https://joanna-ruth-evans.com joannaevans Wed, 03 Apr 2024 19:58:47 +0000 https://joanna-ruth-evans.com en https://joanna-ruth-evans.com/About-1 Wed, 03 Apr 2024 19:58:45 +0000 joannaevans https://joanna-ruth-evans.com/About-1 ABOUT Joanna Ruth Evans is a South African theater artist and performance scholar working in New York and Cape Town. They are a PhD candidate in performance studies at New York University and a Helena Rubinstein Fellow in the Whitney Museum Independent Studies Program (ISP). Their doctoral research explores the intersections of improvisational performance practices and environmental relation across South Africa and the Southern United States. Joanna's creative practice is organized around collaboration, ensemble devising, and open-ended inquiry, with recent presentations at the Brown Arts Institute (Providence, 2024) and The Africa Center (New York, 2024). Joanna’s original plays have toured throughout South Africa, as well as to international festivals in Italy, Germany, Iran, Hungary, Réunion and the United States. Their scholarship has been published in TDR: The Drama Review; Women&amp;Performance: a journal of feminist theory; Performance Research; and Ecumencia. Joanna holds a BA in Theater and Performance from the University of Cape Town, and an MA in Performance Studies from NYU.Research areas of interest and expertiseperformance studies, black studies, anti-colonial theory and history, African and African American studies, protest theater, queer theory, ecology and the environmental humanities, critical improvisation studies Theatrical areas of expertise and training devised theater, playwriting, directing, dramaturgy, collaborative process, performance as research, puppetry (bunraku), physical and ensemble storytelling, theater for early years&nbsp; <img width="1563" height="711" width_o="1563" height_o="711" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/92036e9b1a934bf5f8556993b065b1dfda5f6bef92e51ad230e4bc4b71b238e6/Screenshot-2024-07-25-at-3.37.31PM.jpg" data-mid="216014295" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/92036e9b1a934bf5f8556993b065b1dfda5f6bef92e51ad230e4bc4b71b238e6/Screenshot-2024-07-25-at-3.37.31PM.jpg" /> https://joanna-ruth-evans.com/Research-Teaching Wed, 03 Apr 2024 19:58:45 +0000 joannaevans https://joanna-ruth-evans.com/Research-Teaching RESEARCH + TEACHING Doctoral researchAfter the Soft Ones: Environmental Improvisation in South Africa and the US South After the Soft Ones draws together black improvisational performances from South Africa and the southern United States, garnering unique insight into the environmental legacies of settler colonialism and racial oppression through diasporic study. Recognizing improvisational practices’ heightened responsiveness to environmental conditions, it amplifies the critical redress of performances that emerge directly from the impossibility of separating complex lived experience and ecological effect. By looking across the two “Deep Souths” of South Africa and the Southern US, the exceptionalism that shrouds both of their racial histories is contended, while the robust dialogue of their creative innovations is thrown into relief. After the Soft Ones spans improvisational works in dance, devised theater, film, performance art, land art, free jazz, and social practice by Ralph Lemon, Chuma Sopotela, Beverly Buchanan, Zim Nqawana, Kemang wa Lehulere, Gladys Thomas, Gladys Mgudlandlu, Ilze Wolff, Herman Wallace, Jackie Sumell, and Workshop71. Through granular study of artistic processes, it demonstrates that the spatial effects of racial capitalism in South Africa and the US South (displacement, dispossession from means to subsistence, segregation, and incarceration) have produced an intergenerational depth of black environmental thinking that surfaces in contemporary improvisational practices. This timely bridge between performance studies, black studies, and the environmental humanities uniquely situates performance as an environmental discourse. Voicing the unnamed, but nonetheless crucial, term “environment” in the development of performance studies as a field and regional histories of black improvisational practice, it develops an original framework for conceptualizing environment on simultaneously ecological and humanist registers. <img width="3024" height="4032" width_o="3024" height_o="4032" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/54eb2ef09c2d824b9e9a8100fe569b1fec058b5f1b45f2cf16b48ae68d5140e0/IMG_0187.jpeg" data-mid="216064925" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/54eb2ef09c2d824b9e9a8100fe569b1fec058b5f1b45f2cf16b48ae68d5140e0/IMG_0187.jpeg" /> <img width="4032" height="3024" width_o="4032" height_o="3024" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/639c3c5eff1dd0608600b93a4c8eda5fd273adb519a17f7a2727f97e0c535b25/IMG_0030.jpeg" data-mid="216064836" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/639c3c5eff1dd0608600b93a4c8eda5fd273adb519a17f7a2727f97e0c535b25/IMG_0030.jpeg" /> <img