Empatheatre’s electrifying and highly acclaimed Isidlamlilo/The Fire Eater, a one-woman show brought to life by Mpume Mthombeni and theatre-maker Neil Coppen, comes to the Baxter Flipside.
Winner of four Naledi Theatre Awards for Best Production, Best Actor in a solo performance, Best Director and Best Lighting Design, the production was nominated for four more awards.
At the 2024 Woordtrofees Awards it won Best New South African text, Best Solo Performance for Mpume Mthombeni and Best Technical Achievement for Tina le Roux.
It was selected as the Noorderzon Critics Choice at the 2023 Noorderzon Festival of Performing Arts in the Netherlands. The play text has been published by Wits University Press.
Coppen, in collaboration with Mthombeni, wrote the script, which is based on a range of testimonials. Set in a womens’ hostel in downtown Durban, Zenzile Maseko (performed by Mthombeni), is a grandmother partially disabled and declared dead by the Home Affairs’ decrepit system.
It is within the confines of this cramped room that Zenzile reckons with Nkulunkulu (God), recalling the unbelievable series of events that have unfolded across her lifetime.
It is soon revealed that she operated as one of the Inkatha Freedom Party’s (IFP) most feared assassins nicknamed Impundulu (The Lightning Bird) in the build-up to the 1994 general elections. It’s a past Zenzile has spent most of her adult life trying to erase, praying nightly to Nkulunkulu and begging Him to cleanse her of her past sins.
However, when Home Affairs mistakenly declares her dead and is unable to reverse the error on their system, she finds herself cast into the middle of a Kafkaesque nightmare, forced to reawaken the vengeful spirit of Impundulu to secure her survival.
Mthombeni sets the stage ablaze in a breathtaking tour-de-force performance that sees her shifting between the feared IFP assassin Impundulu and the reborn Gogo, longing to return to the house she’s building in her childhood village, iPharadise.
Zenzile’s devastating and often hilarious recollections propel the audience back and forth through time, traversing the shifting landscapes of KwaZulu-Natal and while charting critical events in the province’s post-1994 trajectory through to its present-day floods and insurrections.
While the story offers an insightful look at the eddying cycles of violence and revenge that play out across generations, it is most of all a story about redemption, regeneration and reinvention.
The production has toured throughout South Africa and Europe to sold-out houses and rave reviews with performances at the National Arts Festival, Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre (Durban), The Market Theatre (Joburg), Hilton Arts Festival (KZN), Noorderzon Festival of Performing Arts (Groningen Netherlands), The Kampnagel International Summer Festival (Hamburg, Germany) and La Bâtie – Festival de Genève (Switzerland).
It has just returned from a season at the Schlachthaus Theatre in Berne, Switzerland.
Mthombeni, Coppen alongside Dylan McGarry, are the co-founders of Empatheatre whose focus is on forging creative responses to complex social concerns and historical events.
The company was awarded the prestigious 2022 Bertha Artivism Award for their theatre and social justice work as well as the 2023 Fleur Du Cap award for innovation in South African Theatre.
In 2024, Empatheatre was granted the Ibsen scope award for their up-and-coming isiZulu adaptation of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People.
With a 14-years age restriction, it will run from Wednesday 9 to Saturday 19 April, at 19:30.
Booking is through Webtickets or at Pick n Pay. For schools or block bookings of 10 or more: Carmen Kearns on 021 680 3993 or email carmen.kearns@uct.ac.za or Mark Dobson on 021 680 18 or email mark.dobson@uct.ac.za
