On Friday 15 August, The Centre for the Less Good Idea presents The Open Moment | Thinking in Directing.
Thinking in Directing is a five-day mentorship led by renowned directors and theatremakers Mwenya Kabwe, Monageng Vice Motshabi, and Qondiswa James.
The mentorship takes place from 11 to 15 August 2025 at The Centre and sees six selected participants entering into a mentorship process led by Kabwe, Motshabi, and James, allowing for three unique directorial perspectives and approaches.
The participants of Thinking In Directing will work with three selected scripts that emerged from Thinking In Writing, which took place earlier this year.
The Open Moment will take the form of a public showing and will be an opportunity for an audience to witness the material and experiments explored throughout the mentorship, including showings of short extracts from the scripts, directed by the mentees.
The six participants of Thinking In Directing are Chris Djuma, Lea Seekoe, Noluthando Mpho Jupiter Sibisi, Mlindeli Zondi, Aalliyah Zama Matintela, and Mbali Ndlozi.
DATE | FRIDAY 15 AUGUST 2025
TIME | 19H00
VENUE | THE CENTRE SPACE, THE CENTRE FOR THE LESS GOOD IDEA, ARTS ON MAIN, 264 FOX STREET, MABONENG
DURATION | 60-90 MINUTES
TICKETS | R150
BOOKINGS | www.lessgoodidea.com/bookings
BIOS
Mwenya B. Kabwe is a Zambian-born maker of theatre and performance, facilitator of creative processes, a performer, writer, arts educator, and scholar. She holds a PhD from The Centre for Theatre Dance & Performance Studies at the University of Cape Town where she is currently Senior Lecturer and Head of the Theatre Section. Her creative practice and research is focused on contemporary African theatre and performance, migration, immersive and site- specific performance work, live art, collaborative and interdisciplinary art making and re-imagining African futures.
Monageng Vice Motshabi is an award-winning playwright and theatre director. He is recipient of the DSAC’s Cultural and Creative Industries Award for Outstanding Production for The Red on the Rainbow 2024, Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Theatre 2017 and a Naledi Award for Echoes 2006. He is also a publisher, educator and dramaturg.
As a playwright, he has written numerous plays, including Of Blackness and Water (previously titled Mountain of Ancestral Gifts) 2025, Lala Ngenxeba: Of Love and Revolution 2024, The Red on the Rainbow 2021, Ankobia (co-written with Omphile Molusi) 2017 and Book of Rebellations (co-written with Kgafela oa Magogodi) 2014, amongst other work.
As a theatre director he has directed The Red on the Rainbow 2021-2024, Ankobia 2017, The Story I’m about to Tell 2015 and Book of Rebellations 2014 among other works.
His dramaturgy work includes Next Sunday, Tau, The Playroom, The Blacksmith for the Market Theatre and The Iron and Toy Gun for the South African State Theatre.
His mentorship and teaching/lecturing work includes work with the Gauteng Department of Art and Culture’s Ishashalazi Festival, Twist Theatre Projects in KZN, Savannah Trust in Harare, Wits University, UCT, the Market Theatre Laboratory and the KZN Film Commission among others.
As a publisher, Motshabi has published Reading the Palms of the Time 2017, Khongolose Khommanding Khomissars 2018, Between the Pillar and the Post 2019, Hauntings 2021 and The Red on the Rainbow 2022, collections of plays, of a play and monologues and of monologues and scenes respectively.
Motshabi is currently pursuing a MA Degree in Theatre and Performance at UCT where he’s exploring dramaturgical strategies for working with Racial Trauma in the theatre.
Qondiswa James is a freelance cultural worker living in Johannesburg. She is an award-winning writer, performer and theatre-maker, performance and installation artist, arts facilitator and activist. Her work engages the socio-political imagination towards mobilising transgression.
She has staged public art interventions at Infecting the City Cape Town, Live Arts Festival, FNB Art Joburg, The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Les Rencontres a L'échelle (France), Arcade (Makhanda), Live Art Network Africa, AiiA Festival (Switzerland), Suidoosterfees, A4 Arts Centre (China), UCT’s Work of Arts Committee, and Wits University’s Towards Critical Apartheid Studies. Her installation work has been exhibited at Spier Light Art Festival and the Stellenbosch Triennale. Her onscreen appearances include High Fantasy (DIFF 2018 Best South African Film Award, Artistic Bravery Award), and Letters from the Continent (Holland Film Festival 2021). In 2024 she was a resident artist at the A4 Artist Residency in Chengdu where she collaborated on a digital hybrid performance, Youth in History.
She has directed theatre works including A Faint Patch of Light (winner of a 2019 Standard Bank Ovation Award); her original play A HOWL IN MAKHANDA (Fleur du Cap Award 2022 Best New Script, Best Original Composition); and an original solo work, Retch (Naledi Award 2024 Best Performer on the Fringe). In 2024 she staged a new play, Amaxelegu, at Market Theatre under their play development programme. Earlier in 2025, she directed a new work in progress, Dump State, about homelessness and evictions in the tidy City of Cape Town.
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