width="4032" height="3024" width_o="4032" height_o="3024" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fa84c42c15b83874204a42d4ce52f0f89a2ddecbc4f7f64f98f5a0a4477de9c6/IMG_0086.jpeg" data-mid="216064840" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fa84c42c15b83874204a42d4ce52f0f89a2ddecbc4f7f64f98f5a0a4477de9c6/IMG_0086.jpeg" /> <img width="3024" height="4032" width_o="3024" height_o="4032" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0996231ed65a0b30f289b8e2feabb6bffef00a76dd1be7388eb84e74791c8c21/IMG_0258.jpeg" data-mid="216064994" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0996231ed65a0b30f289b8e2feabb6bffef00a76dd1be7388eb84e74791c8c21/IMG_0258.jpeg" /> <img width="4032" height="3024" width_o="4032" height_o="3024" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6162a174a25c54b3c300df6a33186020cf813cc4c651cc99e3cbb0655cb15eba/IMG_0116.jpg" data-mid="215607602" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6162a174a25c54b3c300df6a33186020cf813cc4c651cc99e3cbb0655cb15eba/IMG_0116.jpg" /> <img width="2448" height="3264" width_o="2448" height_o="3264" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2296a64c7822058636233867ac1f78da2fbdc511ceae69a61b8622935f54d88a/IMG_2387.jpeg" data-mid="216064992" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2296a64c7822058636233867ac1f78da2fbdc511ceae69a61b8622935f54d88a/IMG_2387.jpeg" /> Images from research travels in Makhanda, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisianna and Georgia. Performance Studies Courses *These are undergraduate courses I’ve designed and taught.&nbsp; Performance of the City New York — a city that is famed for its diverse performance forms, and that seems to endlessly perform itself. In this course we utilize Performance Studies’ unique attunement to space to interrogate how the city and its performances create and affect each other. We pay particular attention to experimental forms that have emerged directly from New York from the 1960’s on, as well as studying the city itself as an ongoing performance. How do particular spatial and social structures enable, or disable, performance? How does performance transform an environment? Our attentiveness to the spatial is accompanied by a deep historical awareness — in many of our sessions we will take a “palimpsest” look at a particular site, exploring the layers of history and transformation that have formed it. Together we will experiment with ways of paying attention to the city, and explore New York physically (getting out and doing things!), creatively, and philosophically.&nbsp;Environmental Performance The late 1960s saw the concurrent emergence of the modern environmental movement and the outpouring of performance and art into public and natural spaces, accompanied by the development of performance studies as a critical field. In this interdisciplinary course, we will study the interdependence of environment and performance, contemplating the role that performance plays in activating environment as a discursive site and the ways that environmental conditions animate performance in quotidian and artistic spheres. Our reading will combine contemporary scholarship in the environmental humanities and performance studies, building a solid grounding in both, while discovering new lines of inquiry in their intersections. Queer, feminist, black, disabled, anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and indigenous perspectives guide our investigation into topics that include embodiment, speciation, spatiality, technicity, and the dissolution of received categories such as “art,” “culture,” “nature” and “the human.” Through close engagement with a diversity of performance forms, and attention to our own environmental relations, we will come to understand “environment” as a performative force on multiple scales and develop creative and critical tools for articulating this. Together we will explore the ways that artists embrace, disrupt, praise, reveal, or reconfigure environment’s performative capacity, as well as conduct some environmental performance experiments of our own. Performance Theory In this course we will simultaneously theorize performance and perform theory, exploring such questions as: How is theory performative? How does performance generate theory? How is performance always already theoretically active? How can a performance lens help us to read and generate theory? We will ground our discussion both in “canonical” performance studies texts, as well as a diverse range of performative “objects” including novels, plays, interviews, films, and photographs. An emphasis on queer, black and anticolonial thinking will help us to question the locus and even the very notion of theoretical authority, while exploring how these thinkers employ performance and performative tools in their work. We will also generate and play with a range of approaches for “doing” performance theory, including “thick descriptions,” poetry, free writing, performance actions, and practical exercises and experiments. <img