The Market Theatre presents eight performances of ‘The Black Circus of the Republic of Bantu’, an explosive and destabilising installation-based performance artwork that aims towards healing generations of trauma inflicted on Black bodies.
The internationally-travelled piece is performed by NYC Bessie Award winner, Albert Ibokwe Khoza, in collaboration with award-winning director, Princess Zinzi Mhlongo.
It’s strictly limited season over weekends at The Market Theatre will run from 13 – 29 June 2025. This after selling out venues and performing to critical acclaim in major cities such as Amsterdam, Liverpool, New York and Barcelona, among others. It has been hosted by progressive festivals and organisations, including the Liverpool Biennial and the U.S-based Boom Arts, to mention a few.
Locally, the work has been seen briefly in Cape Town, Soweto and Johannesburg
‘The Black Circus of the Republic of Bantu’ is an artistic display of the violent and shocking legacy of ethnological expositions such as human zoos and exhibitions in Western societies, popularised by the human curiosities movement between the late 19th century to mid-20th century.
Through this movement, Black people – most notably Sarah Baartman – were uprooted from their homelands, commercially exploited and intrusively paraded for the white fetish. At an urgent pace, Khoza offers a visceral experience that thrusts the audience into re-examining this history – a history often left unspoken – and boldly opens portals for us to reclaim, reflect, and confront ourselves as a people.
The haunting and, at times, shocking confrontation goes further to lament the reduction of Blackness into a performance. The text makes the claim that Black bodies are institutionalised crime scenes that must be redeemed and cleansed. Piercingly, Khoza investigates the effect of this imperial and colonial gaze on Black people and its modern day continuation, emphasising the need for spiritual healing and reclaiming violated dignities.
This installation-based performance evokes the exploitation of Black power across industries, contending that this country was built on the unbreakable backs of Black people doing the work, and a White messiah shamelessly profiting from it. According to Khoza, Black creatives are still chained like slaves who need a White master in the form of international curators and funding organisations to penetrate local and global markets.
“With this secular performance,” Khoza explains, “I am questioning the freedom of the performer and whether it’s still caged, if the stage is the modern-day human zoo. In paying tribute to the victims of the horrific legacy of slavery, I look back at the likes of Sarah Baartman who were coerced into unpaid public exhibitions and confront my own exploitation as a performer. Am I that different from them even now?”
Allow Khoza to lead you into an atmosphere of collective healing, feel the shackles that hold you back fall off, and break into a sense of spiritual connection.
Tickets for ‘The Black Circus of the Republic of Bantu’ are available on Webtickets –https://www.webtickets.co.za/v2/event.aspx?itemid=1570027465, selling at R120 up until 12 June. Thereafter, all tickets are R150.
Age restriction is 16+, with scenes of full frontal nudity and disturbing references.
