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,MowbrayALL OTHER PUBLIC SHOWS ARE AT THE AVALON THEATRE AT THE HOME COMING CENTRE

Produced by Empatheatre in partnership with GroundworkDirected by Roshina Ratnam & Neil CoppenStarring Mpume Mthombeni & Andile VilakaziSet Design by Dylan McGarryCostume Design Dylan McGarry and Diane Badenhorst.Set construction- Jimmy AlbertsSeamstress- Shanti NaidooPuppetry Direction- Roshina RatnamWritten by Dylan McGarry, Neil Coppen & Mpume MthombeniAdditional Text- Tony MiyamboCreated by Dylan McGarry, Neil Coppen, Mpume Mthombeni, Minenhle Sikhosana, Roshina Ratnam & Tony MiyamboHead of Research- Mpume MthombeniDramaturge- Neil CoppenLighting Design- Tina Le RouxOriginal Score/Soundscape- Ghia LeighGuitar and Sound Contributor- Andrei van WykSound Desgin & Final Mix- Tristan HortonStage Manager- Bongumusa Thulasizwe MasondoAssistant Stage Manager- Kwanele Nyembe Empatheatre Producer- Mari StimiePhotography by Val Adamson