width="3024" height="4032" width_o="3024" height_o="4032" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4608ef5bee243fda0658d9a2d1ffcb34e452deeaea33cf556c70132d9129a6f6/A0C08370-51AA-4BEF-BECC-C94FEE831053.jpeg" data-mid="216042728" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4608ef5bee243fda0658d9a2d1ffcb34e452deeaea33cf556c70132d9129a6f6/A0C08370-51AA-4BEF-BECC-C94FEE831053.jpeg" /> <img width="3024" height="4032" width_o="3024" height_o="4032" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1c42f6de5f3e0fd6d5619013196223a46ef40fbb0225489e5665ca78dbd7f527/70CD04FC-1635-43D0-B45B-6F0291FA9A2F.jpeg" data-mid="216042743" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1c42f6de5f3e0fd6d5619013196223a46ef40fbb0225489e5665ca78dbd7f527/70CD04FC-1635-43D0-B45B-6F0291FA9A2F.jpeg" /> <img width="3024" height="4032" width_o="3024" height_o="4032" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ae8ad4fe80ed5ed439437eaa348fe763a71bcfb00960db9c1d40f60af284fe33/7E02BD10-6619-41E0-AB63-C529D43F2280.jpeg" data-mid="216042744" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ae8ad4fe80ed5ed439437eaa348fe763a71bcfb00960db9c1d40f60af284fe33/7E02BD10-6619-41E0-AB63-C529D43F2280.jpeg" /> Assemblages of city waste made during a class activity in “Performance of the City,” 2023. https://joanna-ruth-evans.com/Publications Wed, 03 Apr 2024 19:58:46 +0000 joannaevans https://joanna-ruth-evans.com/Publications PUBLICATIONS Peer-reviewed Articles *If you do not have institutional access and would like to receive a PDF of any these please email me.&nbsp; Beyond Mundane: Zim Nqawana’s Environmental Improvisation When the studio of South African jazz saxophonist Zim Nqawana was destroyed by copper thieves, he responded by improvising with the wreckage. In ‘Beyond Mundane: the environmental improvisation of Zim Nqawana,’ Joanna Ruth Evans studies this performance through the film ‘The Exhibition of Vandalizm’ (2010), which documents the full day and night that Nqawana spent drawing sound from the detritus, and meditating on the psychic effects of South Africa’s colonial past. Nqawana’s creative response to an experience that is at once extreme and commonplace puts pressure on the concept of ‘the mundane’ and its racialized connection to the fantasy of aesthetic transcendence. Evans argues that the shifting connotation of ‘mundane’ (from a sense of worldly belonging to one of dull, repetitive ordinariness) is coterminous with the emergence of the liberal subject as a figure who is in but not of the world. This shift in the word’s association corresponded with a racialized denigration of material embeddedness, and followed upon Kantian aesthetics, which secures the liberal subject’s universality through the transcendence of aesthetic experience. Through a black studies critique of Kantian aesthetics, this discussion tracks connections between material vulnerability, mundanity, and art (including the embrace of ‘the mundane’ by twentieth century performance artists and scholars). Ultimately, Nqawana’s experience pushes both ‘the mundane’ and aesthetics to a conceptual breaking point. It begs the question: without access to the regulative framework that secures environmental autonomy and stability, what becomes of art? Faced with this crisis, Nqawana turns to improvisation. Refusing cynicism and reactionary closure, he enters the reality of the destruction with a creativity that does not transcend the material conditions of its emergence, but rather engages the already given creativity of his material environment in all its instability. “Beyond Mundane: the Environmental Improvisation of Zim Nqawana.” Performance Research. Special Issue: “On the Mundane.” Vol. 28, Issue 4 (2023). London: Routledge. <img width="1864" height="956" width_o="1864" height_o="956" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/934574706aab6a7c4b2a0f1e3a887c58c974660a98deaf44592390df86c1b957/Figure-1.png" data-mid="208292544" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/934574706aab6a7c4b2a0f1e3a887c58c974660a98deaf44592390df86c1b957/Figure-1.png" /> <img width="2826" height="1596" width_o="2826" height_o="1596" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e4a74eae529c67c0668ee4eb3b3c6409ebb5880c95ee18736f438b38ce36d99f/Figure-2.png" data-mid="208292681" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e4a74eae529c67c0668ee4eb3b3c6409ebb5880c95ee18736f438b38ce36d99f/Figure-2.png" /> Images from The Exhibition of Vandalizim, Aryan Kaganoff (2010). “As the world trembles”Borders and borderlessness in the thought of Édouard Glissant In the film Édouard Glissant, One World in Relation (Diawara 2009), Glissant states that “borders are necessary in order to appreciate the passage from the flavor of one country to the flavor of another.” This statement inspires an exploration of the workings of borders in Glissant’s work, focusing on his book Poetics of Relation and the film. It argues that Glissant holds an attachment to borders that is both pragmatic and ontological, and through which he generates a philosophy of the border as generative, distinguishing it from modernity’s externalized borders to greater and lesser effect. It also suggests that there appears through Glissant, and often in spite of his own attachment to borders, a