After a successful debut at The Nunnery in Johannesburg, Ife & Bilal: Songs on a journey comes to the Theatre Admin Arts Collective in Observatory for a limited run of two shows on 1 and 2 October, 2018. The production is a live, improvised visual and musical performance by artist-researchers from the Recentring AfroAsia project.
A year in the making, this work is based on the performers’ research with the Re-centring AfroAsia project, exploring pre-colonial migrations across the Indian Ocean. The team comprises of musicians, artists and theatre practitioners from South Africa, India and Turkey. Visual artists Kristy Stone and Conor Ralphs designed and constructed a custom rig to perform their unique visual improvisations to interact with narrator Qondiswa James and musicians Mark Aranha, Cara Stacey, Halim Gencoglu, and Bronwen Clacherty, whose sonic palette draws from musics ancient and contemporary, historical and re-imagined.
The story follows the characters Ife from Ethiopia, Bilal from Zanzibar, Seljuk from Turkey, and the “all seeing” parrot from India. In the interconnected world of the Indian Ocean a thousand years ago, the sea carried people, ideas, and sounds between Africa and Asia. Ife and Bilal revisits that world, where journeys were unpredictable and at the mercy of the forces of nature. Knowledge, collaboration and improvisation were key to survival, and the creative process used here embraces these elements.
Journeys across oceans
“To charter the complex trajectories of history with personal memories and highly localized folklores is always an act of courage. To evoke and relive through the ephemeral and fleeting images and sounds the very rustle of time is indeed a way to open up new possibilities. Ife and Bilal left me in the midst of such resonances. I journeyed across many an imaginary – of journeys across oceans, of profound traumas of separations and sudden joys, of the repressed and unfettered desires, of images retrieved from the verge of disappearing. It was an experience of music, images and recitative energy whose compassion and sensitivity has not stopped haunting me,” says Prof. Madan Gopal Singh, Sufi scholar and singer, Chaar Yaar.
Ife and Bilal was commissioned by the Re-centring AfroAsia project and was made possible by funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Cape Town Theatre Guide: https://weekendspecial.co.za/stage-on-the-boards/
What: Ife and Bilal
Where: Theatre Arts Admin Collective, Methodist Church Hall, Milton Road/Wesley Street, Observatory, Cape Town
When: Monday 1, Tuesday 2 October 2018, 7pm – 8pm
Info: calburn@mweb.co.za or bronwen@clacherty.co.za
Tickets: R80, R50 students with card, www.theatrearts.co.za, calburn@mweb.co.za
Theatre Arts Admin Collective: 021 447 3683, artsadmin@mweb.co.za
WS
