Curious Monkey from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and NADO from Newcastle Kwa Zulu Natal in South Africa are co-operating to create a new production.
This World Here…Nomhlaba Le has been devised by Curious Money and Newcastle Arts Development Organisation and brings together original music intertwined with traditional South African and Geordie songs, verbatim testimony and storytelling. It will take audiences on a journey exploring community and belonging, celebrating diversity and uncovering our unconscious biases. Asking... where is home?
Artists from Curious Monkey and NADO met at the National Arts Festival of South Africa in 2015 where Curious Monkey was running the Remix Laboratory programme in partnership with the Swallows Foundation UK.
The Swallows Foundation UK, based in Newcastle, and Isiseko Senkonjane, based in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, are sister foundations that form the Swallows Partnership. The two foundations work together to promote creative connections between Eastern Cape South Africa and North East England.
NADO won a provincial competition to attend the Remix programme. The work they make is political and provocative and tells the stories of township life and the issues faced by their communities.
The two companies had an unforgettable ten days working together and left knowing that they had to work together again, having developed a mutual respect and fascination with each other’s processes of making theatre.
The show has been developed through a series of international exchanges, originally commissioned as the flagship cultural project of Newcastles of the World supported by International Newcastle in 2016.
The production has been edited and directed by Amy Golding who founded Curious Monkey in 2011.
“We have been developing this show very slowly over the last few years as the two halves of the creative team live in opposite hemispheres,” she says. “We came together when we could and communicated via a Whatsapp group.
“Everyone involved has had a to spend time reflecting on their own home as they have hosted people from the other side of the world and, through doing so, have been encouraged to look at their Newcastle with new eyes.
“We have all also spent time in a new place that shares the same name as our home but is very different in many ways, experiencing a new culture by becoming embedded in it
“Creating a show together in these international contexts resulted in such rich and powerful conversations about everything from history to race, travel to home—and everything in-between. The time we spent together was beautiful and challenging and I believe for all of us in some way transformational. And the joy of it all being wrapped up in learning and creating new music together with a group of truly talented singers and musicians. We can’t wait to bring the show together!”
This World Here…Nomhlaba Le opens at The Exchange in North Shields on 26 May and then moves to Alphabetti in Newcastle from 29 to 30 May.
The two companies will run workshops with Mouthful Voices at Gosforth Civic Theatre who will perform a curtain raiser at the Exchange. There will also be a workshop for year 5 and 6 pupils at Hotspur Primary School and visits to Hexham and North Tyneside Hospitals in partnership with the NHS Northumbria Healthcare Foundation Trust to share the songs and stories from the show with patients.