In the Press: Tony Bonani Miyambo
Photograph by Zivanai Matangi, The Centre for the Less Good Idea
CHR Artist in Residence Tony Bonani Miyambo confronts the momentous challenges facing theatre makers with his solo show Commission Continua, performed online for the 2021 National Arts Festival.
Miyambo was featured in an article by Janice Phiri for City Press in which he addresses the difficulties lockdown and Covid-19 restrictions have placed on the theatre. Speaking of the new silence of a theatre without an audience, and the struggle of adapting Commission Continua for online viewing, Miyambo nevertheless maintains hope that these dark times can yield new potential:
South African theatre has always existed on the fringe. The theatre makers who continued to make work despite the lack of resources and support from the mainstream, are the future. There’s an opportunity to re-evaluate some of the barriers within institutions that prevent new work and new voices from living. My hope is that the shared restrictions will make some decision-makers understand what it feels like to have no opportunity to create work.
Commission Continua is conceptualised by Miyambo and Phala O. Phala of The Centre for the Less Good Idea. The show follows the history of South Africa’s commissions of enquiry, laying bare the heart of the South African society’s struggle for real change and reconciliation. Miyambo plays Bright Maluleke, an employee who copies and archives official documents from the commissions. He does his best just to stick to his brief and ignore the content of the files – but this proves difficult when faced with all these pages giving an account of the most critical and catastrophic moments in South Africa’s history. In the frugal setting of a photocopier, a microphone, and a loop station, he begins to give vent to his annoyance with the ‘paper jam.’
Commission Continua has received several positive reviews. Writing for Arts24, Nkgopoleng Moloi highlights Miyambo’s strong performance, the show’s clever use of simple tools, and a “haunting soundtrack” which creates “fragmentation, disruption, repetition, layering.” In a piece about the National Arts Festival for Business Live, Chris Thurman selected Commision Continua as his “pick from the programme,” describing the production as “a devastating one-hander that emphasises how the culpability for historical and recent crimes perpetrated against the South African people has become buried under mountains of paperwork.”
Read
- “In Commission Continua, the Power is in the Paper” by Nkgopoleng Moloi online.
- News24 Subscribers can read or listen to “On stage with Tony Miyambo” by Janice Phiri online.
- Chris Thurman’s “Asking the same old question: ‘How did we get here?’” is available to subscribers of BL Premium.
