August - November 2022 — Performing Arts

Thando Mangcu is a South African performer, director and writer. She will be an artist in residence at Théâtre du Grütli in Geneva from 29 August to 27 November 2022, during which time she looks forward to working and being part of the creative community at Grütli. “This residency will be an opportunity to expand my theatrical knowledge, dramaturgical and visual vocabulary,” Thando explains. “I want to use this time to gain exposure to various theatre and cultural practices, I want to write about what I watch and see here, and forge networks and cultural exchange.”

BIOGRAPHY

Thando Mangcu recently obtained her Master’s Degree in Dramaturgy from the University of Cape Town, which included a six-month exchange program at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), focusing on translation, tragedy and globalization. In 2021 Thando was a panellist at the Kennedy Centre American Theatre Festival in Nothing About Us Without Us: Workshop Protest Theatre in the 21st Century. In late 2020 Thando created a mini-documentary on South African Workshop Theatre with Tankiso Mamabolo, featured in Duška Radosavljevic’s Auralia.Space website and commissioned for the Aural/Oral Dramaturgies project. The latter two projects were the result of her being co-writer of The Fall, an international award-winning and critically acclaimed play about the 2015 Fees Must Fall and Rhodes Must Fall movements produced by the Baxter Theatre Centre. The Fall has been performed  at the Baxter Theatre Centre (2016 and 2017), Woordfees Festival (2017), Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2017) and Arts Centre Melbourne (2018).

In 2017 Thando directed Pieces, a Fleur du Cap nominated play (‘Best New Director’, 2018) that was devised under the TAAC Emerging Director’s Bursary program. She choreographed Delayed Replays (with Sizwesandile Mnisi and Sihle Mnqwazana), which was performed at the Centre for African Studies (CAS) Gallery in 2017. In 2016 Thando was mentored by Sello Pesa of the Ntsoana Contemporary Dance Theatre during their In House Project.

[Portrait by Jabu Newman, assisted by Yonela Makoba and Natallie Kawondera]