NonScenes
NonScenes is an emerging non-profit company focused on promoting artivism in education and creating career pathways for aspiring young artists. I co-direct this initiative with Tom Penfold who is based at University of Liverpool. While NonScenes initially began as a poetry-focused endeavor, it has now expanded to other genres including theatre. Our next event is Shakespeare NonScenes which will take place in collaboration with the Tsikanye-Chaka Centre and the Quickening Theatre Company in May and in Johannesburg and Cape Town. A further poetry event is also being planned in Platfontein.
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Below is a timeline of NonScenes' events and achievements so far.
NonScenes Timeline
May 2024
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Poetry NonScenes has its inaugural event at the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre. The event brought together school learners, university students and working professionals for a one-day workshop where they were given the opportunity to write and perform poetry to a public audience which engaged with a range of social and cultural issues, pertaining to human rights.
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A second workshop took place at the University of Pretoria with students from a range of different disciplines.
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Both workshops are run in collaboration with the South African Poetry Project (ZAPP).
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November 2024
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Our anthology Poetry Non-Scenes: New performance poems beyond the struggle. The anthology features poems written at the Johannesburg and Pretoria workshops.
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Almost immediately, the anthology became uHlanga Press's fifth best-selling title of 2024.
May 2025
In collaboration with ZAPP, we run a two-day workshop at the Amazwi Literary Museum in Makhanda with learners from four different schools. The learners also get the opportunity to perform their poetry in a showcase.
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We also run a collaborative workshop, involving school learners from Johannesburg and Youth Speaks, a US poetry-based organization.
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Poetry Non-Scenes: New performance poems beyond the struggle is launched at the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre, Bridge Books and Book Circle Capital.
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