trembling sense of the possibility of borderlessness. Trembling is invoked throughout as a material and conceptual force with the propensity for destabilizing and even negating borders. Glissant’s work is read through a number of performative scenes, including: Martin Heidegger’s famous reaction to viewing photographs of Earth from space in 1966; the dance piece more, more, more… future (2011) by Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula; Glissant’s own half-ironic, and ultimately unrealized, suggestion for the making of the film; and scenes from One World in Relation of Glissant and Diawara exploring Martinique together. “As the World Trembles: Borders and Borderlessness in the thought of Édouard Glissant." Women&amp;Performance: a journal of feminist history. Special Issue: “Border Encounters, Performing Thresholds.” Vol. 32, Issue 1 (2022). London: Routledge. <img width="3543" height="2362" width_o="3543" height_o="2362" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cfdae0f3cf4f82bd8883d91589b1a14c086df61aa0005c155874e726aeeca28e/mmmfcAgathePoupeney.jpg" data-mid="208294201" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cfdae0f3cf4f82bd8883d91589b1a14c086df61aa0005c155874e726aeeca28e/mmmfcAgathePoupeney.jpg" /> <img width="3543" height="2362" width_o="3543" height_o="2362" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/971a1e2fa09b3aae6abec94aeb1eec0e1d702e9b0727e4dd7a6b002de340742d/mmmfcAgathecost4MD.jpg" data-mid="208294198" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/971a1e2fa09b3aae6abec94aeb1eec0e1d702e9b0727e4dd7a6b002de340742d/mmmfcAgathecost4MD.jpg" /> Image credit: Agathe Poupeney. From more, more, more... future (2011), by Faustin Linyekula and Studio Kabako. Unsettled Matters, Falling Flight: Decolonial Protest and the Becoming-Material of an Imperial StatueTDR: The Drama Review Student Essay Contest Winner, 2018 A statue of 19th-century British imperialist Cecil John Rhodes sat at the heart of the University of Cape Town’s colonial façade until 9 April 2015, when it was removed after just one month of student protests known as the Rhodes Must Fall movement. The material alterations made to the body of the statue by protesting students unsettled the dominant epistemology of the university and public discourse by exceeding the bounds and logics of representational politics.“Unsettled Matters, Falling Flight: De-colonial Protest and the Becoming-Material of an Imperial Statue.” TDR/The Drama Review. Vol. 62, Issue 3 (2018). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <img width="3600" height="3086" width_o="3600" height_o="3086" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7fbf286f9e7ca581192f627bb15528a616e180dd629c74de320a4c74f5110972/4.-MichaSerraf.jpg" data-mid="208295030" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7fbf286f9e7ca581192f627bb15528a616e180dd629c74de320a4c74f5110972/4.-MichaSerraf.jpg" /> Image Credit: Micha Serra Performance Review The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window Written by Lorraine Hansberry. Directed by Anne Kauffman. Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), New York, March&nbsp;3,&nbsp;2023.“On May 24 1963, in the aftermath of the Birmingham protests, Lorraine Hansberry was amongst a group of artists and black activists invited to the home of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to open dialogue about the Civil Rights Movement, and the anger of black people at the administration’s response to white supremacist violence. Amongst the attendees were James Baldwin (who had assembled the group at Kennedy’s request), his brother David Baldwin, musicians Lena Horne and Harry Belafonte, and Freedom Rider Jerome Smith. At a crucial moment in the meeting Smith, who had been on the frontlines of the movement and repeatedly beaten, broke down while describing his experiences. Hansberry detected Kennedy physically turning away from Smith and, with a directness that shocked him, implored Kennedy to listen to him. The meeting quickly devolved, and Hansberry is reported as saying to Kennedy, ‘You are the best of what white America can offer us, if you can’t hear us, then we have no hope.’ Soon after she walked out, followed by the group. Hansberry wrote afterwards, ‘I had a feeling of complete futility, and as we got on the elevator I wondered if there is any way to make the white people in this country understand.’...” Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.” Ecumencia: Performance and Religion. Vol. 16, Issue 2 (2023). Penn State University Press.Digital Articles A “Jail Bird's Eye View:” Workshop 71’s Survival in South Africa"Referred to playfully as a ‘jailbird’s eye view,’ Survival would come to tell the stories of five prisoners – Vusi, Leroi, Edward, Slaksa, and Habbakuk – as they struggled to survive in the prison of South African society."Read here. Black on Both Sides: Survival in the USA"Between the 1976 Soweto uprising, Nelson Mandela’s release in 1990, and even the release of Roots in 1977, Survival has a knack for popping up at charged historical moments.”Read here. PlaytextThe Year of the Bicycle Amelia and Andile are children from very different backgrounds who befriend one another over a garden wall. Ten years later, they have become estranged and, in separate accidents, fall into a concussion at the same moment. The meet again in each other’s confused minds. Their bodies are broken but their throughts are very loud as they reach out for contact. While piecing together fragments of self, their memories draw them back to 1997; the year of Ninja Turtles, bicycles, and R. Kelly’s ‘I believe I can fly.’ And the year when their friendship was shattered by a place in which it is impossible for even a child to feel at ease. “We don’t cry during The Year of the Bicycle because it is soppy. We wail because it so damn defiant.”&nbsp; &nbsp; - Mike Loewe, The Critter The Year of the Bicycle. Junkets 10 Series. Cape Town: Junkets Press. 2016. <img width="2402" height="2402" width_o="2402" height_o="2402" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5f4b3ea3ec3a7bbeca94bfb3f023695bb23dff3faabfb8cbd4b8f02433117f37/The-Year-of-the-Bicycle-6-pic-by-Val-Adamson.jpg" data-mid="208301917" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5f4b3ea3ec3a7bbeca94bfb3f023695bb23dff3faabfb8cbd4b8f02433117f37/The-Year-of-the-Bicycle-6-pic-by-Val-Adamson.jpg" /> Aphiwe Livi and Amy Wilson photographed by Val Adamson. https://joanna-ruth-evans.com/Theater-Performance Wed, 03 Apr 2024 19:58:47 +0000 joannaevans https://joanna-ruth-evans.com/Theater-Performance THEATER + PERFORMANCE Survival (2024) PlayCo and The Africa Center, in association with the National Black Theatre, present Survival, an inter-generational reading featuring two of the play's original creators. A product of Workshop '71, the first interracial theatre company in South Africa, Survival was devised in a highly physical, experimental style under conditions of radical uncertainty and repression. Launched shortly before the 1976 student uprisings, the play's searing, irreverent tone captured carceral life during Apartheid and tapped into the collective spirit shared among Black South Africans. Touring extensively in turbulent times, Survival was shut down by the army mid-performance in Soweto, and in 1977 invited to tour California. Shortly after, the play was banned in South Africa, and the cast remained in the US in exile. This event reunites Fana Kekana and Seth Sibanda, two members of the original Workshop '71, and will include a post-show conversation with artists, South African community leaders, and the audience facilitated by Jonathan McCrory, National Black Theatre's Executive Artistic Director. Directed Keenan Tyler Oliphant + Joanna Ruth Evans Featuring&nbsp;David Glover, Fana Kekana, Namisa Mdlalose, Seth Sibanda &amp; Vuyo Sotashe <img width="2474" height="3424" width_o="2474" height_o="3424" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/678d6bb2172caf9871056558243a0c57c4879b1d04ba26c242e29cda55034928/IMG_2880-4.jpg" data-mid="216014051" border="0" data-scale="33" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/678d6bb2172caf9871056558243a0c57c4879b1d04ba26c242e29cda55034928/IMG_2880-4.jpg" /> <img width="1080" height="1080" width_o="1080" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a4a06173ecb42c522342171cd0dae83d8ae9696643cac77b629a3b9cb15ae9da/SURVIVAL-Instagram.jpg" data-mid="214875604" border="0" data-scale="45" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a4a06173ecb42c522342171cd0dae83d8ae9696643cac77b629a3b9cb15ae9da/SURVIVAL-Instagram.jpg" /> DIRECTOR’S NOTE In 1976 Workshop 71 set out to devise a new play under conditions of intense repression. As Fana explained to me:&nbsp; “first we said we wanted to do a play about prison. But as the research was going… we discovered that this whole country is a prison. So the approach should be that.” When I first read Survival I was captivated by its meta-theatricality, its humor, its expression of raw anger, and its theory of struggle.&nbsp; When I met Seth Sibanda in 2022, and later Fana Kekana, I learned more about the many adaptations this play has made as it toured through wildly changing contexts in South Africa and the United States, from maximum security prisons, to Soweto in the midst of the 1976 uprising, from off-Broadway theaters to right here in Harlem on the day of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990. As it moved, Survival would change to incorporate new events, duck censorship, and respond to shifting environments. I was amazed when Seth and Fana agreed to once more enter and tranform&nbsp;Survival, this time for a reading at the Africa Center in 2024. I thank them for their incredible generosity in returning to the characters they created nearly 50 years ago, for patiently teaching us the original songs and sharing their memories as we worked, and for trusting us to join them in sharing Survival once more — in a radically different, but nonetheless politically charged moment. — Joanna Evans AnotherKind (2021 - 2022) Presented by the National Arts Festival, Winner of the 2020 Distell National Playwright Competition.AnotherKind is a funeral for a piece of theatre