Buhle Ngaba: Artist in Residence for 2021
The Tsikinya-Chaka Centre is thrilled to announce that
Buhle Ngaba is our Artist in Residence for 2021.
Buhle is an award-winning South African actor, writer and speaker.
She studied Acting and Contemporary performance at Rhodes University and Processes of Performance at the University of Leeds. She performed in the world premiere of John Kani’s play Missing at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town and went on to tour internationally with the production, earning nominations for Best Supporting Actress at the Fleur Du Cap and Naledi Theatre Awards.
In 2016, Ngaba was awarded the prestigious Brett Goldin Bursary, with the opportunity to expand her knowledge and repertoire at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon. It was during her time there that Ngaba began to conceptualise and write her first one-woman play, Swan Song. In 2018, she was cast as Bianca in an all-woman The Taming of the Shrew at the Maynardville Open-Air Theatre. These experiences resulted in her curating Shakespeare Grounded, a programme consolidating all she had learnt in her time at the RSC with the aim of teaching these skills to young performers in South Africa. The programme is based on facilitating a practical approach between teacher and student in accessing Shakespeare. Shakespeare Grounded has been implemented at the University of Cape Town (2018/19) as well as at AFDA Film School (2020).
Ngaba is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa (SSOSA). Performing artists globally have been affected particularly harshly by the necessary measures taken to limit the spread of COVID-19. In response to this, Ngaba spearheaded the #lockdownshakespeare initiative with SSOSA and Shakespeare ZA. The aim of the initiative was to contribute to the SA arts economy by promoting theatre makers and helping to provide some financial support. Following its initiation submissions poured in countrywide, which led to a range of speeches being generated for collection by Shakespeare ZA as resources for theatre makers, teachers and learners.
In 2017, Ngaba won two Kanna Theatre Awards, including Best Upcoming Artist for Swan Song. The production was adapted into a screenplay and streamed worldwide during the course of the Virtual National Arts Festival 2020. In 2018, she was nominated for a Fleur Du Cap Theatre Award for Best Leading Actress for her performance in What Remains, a play by acclaimed writer Nadia Davids and award-winning director Jay Pather. Ngaba was named as one of the Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans in 2016 and voted number 1 in the Superbalist Top 100 Entrepreneur List (2016) – a definitive list of young people redefining the future of creative culture, entrepreneurship and style in SA. In the same year, Ngaba was awarded the Gauteng Youth Premier’s Award of Excellence.
As the author of The Girl Without A Sound, Buhle seeks to promote diversity in children’s literature, to aid artists in underprivileged communities and to develop the legacy of storytelling amongst the youth. The Girl Without A Sound has been published in all 11 official South African languages. Ngaba’s TedX Table Mountain talk “How Storytelling Can Change How We See the World” launched the whirlwind success of her book and since then she has been invited to speak at several schools, workshops and corporate events/panels across the country, including being invited to MC the Hyundai Kona Studio at Afropunk 2018/19. She also had an opportunity to MC at the Design Indaba Conference (2018/19) and was invited to deliver a keynote address at the 20th anniversary of the Women’s Legal Centre (SA).
Buhle recently localised The New Girl Code, an initiative by Inspiring Fifty NPO and Dutch serial technology entrepreneur Janneke Niessen. Funds made with the book are used to further support activities to increase diversity in technology. The New Girl Code is aimed at girls and young women, providing visible role models to highlight the potential of working in tech.
In 2019, Ngaba was invited to participate in the Women’s Creative Writing Mentorship Project at the University of Iowa (IWP). Ngaba used the opportunity to collate research with the intention of writing a book that will focus on the life and times of her great aunt, Ruth Mompati. The research was to be completed alongside her mother, Sindi Ngaba, whose doctoral thesis (The Leadership and Ideas of Ruth Segomotsi Mompati in the Struggle for National Liberation and Democratic South Africa) worked with intellectual biography as a mode of enquiry, seeking to theorise around the leadership of Mompati. Devastatingly, Sindi passed on after a battle won with cancer in 2019. Buhle intends on continuing the research alongside Siphokazi Magadla, culminating in an intellectual biography of Ruth Mompati. The project not only holds personal significance for Buhle but also speaks to who and what is remembered in the South African consciousness.
In 2019, Ngaba was awarded the “Rising Light” award at the Mbokodo Awards for Women in the Arts. Through her acting, writing and inspiring work, Ngaba inspires others to find their own voices.
* Buhle Ngaba will pursue various creative ventures as the Tsikinya-Chaka Centre’s Artist in Residence, balancing this with a Pro-Helvetia Swiss studio residency to be completed in 2021. She is currently working with TCC affiliate Sabata-Mpho Mokae on the translation and performance of extracts from Hamlet in Setswana and has a film project in development. Watch this space!