Artistic Research Productions

The artistic practice-as-research productions formed an integral component of the ReTAGS research, shaping the project’s enquiry through performance. The first production mounted was Antigone (not quite/quiet) in 2019. As a result of the global pandemic, the second production, iKrele leChiza, was reimagined as filmed episodic performances and sonic journeys, and later staged as iKrele leChiza… the sermon in 2022 and 2023. The trajectory continued in 2023 with Oedipus at Colonus: #aftersophocles, and culminated in 2024 with mAnJE ! MaNJE (an epic), the final ReTAGS practice-as-research production and the artistic research work undertaken as part of Neo Muyanga’s PhD.

 

Antigone (not quite/quiet)
Antigone, an old story from the dawn of democracy. Rule, order, power, women, mortality. This production is a set of responses to the Sophocles' play from the perspective of three of the play’s characters: Ismene, Antigone, Tiresias.
iKrele leChiza 2021
This interdisciplinary and episodic performance is the reimagining of the Greek epic the Odyssey by Homer as understood through an African lens and within the landscape of Mbothwe's theatrical mythology.
iKrele leChiza 2022
iKrele leChiza...the sermon, is a production of ritual, song and magic realism, it stirs up a dreamlike state of spiritual ecstasy much like a sermon.
Oedipus at Colonus #aftersophocles
Tackling the problem of what to do with the leftovers of a catastrophic past, the rot that remains long after the cause has ended and the impacts this has on the land, the people and their patrimony.
mAnJE ! MaNJE (an epic)
Drawing on the story of the ancient Greek inventor and super-engineer, Daedalus, to stage a profound and prophetic lament on the human condition in the age of the machine, big data and the climate catastrophe.