which never existed and a celebration of the birth of a new hybrid artwork between the digital and the live. It draws from Amy Louise Wilson’s award-winning script, Another Kind of Dying which tells the story of Silumko - a young man from rural Eastern Cape who moves to Johannesburg after the death of his father. Due to the pandemic, Another Kind of Dying was not able to be staged as a play.AnotherKind both builds on and breaks apart the original script across a series of short video, performance and sound pieces which were created over a 6 week creative lab in Cape Town, South Africa, and presented at the South African National Arts Festival (2021) and Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2022). This website is an intimate view into another kind of process – a meeting of text fragments, recorded rehearsals and performance and sound experiments which challenge the formal limits of live collaboration and theatrical experience.Created by: Amy Louise Wilson (Script &amp; Creative Producer); &nbsp;Aphiwe Livi (Performer &amp; Translator) Francois Knoetze (Art Director, Scenography &amp; Video Art); Joanna Evans (Performance Director &amp; Co-creative Director); Gugulethu Duma (Sound Artist) and others. Explore the films and interactive digital archive here: <img width="352" height="80" width_o="352" height_o="80" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c40f6a79c2ded4510d5194d25ca495da72e9e32b0b9ec6e578f221bbf99ddb44/Screenshot-2024-07-26-at-10.58.20AM.png" data-mid="215327993" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/352/i/c40f6a79c2ded4510d5194d25ca495da72e9e32b0b9ec6e578f221bbf99ddb44/Screenshot-2024-07-26-at-10.58.20AM.png" /> <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/899d03360e496aeb9887c6fc2580179af2ff58304debedd1fbbb45fa161bc1b9/anotherkind5.jpg" data-mid="215289503" border="0" data-scale="82" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/899d03360e496aeb9887c6fc2580179af2ff58304debedd1fbbb45fa161bc1b9/anotherkind5.jpg" /> <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8245d1198ca811811e08eb166602405964734c80da24888672dae6f47cc5ffc6/anotherkind2.jpg" data-mid="215289500" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8245d1198ca811811e08eb166602405964734c80da24888672dae6f47cc5ffc6/anotherkind2.jpg" /> <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e72400d2b9d1d4ed79ebe52b4d683362322f4b7298ba7e8b463bc398bacc364d/anotherkind7.jpg" data-mid="215289504" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e72400d2b9d1d4ed79ebe52b4d683362322f4b7298ba7e8b463bc398bacc364d/anotherkind7.jpg" /> <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/546070e03e43df42552e7b67e1d141be9355f5eb9b2e48ac90727bc40290a631/anotherkind4.jpg" data-mid="215289502" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/546070e03e43df42552e7b67e1d141be9355f5eb9b2e48ac90727bc40290a631/anotherkind4.jpg" /> <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/21c8359042856ca8e4c86942b6a601b63aafdf60fd2d940bdfeb57adebf64a19/anotherkind3.jpg" data-mid="215289501" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/21c8359042856ca8e4c86942b6a601b63aafdf60fd2d940bdfeb57adebf64a19/anotherkind3.jpg" /> We Were Everywhere (2019) We Were Everywhere is a new music theater work commissioned through the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Playwrights-in-Residence Fund at the Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University.Set on Kenya's coastal "mitumba" dumps, We Were Eveywhere traces the material histories of refuse clothing, through plantations, factories, malls, and across the ocean in containers to dumping sites, where it will receive a second life as it is rummaged through, patched up and resold in the used clothing market. All told from the choral voices of the clothing itself as it reaches for language, sensation, and memory... Production Team Joanna Ruth Evans &amp; Shariffa Ali (Book and Lyrics);&nbsp;Avi Amon (Music and Lyrics);&nbsp;Shariffa Ali (Director);&nbsp;Anna Ebbesen (Music Director);&nbsp;Jennifer Harrison Newman (Choreography);&nbsp;You-Shin Chen (Set Design)Sarah Woodham (Costume Design);&nbsp;Victoria Davidjohn (Lighting Design);&nbsp;Kay Richardson (Sound Design) <img width="6720" height="4480" width_o="6720" height_o="4480" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9071a5e5e319236ecb7ef28c13579fb7d811a18071af33512689d68b1a2a334a/We-Were-Everywhere_6.jpg" data-mid="215215242" border="0" data-scale="66" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9071a5e5e319236ecb7ef28c13579fb7d811a18071af33512689d68b1a2a334a/We-Were-Everywhere_6.jpg" /> <img width="1000" height="667" width_o="1000" height_o="667" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/42d5dfd7c647298038b3ea790be2dea33c8b64ae6d70d14b7ebf3a201d9ead42/We-Were-Everywhere_3-1.jpg" data-mid="215221519" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/42d5dfd7c647298038b3ea790be2dea33c8b64ae6d70d14b7ebf3a201d9ead42/We-Were-Everywhere_3-1.jpg" /> <img