OSW

ON STAGE
Slindile Mthembu’s Old Soul Waiting (2021) is an experimental, multi-disciplinary production that sees the artistic collision of film, theatre, and visual art. It explores how an ancestral calling can be misdiagnosed as a mental illness.

With its non-linear storytelling, infused with music and interpretive physical language, the piece attempts to show what a spiritual awakening might look like from Western and spiritual perspectives. The audience is introduced to this through the memory of the protagonist.

Mthembu deconstructs the work, extracting its elements as stylised performances in theatre spaces as well as non-institutional spaces. These sites – which range from cinemas and galleries to restaurants – are what she terms the 'third space'. “What we hope to do is to hybridise the performances. And I want the audience to feel like they’re walking through a maze of the main character’s mind. The artworks in the show help to articulate what can’t be verbalised."

Slindile Mthembu is a South African multi-hyphenated storyteller who dabbles as a playwright, director, scriptwriter, creative producer, theatre-maker, and filmmaker.

EXTENDING THE STAGE
Part of Old Soul Waiting is an exercise in extending the theatre stage into an immersive exhibition. Through moving images and artworks we explore the inner world, it's layers, and complexity as the protagonist is the bearer of multiple universes that collide and expand, implode, and recreate. Forces that are powerful, yet seem to slip through the porous mesh of our understanding.

The protagonist constantly transitions between the metaphysical and the physical, between scientific concepts of human existence and the ones that don't use language, categories, or binaries. The yellow theatre is an invite to the soliloquy which we will then experience on stage, a moment that presents the fractures and world-building moments and invites us to step into our own inner makings.

Through the looping of moments, taken from recordings of the performance, introducing yet another level of the stage, the exhibition expands what we understand the boundaries of the theatre to be and shares moments of not-knowing and non-being. Physical and digital artworks by Mvelo Mahlangu and Manyaku Mashilo accompany this realm that carries no name other than the feelings it invokes. This visual layover is conveyed by live music by singer Koek Sista.

CREDITS
Writer: Slindile Mthembu
Director: Hulisani Ndou
Assistant Director: Slindile Mthembu
Music Composer:Thembinkosi Mavimbela
Art Director: Sandile Mhlongo
Curator: Nisha Merit
Visual Artists: Mvelo Mahlangu & Manyaku Mashilo
extra Music: Sibusile Xaba & Amaza Sound
Musician: Koek Sista
Lighting Designer: Motlotlo Makhobotloane
Lighting Technician: Rendani Gelebe
Sound: Thapelo Makhubo
Creative Assistant: Sami Maseko
Stage Manager: Grace Petersen
Producers: Slindile Mthembu & Nisha Merit
Film: Lauge Sorensen