Blending spoken word, live music, and satire, Gauteng (For Ebenheizer) brings South Africa’s cities to life as a fractured family. Gauteng and Kaapstad, estranged lovers, leave their “children"—Hillbrow, Yeoville, Maboneng, Sandton, and Msawawa—to navigate the chaos of urban life, spiraling into addiction, neglect, and tragedy. Streets and suburbs become living archives of trauma, memory, and resilience, capturing the contradictions of post-liberation South Africa.
Performed with minimal staging, a single crate, live music, and dynamic physicality, the piece moves fluidly between humor, satire, and heartbreak. Through movement, sound, and language, it is both a love letter and an elegy: a meditation on loss, survival, and creative endurance. Gauteng (For Ebenheizer) invites audiences to witness a city’s pulse, its fractures, and its undying capacity for song, memory, and connection
Gauteng (for Ebenheizer) is a poetic theatre piece that brings South Africa’s cities to life as a fractured family.
When Gauteng and Kaapstad separate, their children begin to fall apart: Hillbrow spirals into addiction, Yeoville dies, Maboneng is poisoned, and Sandton turns his back on the family. At home, the youngest, Msawawa, neglects his cousin Eskom, pushing the family further into darkness.
Years later, Newtown returns to pick up the pieces. Blending spoken word, live music, and movement, the work moves between humor and heartbreak, reflecting the realities of city life in South Africa.
Asher Gamedze is a South African drummer, composer, scholar, and bandleader based in Cape Town. His music is a profound mixture of various musical traditions from Southern Africa, free improvisation, jazz, and radical social and political thought. A self-taught musician, Gamedze gained recognition over the years for his work on the drums with the likes of Angel Bat Dawid and Nduduzo Makhatini and as a session player for many other South African artists before releasing his critically acclaimed debut album, Dialectic Soul, in 2020. Named one of the best jazz albums of the year by various publications, including The New York Times, it was followed in 2022 by the duo release Out Side Work. His latest album, Turbulence and Pulse, released in 2023 through a special collaboration between International Anthem and Mushroom Hour Half Hour, sees him coming back to the musicians and the political and historical questions of Dialectic Soul, infusing them with renewed significance.
Masello Motana is a storyteller, actor, poet, writer, and super vocalist who thrives on collaborations. She has recently collaborated with Neo Muyanga and Bokani Dyer on groundbreaking Pan African Space Station shows in Cape Town, where she is currently based. She is at home with a live band, orchestra, acapella setting, or even a DJ and vocalist setup like the Familiar Strangers project, where she collaborated with nujazz DJ True Jones. Masello has presented and acted in several television productions and recently played the lead in the film A Million Colours. She compiled and taught the children’s class at the Market Theater Laboratory and performs stories for children.
Nobuhle Ashanti (22) is a Cape Town-based musician, composer, and arranger, skilled in jazz piano and classical violin. She trained from age 10 at Beau Soleil Music Centre and through programs like Sekunjalo Youth and the Grahamstown International Youth Jazz Festival. She performs widely with her project Ashanti Tribe and as a session pianist/musical director, with highlights including the Cape Town Jazz Festival, Bayimba Jazz Festival, Sofar Sessions, and co-arranging Lauren Manning’s Four Walls. Ashanti Tribe blends South African jazz, R&B, and soul to celebrate heritage and healing. Nobuhle is now preparing her debut album featuring local artists and her Cape Town roots.
Melusi Mnqobi Molefe is a Cape Town–based actor, theatre-maker, and emerging writer whose work stems from play and impulse. A Market Theatre Laboratory alumnus and ACT Acting Scholarship (2019) recipient, he performed in Eclipse: Phifalo ya Ngwedi, No Easter Sunday for Queers (Naledi Awards 2019); Glimmer; and Manje Manje the Epic and trained in early-years theatre under Jennie Reznek (Mina Thina and Umthi | Boom Tree). Part of the Magnet Youth Company, he developed Gauteng (for Ebenhezer) at the SO Academy. Represented by Moonyen Lee & Associates, he has appeared in commercials, Average Joe Season 2, a Netflix series (2026), and a short film with Jenna Bass.
Qondiswa James is a freelance cultural worker based in Johannesburg. An award-winning writer, performer, theatre-maker, installation artist, arts facilitator, scholar, and activist, her work engages the socio-political imagination to mobilize transgression.
She has staged public interventions at Infecting the City (Cape Town), Live Arts Festival, FNB Art Joburg, Centre for the Less Good Idea, Les Rencontres à L’échelle (France), A4 Arts Centre (China), and others. Her installations have featured at the Spier Light Art Festival and Stellenbosch Triennale.
Her theatre includes A Faint Patch of Light (Standard Bank Ovation Award 2019), A Howl in Makhanda (Fleur du Cap 2022 Best New Script & Best Original Composition), and Retch (Naledi Award 2024 Best Performer on the Fringe). She staged Amaxelegu (2024) and directed Dump State (2025).
On screen, she appeared in High Fantasy (DIFF 2018 Best SA Film & Artistic Bravery Award) and Letters from the Continent (Holland Film Festival 2021).
PREVIOUS PERFORMANCES:
27–29 March 2025
Centre for the Less Good Idea – COLLATIONS 3: The Unexpected City
30 November 2025—Centre for the Less good Idea Season 11