Theatre and music performances at March Meeting 2018: Active Forms

Overview

Four performances will be presented from 16 to 19 March as part of the March Meeting 2018 (MM 2018) programme.

On 16 March, artist Claudia Pagès and collaborators will present Talk trouble, a reading performance in three acts that focuses on language and collectivity. During each act, a body of text accompanies different contexts in which speech and linguistics operate as processes of alienation and uprooting. Performing with Pagès are musician Aleix Clavera and performers Noela Covelo and Ameen Mettawa.

On the following evening, the large-scale musical and theatrical performance of Wael Shawky’s The Song of Roland: The Arabic Version (2017) will have its Middle Eastern debut. Based on the French epic poem La Chanson de Roland and translated into classical Arabic, this work will be brought to life by 20 fidjeri singers and musicians from the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, who will perform in the traditional style of Arabian Gulf pearl divers.

In addition, experimental composer and musician Neo Muyanga will present two performances as part of the MM 2018 programme. On 18 March, Muyanga will perform Naham – Songs of light and weight, the culmination of a week-long workshop project with a chorus of multilingual singers. Drawing on the songs of the naham, the song leader on a pearling ship, the performance will provide a platform for ‘hidden voices’ to express their stories of hope, fear and longing through movement and song.

On 19 March, the final evening of MM 2018, Muyanga will present Tsohle – A revolting mass. Muyanga interjects abstraction into South African church hymns and mines the archive of apartheid protest songs to create a performative survey that disrupts the established musical narrative of struggle. Performed by four singers and a conducting pianist, tsohle, which means ‘all things’ in Sesotho, highlights the complexities of contemporary life in South Africa in the wake of the country’s colonial experience.