KUKU stage-piece at Olive Tree Theatre, Wynberg in Alexandra Township

Olive Tree Theatre, a community based theatre development, aimed at bridging a gap between the mainstream theatre and alternative spaces located in Alexandra Township and focuses on developing and uplifting women and the youth around the area. The OTT is hosting its 5^th International Women’s Theatre Festival 2016 under the artistic directorship of Ntshieng Mokgoro, the 2008/9 Standard Bank Young Artist Award Winner for Theatre. Mokgoro is the founder and creative director of Olive Tree Theatre. All the productions in this festival are written, directed and performed by women from across the SADC region. These include workshops and panel discussions spearheaded by women.

Nelago Gloria Shilongoh, Images Courtesy of Olive Tree Theatre, Photographer: Fikile Smynes

 African languages across all corners of the continent have similarities one way or the other. Words may assonant the same way but mean totally different thing in other languages. In the case of KUKU, a stage piece written and performed by young Namibian theatre maker and performer, Nelago Gloria Shilongoh, South African indigenous speakers were whirred with the title for in their common understanding it meant something totally different both in tone and spelling. KUKU - for grandmother in one of Namibian dialects, same of Sepedi language meaning of KUKU, however, it is presaged ‘KOKO’. 

KUKU is an expression interlaced with memories and lessons learned with a further push into inquiries of a life upbringing under the guidance and protection of a grandmother to a grandchild. With a pre-setup music by the world’s greatest virtuoso on the kora, the sublime West African instrument made from large gourd, cow skin and 21 strings, ToumaniDiabate, the stage piece promised to be a captivating piece with the punctuation “Kuku Wange…”  from Shilongoh as she moves about the floor to face her sculptural granny. Diabate’s music in this play, does not only make spiritual connections between the audience and the soul of the stage piece but it also shows not just music but its preservation of culture and tradition, a way to keep alive the spirit of the defunct African Masks that stretch across a vast swathe of African art, very art that inspired European artists such as Pablo Picasso to mention a few.  

Nelago Gloria Shilongoh, Images Courtesy of Olive Tree Theatre, Photographer: Fikile Smynes

With a black sculpture facing away from her, five cloaks in different colors on the floor with empty chair on the far left - memories and places, visions and melodies find ways onto the stage. She sings in one of the Namibian official languages – though an ear not tutored in any official languages of this country cannot comprehend the message from the lyrics, one finds enchantment in her melodies. There is a sovereignty of time, the autonomy of place, the smell of intelligence and wisdom she exudes to the audience. KUKU becomes a myriad burning fuse, each radiating its own fragility of explosive longings and yearnings.

Shilongoh strikes a conversation with her sculptural granny, a child and granny dialogue in a foreign language to the audience. Later she switches to English-language, revealing furrow age of time that KUKU has lived. Long before the continent’s history was recorded in books or on rocks, history was told through a caste of griots, musical storytellers, sculptors and painters. KUKU claims its rightful position at the 5^th Women International Theatre Festival as a memory and a link between society and the past, people and ancenstors.

Virtuosity is visible enough in this one-handler stage piece. Shilongah emerges as a guardian of the ancient oral traditional history, poetry and social etiquette and verbal dexterity of her family. She is a sort of a narrator who believes her story can be traced all the way back to a common ancestor, something which is visually practicable from her manipulation in the use of the sculpted black female figure. “What is your name? Where do you come from? Who do you think you are? Who are you?” she asks loaded questions, as if the questions are directed to her common ancestor or her audience.

Nelago Gloria Shilongoh, Images Courtesy of Olive Tree Theatre, Photographer: Fikile Smynes

There are stuttering answers to her loaded questions. It feels as though that her mother, grandmother and great grandmother were talking to her from the past. It is the past meeting the present for the future. The purple beaded neck-piece is left of inheritance from Shilongoh’s KUKU (grandmother) – it is then a metaphor for connection between the living and the dead. As the play draws to an end, Shilongoh clefts in heavier confession “My grandmother passed away few years later. I never went to her burial. I never said good bye to her,” and she blew her flute in KUKU’s memory to seal her confession. 

The festival officially opened on the 4^th November and will conclude on the 13^th November 2016. 

Khehla Chepape Makgato is a Johannesburg-based independent artist and arts writer, regularly contributing articles to ART AFRICA and The Journalist. He has his studio at Assemblage Studios and is the founder of Samanthole Creative Projects & Workshop, a community-based art organisation focusing on arts and literacy youth programmes. Chepape is the ImpACT Award WINNER for Visual Arts 2016 from the Arts and Culture Trust of South Africa.