Buyela

BUYELA A new production by Empatheatre in partnership with Groundwork

What if the story of our city could be told through what we throw away?

On the final afternoon of one of Durban's last working landfills, two women meet amid mountains of discarded things. Mam Nothemba (Mpume Mthombeni) is a waste picker, matriarch, and daughter of the dump, a woman who has spent forty years transforming other people's rubbish into a livelihood, a brick house, and eight grandchildren. Nokwanda, a journalist (played by Minenhle Sikhosana) arrives claiming to want her story, though she carries a quieter desperation she's slow to admit.

What unfolds between the two of them is part detective game, part oral history, part fairy tale: the two women read the lives of strangers from their rubbish, trace glass back to mountains and plastic back to ancient seas, and weave mythological and very real stories together, all threaded through their conversation is the looming arrival of an incinerator and the knowledge that the gates to the landfill will close at five, for good.

Buyela, the Zulu word for return, is a play about what we throw away and what refuses to disappear: grief, knowledge, solidarity, and the circular logic of a living earth. Informed through over four years of collaborative research, story-listening and citizen-led enquiry with informal waste collectors this play aims to create a third space to explore how we might choose to live closer to the earth and with each other.

Buyela recently premiered at UKZN Square Space theatre for a short run and we will be touring the country for the rest of the year. Check our website for further details and dates.

**** NOTE!!!!: the 24 NOV show is in a different Venue: At the Bertha House in Obz, 67-69 Main Road,Mowbray

ALL OTHER PUBLIC SHOWS ARE AT THE AVALON THEATRE AT THE HOME COMING CENTRE

Produced by Empatheatre in partnership with Groundwork

Directed by Roshina Ratnam & Neil Coppen

Starring Mpume Mthombeni & Andile Vilakazi

Set Design by Dylan McGarry

Costume Design Dylan McGarry and Diane Badenhorst.

Set construction- Jimmy Alberts

Seamstress- Shanti Naidoo

Puppetry Direction- Roshina Ratnam

Written by Dylan McGarry, Neil Coppen & Mpume Mthombeni

Additional Text- Tony Miyambo

Created by Dylan McGarry, Neil Coppen, Mpume Mthombeni, Minenhle Sikhosana, Roshina Ratnam & Tony Miyambo

Head of Research- Mpume Mthombeni

Dramaturge- Neil Coppen

Lighting Design- Tina Le Roux

Original Score/Soundscape- Ghia Leigh

Guitar and Sound Contributor- Andrei van Wyk

Sound Desgin & Final Mix- Tristan Horton

Stage Manager- Bongumusa Thulasizwe Masondo

Assistant Stage Manager- Kwanele Nyembe

Empatheatre Producer- Mari Stimie

Photography by Val Adamson