Mbongeni N. Mtshali

Full Name

Mbongeni N. Mtshali

First Name

Mbongeni

Surname

Mtshali

Additional Name

N.

Honorific Prefix

Dr

Biography

Mbongeni N. Mtshali has a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He currently Heads the Theatre Section in the Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies. Mtshali is a multidisciplinary performance practitioner, working across a range of disciplines including dance and movement composition and performance, animation and puppetry, and site-specific performance installation among others. Recent professional recognitions include The Standard Bank Silver Ovation Award and the Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards for his achievements in directing and performance-making. Mtshali’s primary research interests, which animate both his practical and theoretical enquiries, are in black queer/femme performance in South Africa as well as Africa and its diaspora more broadly. He is particularly interested in how the unruly aesthetics of black queer/femme performance challenge nationally sanctioned performance repertoires and the national frameworks of African respectability, cultural intelligibility, and ethnonational belonging in which they are vested. He has more recently turned to thinking about queer genealogies of African decolonial world-making in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean.

Nationality

South African

Birth Date

4 December 1982

Birth Place

Pietermaritzburg

Occupation

Director
Choreographer
Scenographer
Writer
Performer

Website(s)

shortenedtongue

UCT Role

Academic

Academic Position

Senior Lecturer

Start Date

1 January 2015

Member Of UCT Department

CTDPS People

UCT Faculty

Humanities

ORCID

0000-0002-8336-5624

Alumni of

Northwestern University

Keywords

Performance See all items with this value
Theatre See all items with this value
Dance See all items with this value
Liveart See all items with this value
Installation See all items with this value
Africana See all items with this value
Black aesthetics See all items with this value
Queer aesthetics See all items with this value
Femme aesthetics See all items with this value
Decoloniality See all items with this value
Postcolonial modernities See all items with this value
Nationhood See all items with this value
Belonging See all items with this value
Subalternity See all items with this value
Gender See all items with this value
Sexuality See all items with this value
Critical race theory See all items with this value

Linked resources

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Section Head Theatre
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Section Head Theatre Mbongeni Mtshali Event
Director
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Love of the Nightingale 2022 TheaterEvent
Creator
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This shit is political; shit is real: The politics of sanitation, protest, and the neoliberal, post-apartheid city Text