width="1000" height="667" width_o="1000" height_o="667" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/086811d5cee0bad404660605d3092096357e5cd4bca43c8f0c4c3a05f02a7948/We-Were-Everywhere_2.jpg" data-mid="215221515" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/086811d5cee0bad404660605d3092096357e5cd4bca43c8f0c4c3a05f02a7948/We-Were-Everywhere_2.jpg" /> <img width="1000" height="667" width_o="1000" height_o="667" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cafe3d5b59a6368d47ff479e2f9a7d33e9301909133bdc043649f94b63687392/We-Were-Everywhere_8.jpg" data-mid="215219949" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cafe3d5b59a6368d47ff479e2f9a7d33e9301909133bdc043649f94b63687392/We-Were-Everywhere_8.jpg" /> <img width="1000" height="1500" width_o="1000" height_o="1500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a5e22b20e61ab8806b920865912f2188b925950a60ff7ccd1c890ac48584eed7/We-Were-Everywhere_11.jpg" data-mid="215215238" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a5e22b20e61ab8806b920865912f2188b925950a60ff7ccd1c890ac48584eed7/We-Were-Everywhere_11.jpg" /> Four Small Gods (2016) The last four living things on earth after the big flood: a human, a rhino, a panther and a dog. Also, an egg! Perhaps a god? How to survive, and why would we want to? Where does this boat end? And why are there so many ladders? Four Small Gods is meta-theatrical unravelling of the rules of humanist survival and the language that underwrites them, and a tragi-comic bellyflop into the ethical collapse at their limits.“There's immense beauty and power in this tale...definitely a play of the moment.” &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; - Benn vd Westhuizen, Artlink “Explosive and emotive” &nbsp; &nbsp; - Frances Aron, Bizcommunity“The very serious implication of who rules over what is dealt with with humour and some very amusing linguistic acrobatics…Evans has created a surreal landscape inhabited with imagined, yet totally believable characters with a thought provoking script.”&nbsp; &nbsp; - Tracey Saunders, Cape Times Written + directed Joanna EvansFeaturing Siya Ngcoba, Iman Isaacs, Richard September, Amy Louise Wilson, Matthew King and Nandipha Tavares CalburnSet design Francois KnoetzeSound design + original composition&nbsp;John WithersProduced Imbewu ArtsWinner of 2014 Imbewu Arts Scribe Award for Best New Script <img width="1000" height="667" width_o="1000" height_o="667" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d99672b823ef656b7a3d4c6a2138d1e8a4dd45066632ba1cbf77f8ffe69c05ab/COVER-PHOTO.jpg" data-mid="215225150" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d99672b823ef656b7a3d4c6a2138d1e8a4dd45066632ba1cbf77f8ffe69c05ab/COVER-PHOTO.jpg" /> <img width="1000" height="667" width_o="1000" height_o="667" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f874d299ba2a7b4b28686e5e581b93d0c88fedada5ac07c77e2bf4487c924e90/FourSmallGodsOnlineJK-36.jpg" data-mid="215225415" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f874d299ba2a7b4b28686e5e581b93d0c88fedada5ac07c77e2bf4487c924e90/FourSmallGodsOnlineJK-36.jpg" /> <img width="1000" height="667" width_o="1000" height_o="667" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/88564e51ece3e67e234f2ae9f6a71b6a61fc202cab71ea089824adc4c20811a4/FourSmallGodsOnlineJK-44.jpg" data-mid="215225416" border="0" data-scale="83" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/88564e51ece3e67e234f2ae9f6a71b6a61fc202cab71ea089824adc4c20811a4/FourSmallGodsOnlineJK-44.jpg" /> <img width="1000" height="1424" width_o="1000" height_o="1424" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/235e5f487142d29ee5458dfc3fe83f06b6f778889c5975f6dd4ede9bcb2157dd/four-small-gods-poster.jpg" data-mid="215225154" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/235e5f487142d29ee5458dfc3fe83f06b6f778889c5975f6dd4ede9bcb2157dd/four-small-gods-poster.jpg" /> <img width="1000" height="667" width_o="1000" height_o="667" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f7ab88fd6dfaed3ea69ca90046fa940575ee4339961dd64957fd84b1ae67a72b/FourSmallGodsOnlineJK-135.jpg" data-mid="215225419" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f7ab88fd6dfaed3ea69ca90046fa940575ee4339961dd64957fd84b1ae67a72b/FourSmallGodsOnlineJK-135.jpg" /> <img width="1000" height="667" width_o="1000" height_o="667" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/dc5cc6fd6d9e2800f4ca306d8641e141885af47de8aad5fdb811077e8a525fed/FourSmallGodsOnlineJK-163.jpg" data-mid="215225421" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/dc5cc6fd6d9e2800f4ca306d8641e141885af47de8aad5fdb811077e8a525fed/FourSmallGodsOnlineJK-163.jpg" /> <img width="1000" height="667" width_o="1000" height_o="667" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d54fa0e7a60280bb9a80ff89b18dcb21f9b76115d53842015c422156fd967faa/FourSmallGodsOnlineJK-87.jpg" data-mid="215225417" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d54fa0e7a60280bb9a80ff89b18dcb21f9b76115d53842015c422156fd967faa/FourSmallGodsOnlineJK-87.jpg" /> The Year of the Bicycle (2013 on) In the cyclical space of memory two estranged childhood friends meet: their bodies are broken, but their thoughts are very loud as they reach out for contact.