality and expressive movement come together in a performance that presents the potential of the body in motion as a vehicle for narrative.
Umthandazo
A performance that shifts the focus onto the lives of the women of Marikana, and the physical and emotional labour they contributed before and after the events of 16 August 2012.
Full program of events to be streamed online is available here.