Tiisetso Mashifane wa Noni will present her play ‘Delela’ at the National Arts Festival between 30 June at 2 July. Image: Supplied
National Arts Festival: Comedy-drama play ‘Delela’ tackles social injustices
Award-winning playwright Tiisetso Mashifane wa Noni will present her play ‘Delela’ at the National Arts Festival between 30 June and 2 July.
Tiisetso Mashifane wa Noni will present her play ‘Delela’ at the National Arts Festival between 30 June at 2 July. Image: Supplied
The National Arts Festival officially kicked off on Thursday 23 June, with an extraordinary lineup of artists showcasing their brightest work. Award-winning playwright Tiisetso Mashifane wa Noni will premiere her play Delela on the Curated Main Stage of the National Arts Festival on Thursday 30 June.
The comedy-drama play was inspired by several societal issues and is the follow-up to Mashifane’s award-winning debut play, Sainthood which took Cape Town’s Baxter Theatre by storm in 2019.
ALSO READ: Music, theatre and more: National Arts Festival kicks off on a high note
TIISETSO MASHIFANE WA NONI PRESENTS ‘DELELA’
Tiisetso Mashifane wa Noni is a local playwright, producer and director who has been described as a “theatre prodigy” and a “brilliant young mind” with her thought-provoking stage plays.
Mashifane’s play, Sainthood was centred around private school culture and toxic masculinity. Delela will investigate charity work by wealthy and privileged families and take a look at their social and economic privileges.
Mashifane says a series of incidents inspired her to write Delela and explained that there were two specific ones that “really stuck with her”.
The celebrated playwright sites issues of transformation and diversity in some of South Africa’s elite private schools as the first incident and the second, an audience member who challenged her decision to write about racial injustices in South Africa.
WHAT TO EXPEXT FROM DELELA
Delela, made up of a fiery young cast, sees three main characters who are asked to break down events that caused a PR disaster at the Strauss Smith Foundation, a private charity foundation funded by the Strauss-Smith family.
The foundation has recently launched a “transformation and diversity” project and the two heirs to the Strauss-Smith fortune who launched the project, clash when a diversity hire questions the family’s sense of social responsibility.
“It is very dangerous for someone in a position of racial and economic privilege to view their ‘giving back’ as an act [that] excuses them from their other responsibilities in creating racial equity and correcting racial injustice,” says Mashifane.
“Well we might end up with statements like ‘I’ve fulfilled by racial conscience’ and ‘I don’t know what that means’. But I know that as a society we should be petrified of statements like that. I know I am and so I wrote Delela in trying to dissect that error.”
ALSO READ: Makhanda is alive: National Arts Festival returns to normality! [photos]
EVERYTHING TO KNOW ABOUT THE PLAY
Tiisetso Mashifani wa Noni’s Delela will be at Graeme College in Makhanda on 30 June and 1 July at 20:00.
The play will then be showing on 2 July with shows at 12:00 and 18:00.
Tickets are available here for R75 each.
