Season 4: Episode 6 - Mbongeni Mtshali

Welcome to Season 4 of the ICA podcast, where we interview African artists and curators who perform and curate live interdisciplinary works. 

Our sixth and final episode of this season features an interview with Mbongeni Mtshali, performance artist, director and head of the Centre for Theatre Dance and Performance Studies at UCT. In the conversation Mtshali goes into great detail about his performances Skin Tight and in(S)kin and details his artistic decisions behind the creation of these works.  Mtshali also shares insights in his approach to language, through performance as well through teaching. He talks of languaging in the body, an embodied sense of space, time and subjectivity along with sharing his interests in kinetic and physical theatre

Inspired by Denis Glover's poem The Magpies, Skin Tight tells the fraught, passionate and ultimately enchanting story of a New Zealand couple, Tom and Elizabeth and their lives together, a far jump from his  earlier work, in(S)kin, a physical theatre work based on Mtshali’s life. This nimble and robust director expands on this shift in focus, from making rather gentle and revealing work out of one’s own subjective experience, to characters from another country, background and milieu. He also takes us through the provocative and physically demanding physicality in Skin Tight as the two characters share an extreme passion on stage and the means he used to arrive at this.

Mtshali speaks about the thread of memory in both of these works; his abiding interest in and deep exploration of physical theatre, the political undertones of his work as well as his love for public art and performance.

Season 4 of the ICA Podcast comprises interviews conducted by Nkgopoleng Moloi and  produced by Atiyyah Khan.

This is an initiative created by the Institute for Creative Arts which is based at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Thank you for listening