Salibonani -hello-
I'm from Zimbabwe and make multidisciplinary art in New York City. I have deep love for a nice cuppa and Arsenal Football Club #goonerforlife. Before settling in NY, at different stages I've called Botswana, England and South Africa 'home'. And while I'm loving life in NY, my Zimbo roots are what nourish and feed me as a human and artist. To quote DJ Stavo in this co-opted Rihanna song- I'm Zimbo Till I Die! 🇿🇼
What else? I'm driven to tell stories, I can't help it. Honestly the majority of my loved ones wish I'd stop! I enjoy many modes of storytelling but I'm most skilled as an actor, singer, puppeteer, writer and deviser.
Over the past couple of years, a lot of what I've been making has been influenced by afrosurrealism and magic realism; and that's translated into a collaged aesthetic that I've been calling 'theatrical pastiche'. These pastiches tend to mix personal story, puppetry, and video projection. Thematically, over the past few years I've been exploring displacement in diasporic communities, history, identity and femininity....don't imagine anything that deep though, pop culture and internet foolishness often find their way in there too!
Acting Credits: KLII (Walker Arts Center; Redcat; Under the Radar ’23), Mud/Drowning (Mabou Mines), Riddle of the Trilobites (Flint Rep; New Victory Theatre), Red Hills (En Garde Arts), The Sprezzaturameron (BAC), Shoot Don’t Talk (Labapalooza, St Ann’s Warehouse). International: Winter’s Tale (National Arts Festival, SA), The Comeback (HIFA, ZW). As a playwright, I've collaborated with The Royal Court Theatre and the British Council (ZW). My work has been performed at the Harare International Festival of the Arts (Winner HIFADirect 2011), the Intwasa Festival and the Chimanimani Festival. In 2021 I co-directed The Othello Project for Shake on the Lake and more recently premiered my show [sunflower] at Dixon Place in June 2022. I am also a 2022/23 New Victory Labworks Artist.
WOZA NAZO!
WHAT I'M WORKING ON
my body is geography
This interactive theatre show uses storytelling, and movement to investigate ways in which “the body keeps the score.” Weaving together a mix of personal, religious, mythological and popular fictional stories; this piece is an exploration of the ways we hold our stories, as lived and imagined experiences, in our bodies.
Curtain Fall: The Bandungs Live
With ‘Curtain Fall' I am proposing a ritual to invoke the spirit of Esu the trickster god by turning back to the famous Bandung conference of 1953. Richard Wright's The Color Curtain’ (a report on Bandung) has acquired, along with the conference, a mythical quality. For me, Bandung gestures to the potential of a transformed world right at the crossroads of global tension. It's a tension I'm feeling acutely these days.
My idea is to excavate Wright’s text by devising a show where the conceit is a fictional behind- the-music interview where The Bandungs (a fake band) sing their greatest hits, and tell (and retell) their break up story. The ritual is the repetition of the act of splitting apart and resetting to split apart once more.