COLLABORATIVE CONVERSATIONS, celebrating twenty-one years of The Mothertongue Project

255pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Cape Town, 2021

Artists, scholars and writers who have worked with The Mothertongue Project over the past two decades reflect on the organisation's achievements. Includes poetry, scholarly writing and transcribed oral conversations, as well as photographs of performances.

"Soul sharpening sensuality and dialogue between Africana women artists, activists, practitioners and scholars flow through this collection. Theatre, storytelling, song, music, poetry, puppetry and the visual arts spark and animate a decolonial 'activist aesthetics' infused with Ubuntu - interdependence. Through art's many languages, contributors have built experiments, habits and rituals that do more than validate what is and what has been. They lure and beckon us towards what could be. What a glorious resource." Dr Yasim Gunaratnam, Sociology Department, Goldsmiths College

Sara Matchett is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies at the University of Cape Town. She is the co-founder and artistic director of The Mothertongue Project women’s arts collective. She is also an associate teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework® and the African regional co-ordinator of the Fitzmaurice Institute.

Alex Halligey is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Johannesburg’s Institute for Advanced Study. She is the author of Participatory Theatre and the Urban Everyday: Place and play in Johannesburg (2020). Her recent theatre productions include a solo memoir piece, Unfathomable, directed by and co-created with Athena Mazarakis,and an ensemble work, Diving, directed by Clara Vaughan. She first worked with The Mothertongue Project in 2005, co-devising and performing in Breathing Space and has had an ongoing relationship with the company and its members.