THE STRANGER
Drama
Created, Written and Directed by Brett BAILEY | Produced by Barbara MATHERS | Music by Nkosenathi KOELA | Sound Engineering by Jethro HARRIS | Stage Management by Yusuf ARAHAMS | Presented by Third World Bunfight with support from The National Lotteries Commission
Language and Nudity
A ritual drama of love, consciousness and ephemerality based on the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus, a musician whose songs reveal the inner harmony of the universe. His music is so beautiful that rocks, animals and trees gather around him to listen. On the night of his wedding, his bride is killed by a snake, and he travels to the Underworld to retrieve her. Set loosely within a local context afflicted by xenophobia, THE STRANGER is an immersive, haunting meditation on the transformative power of the arts, impermanence, and the fragile interconnectedness of all life forms.
Brett Bailey presented his first adaptation of this myth – ORFEUS – at the Spier Summer Season in 2006 and at The National Arts Festival in 2011. Bringing together installation, ritual, storytelling and performance, THE STRANGER is a complete reworking of the material, featuring the deeply spiritual music of Nkosenathi Koela aka Mntana.Wexhwele.
Bailey states that one of his fundamental creative objectives is to make work that activates deep feeling and reflection – within both performers and spectators, and that resonates on a symbolic level: beyond the rational and closer to the spiritual or metaphysical. Of Koela it is said: ‘To hear his sound is to hear the ancients; stories of pain, loss, love and hope, to journey into the unimagined and reimagined.’
A meditative, ritualistic performance work based on the myth of Orpheus, THE STRANGER is a continuation of Brett’s exploration of the intersections between ancient myth and contemporary realities; ritual and theatrical performance; dream and waking actuality; and the immigrant and shaman as traversers of frontiers.
THE STRANGER is set in a dystopian contemporary town: humdrum, grinding, materialistic and bigoted. A gifted musician arrives from across the border or from another world; his music is transformational: it unifies people, shifts their priorities, brings the natural world into focus, and reveals an underlying harmony in the universe. Orpheus’ wife is murdered on the night of their marriage, and he journeys to the Underworld to retrieve her. There, in an encounter with a personification of Death, he experiences a reality devoid of duality, meaning, morality and form. The songs he sings on his return are haunted by despair at his loss, and at the unfolding devastation of the world. The work closes with his lynching by a xenophobic mob.
CREATIVE TEAM
BRETT BAILEY - DIRECTOR + DESIGNER
Brett Bailey is a South African playwright, designer, director, installation artist, and the artistic director of the performance company THIRD WORLD BUNFIGHT. His works have played across Europe, Australia and Africa, and in the USA, Latin America and Asia, and have won several awards, including a gold medal for design at the Prague Quadrennial (2007). He has a BA in drama and English from the University of Cape Town, and a post graduate diploma in performance studies from Das Arts (now DAS Theatre), Amsterdam (2004).
From 2008-2011 he was curator of South Africa’s only public arts festival, ‘Infecting the City’, in Cape Town. He was the chairperson of the Curatorial Committee of South Africa’s National Arts Festival from 2016-2020. In 2014 he wrote the International Theatre Institute’s World Theatre Day message for UNESCO. He headed the jury of the Prague Quadrennial (2011); was a juror on the International Theatre Institute’s Music Theatre Now competition (2012/13), and the chairperson of the jury of the same competition in 2016/16; and a juror of the Tokyo Festival’s World Theatre Competition in 2019.
He has run extended workshop sessions on his methodology in Ireland, Italy, the USA and Athens, and in 2018 he curated a 2-month component of the MA programme at DAS Theatre, Amsterdam. In 2019 he was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters) by the French government.
NKOSENATHI KOELA - MUSIC
Nkosenathi Ernie Koela (Mntana.WeXhwele) (b.1993) is a Ph.D candidate specializing in indigenous music therapies at the University of Cape Town. Using interdisciplinary practice encompassing being an Afrikan multi-instrumentalist, instrument maker, composer, writer, poet, playwright, director, singer, academic and dancer; Koela creates textures of music embedded in Afrikan spirituality. Observing musical instrument connections of Afrika and Asia as archaeological and knowledge sites, Koela explores how healing practices through sound creates space that manifests spiritually and materially. At the core of his practice is an interest of how people as custodians of the instruments become the living library and creators of indigenous knowledge systems. Through his work he is creating an intersectional and inter-disciplinary indigenous museum that locates sound and movement practice in Afrika as a material space of healing that functions to serve and inform its community. Koela has performed across the continent and internationally. He released his first solo ‘Inkaba’ an Afro-Spritual collection of dream and soundscapes,(Brazil, Cape Town), (2018). He has performed at the International Fringe Festival, Edinburgh, (2011); The National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, (2011); Riaz Festival, Mozambique, (2015/2019), UCT Ibuyambo shows (Baxter theatre, 2014-17) and Dance Umbrella Africa (2019), Curitiba Bienal ( Brazil 2019)
Koela has been a performer and instrumentalist for over 15 years, Alongside playing instruments he also teaches others how to play traditional instruments. In this, teaching others about the instruments h’story, spiritual significance and importance. This he does as testament to his ancestry, the long line/s of traditional instrumentalists, diviners/ healers (amaGqirha namaXhwele) that run in his family, who are in their own right, masters of traditional San, Bantu and Nguni music/heritage.