&nbsp;“An instantaneous resounding applause and standing ovation. What more needs to be said? The Year of the Bicycle is good and the people know it. They feel it … viewing South Africa’s tense transformation, through children’s innocently perceptive eyes, makes for a superb, moving, haunting piece of theatre.” &nbsp; &nbsp; - Sarah Roberson, The Critter“(T)he experimental epic, The Year of the Bicycle, presents stark performances and chilling brilliance to evoke a childhood enmeshed in turmoil during the twilight of apartheid… It is a fascinating and whimsical tale which leaves a somewhat bitter aftertaste, vividly potent with its social rendering.” &nbsp; &nbsp; - Benn van der Westhuizen, What’s On in Cape Town“The Year of the Bicycle is one of those works which seamlessly marries physical theatre with poetry... A terrific maw opens in your heart and spirit about the irrevocable horror of loss and the inestimable sadness that comes of deep friendships rift and tossed at the whim of the vagaries of others.” &nbsp; &nbsp; - Robyn Sassen, My View“We don’t cry during The Year of the Bicycle because it is soppy. We wail because it so damn defiant.” &nbsp; &nbsp; - Mike Loewe, The CritterWinner of the Standard Bank Silver Ovation Award, South African National Arts Festival (2013)Written and directed Joanna EvansFeaturing Aphiwe Livi + Amy Louise WilsonSound design + original composition John Withers <img width="3905" height="2603" width_o="3905" height_o="2603" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bcf1fb5ca3b3eec1de2f03ce7ffa828dbc37579dccfbb2b57a9ef8a6e98ef965/The-Year-of-the-Bicycle-7-pic-by-Val-Adamson.jpg" data-mid="215225734" border="0" data-scale="82" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bcf1fb5ca3b3eec1de2f03ce7ffa828dbc37579dccfbb2b57a9ef8a6e98ef965/The-Year-of-the-Bicycle-7-pic-by-Val-Adamson.jpg" /> <img width="3572" height="2376" width_o="3572" height_o="2376" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ed99f9105fd269abf4e3d5b88275250d003ed2fe7cb6e69a097dd8eafd8d08d9/The-Year-of-the-Bicycle-5-pic-by-Val-Adamson.jpg" data-mid="215225732" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ed99f9105fd269abf4e3d5b88275250d003ed2fe7cb6e69a097dd8eafd8d08d9/The-Year-of-the-Bicycle-5-pic-by-Val-Adamson.jpg" /> <img width="3431" height="2287" width_o="3431" height_o="2287" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cc1fd013b6f42b52a3e586a9ec632b9809e2ec9f775a5ef4f2377bc6de1e2e98/The-Year-of-the-Bicycle-2-pic-by-Val-Adamson.jpg" data-mid="215225730" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cc1fd013b6f42b52a3e586a9ec632b9809e2ec9f775a5ef4f2377bc6de1e2e98/The-Year-of-the-Bicycle-2-pic-by-Val-Adamson.jpg" /> <img width="4256" height="2832" width_o="4256" height_o="2832" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f5acf996b50640c41027c06789669d0e67c4a1ea5cef310d6a33d9bde6d7385b/The-Year-of-the-Bicycle-4-pic-by-Val-Adamson.jpg" data-mid="215225731" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f5acf996b50640c41027c06789669d0e67c4a1ea5cef310d6a33d9bde6d7385b/The-Year-of-the-Bicycle-4-pic-by-Val-Adamson.jpg" /> <img width="2481" height="3508" width_o="2481" height_o="3508" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e389eac63a91b7c02765d759cbe4bdbcb92fe59383c7d757843231aee650ad50/YoTB_R4_PrintPoster.jpg" data-mid="215225737" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e389eac63a91b7c02765d759cbe4bdbcb92fe59383c7d757843231aee650ad50/YoTB_R4_PrintPoster.jpg" /> Inala Theater (2013 - 2018) Inala Theater is an exciting collective of South African artists brought together by a shared commitment to quality theatre for all ages. Combining their skills in Bunraku puppetry, object theatre, clowning, and African music, they explore the power of the imagination to transform the everyday into the magical. Dedicated to intensive research with their target age groups, Inala’s original productions find unique ways to meet their young audiences eye-to-eye, mind-to-mind. As one of the the first company’s in South Africa to create work for pre-verbal audiences, they have played a pioneering role in the burgeoning Theatre for Early Years industry. The team came together in early 2013 as Pillow Fort Theatre, when they were selected as the only non-European company worldwide to receive Small Size Seed Funding from the European Union. From this Patchwork was born, which went on to tour nationally and globally, and was awarded Best International Performance at the 2015 International Festival of Theatre for Children and Youth in Iran. Other works include Just Here, which was created especially for children in hospitals and care homes, and Titum Titum, which introduces young audiences to an understanding of pregnancy and the creation of new life. Inala’s latest production is a Bunraku puppetry piece called Lumka, which has just returned from representing South Africa at the BRICKS Festival in Dugastan, Russia. The Inala team are Asanda Rilityana, Roshina Ratnam, Joanna Evans and Pedro Espi-Sanchis. https://joanna-ruth-evans.com/Homepage Wed, 03 Apr 2024 19:58:47 +0000 joannaevans https://joanna-ruth-evans.com/Homepage