Samanthole Arts Foundation

The setup of the play is very unusual, even to the eye accustomed to theatre appreciation, in that there are two lights dancing lazily atop – with three screens installed above the stage. The audience filled the recently named Laager Theatre in the honour of Mannie Manin, the co-founder of The Market Theatre. When Swallows Cry is a stage piece written by Mike Van Graan and Lesedi Job makes a directorial debut. This play takes on the shape brilliance – fiercely scripted, luminously performed and intensely directed. Image Taken from The Market Theatre Website When Swallows Cry is a stage piece that tells different stories from three different continents. Here you are confronted with turbo-charged realities most Africans face when traveling to Europe and America, where they are subjected to ethnic profiling in the little room insider border control, here you are able to witness grown up people, especially from Africa, being interrogated to tears, whereas Europeans and Americ

The Village Square brought Southern Africa’s multicultural disciplines of the arts together Medu Promotions in association with The Market Theatre presented The Village Square, a multilingual and multicultural collaborative project that encompassed different disciplines of the arts created by South Africa’s most diverse African contemporary and African classical musicians, composers and poets, directed by Tlokwe Sehume. This theatrical piece is a celebration of what is left of our indigenous knowledge system and cultural make up. Tlokwe Sehume, Image taken from the website The Village Square is the ensemble of language, culture, and African wisdom, original musical and ritual practices by Africans. It presented what I call ‘the human face’ that the world should see about us as a country. Sehume and his team brought forth the beauty of a classical offering. “The Village Square is a body of work that started back in 2003,” says Tlokwe Sehume during the panel discussion a

Opened as the first production on The Market Theatre 2017 programme, The House of Truth has already distinguished itself as the South African contemporary classical theatre piece. Written by SiphiwoMahala, based on one of the towering figures of black South African black writers and journos of the 50’s, Can Themba. The play is directed by Vanessa Cooke and performed by veteran actor, SelloMaakekaNcube. This play opened with a bang for its media opening night with high profile politicians and public figures filling the Barney Simon Theatre to the brim. The House of Truth, a title from one of Can Themba’s short stories, is a collection of Themba’s life and work. It stages the most significant and mundane, contrast of beauty and ugliness, black and white, curl of oppression and freedom, monochrome of religion and politics. In this play, SiphiwoMahala navigates Can Themba’s world with dashes of absurdity and nostalgia. Mahala doesn’t only juxtaposes the past with the pre

  Last week I was shocked from sad news on the passing of the legendary South African artist, Judith Mason. She was one of my art senior mentors and last message from email she sent me during my fourth solo exhibition in September was this: "You've got it. kid! I think the Heroine Heads are just terrific and the Rain Queen especially is magnificent. Sorry I am so seldom in touch. Terribly busy and have been rather ill. I am going to check out your blog site. Congrats on what you are doing. Love, Judy." Self-Portrait of  the artist I have known Judith Mason since 2002, when by chance I visited Johannesburg during school holidays. My mom used to work for her daughter, Tamar Mason. That winter of 2002, Judith took me and my twin sister Mamogolo to Joburg Zoo for the first time and that is where I realised her love for animals which I later saw being reflected in most of her works. Another chance encounter with Judith was when I was at the art college when she came