Next month an event showcasing new contemporary South African performance is coming to Wales for the first time.
The biennial Afrovibes Festival will bring an exciting array of theatre, music, spoken word and dance to the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff, which will also become the site of a specially-created Township Cafe.
During the week of October 15-21, the Sherman's foyer will become a hub for activity and discussion surrounding the festival with debates, jamming sessions, post-show talks, late night music and workshops so audiences can engage directly with visiting performers.
The Sibikwa Arts African Indigenous Orchestra
Throughout the week, chefs from Cardiff's African restaurant Tribe Tribe will be providing some authentic cuisine to get people salivating and give them a flavour of local delicacies.
There will be performances of three shows: And The Girls In Their Sunday Dresses, Thirst and Mother To Mother.
I caught up with South African actress Thembi Mtshali-Jones, star of Mother To Mother, which shows on 17 and 18 October, ahead of her trip to Cardiff.
The play is a haunting monologue adapted from the novel by Dr Sindiwe Magona about the murder of American Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl in Cape Town in 1993.
The 26-year-old anti-apartheid activist was killed in a vicious stoning and stabbing by four youths in the Gugulethu Township as she drove some friends home.
Mother To Mother recounts the tragedy from the viewpoint of one of the killer's mothers as she holds an imaginary conversation with Amy's mother.
Directed by Janice Honeyman, it showed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August receiving four star reviews.
Thembi told me her involvement with the production stems from the pain she felt when reading the novel.
"I got exposed to the pain of the killer's mother, the pain that I had not even thought about before. Naturally one sympathises with the victims and the people close to them," she said.
"I felt the pain of this woman who had tried to singlehandedly raise her children and worked hard as a domestic worker for her children to get education. Every mother would understand this pain."
She approached the author Dr Magona after reading her novel with the idea of adapting it and persuaded the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town to produce the play.
Her research led her to conversations with both Amy's mother and the mother of one of the killers.
She told me: "I understood both women's pain and how they related to each other when they met.
"Linda Biehl and her husband reconciled with the boys that killed her daughter and continued the work that she died for.
"They formed The Amy Biehl Foundation, which runs after school projects to educate young people in the townships and keep them off the streets. Two of the boys that killed Amy work for the foundation."
Thembi believes the play helps give a greater understanding of life during the apartheid era and the events around Amy's death.
The Afrovibes Festival is produced by UK Arts International, who brought The Harder They Come to the stage. Its visit to Wales is part of a UK tour.
Lesego Motsepe and Hlengiwe Lushaba who star in And The Girls In Their Sunday Dresses
The programme also includes a performance of the light-hearted play And The Girls In Their Sunday Dresses (15-16 October). Adapted from the short story by Zakes Mda, it is directed by Princess Mhlongo and performed by Lesego Motsepe and Hlengiwe Lushaba, and presented by the Market Theatre, Johannesburg.
On 16 October there will be a performance of Thirst, which is written and directed by the current Afrovibes director James Ngcobo, and choreographed by Gregory Maqoma, a previous director of the festival.
The play centres on three water carriers from an African village that has run dry and their extraordinary mythical journey to find the source of their dried-out river. Thirst was nominated for the Naledi Award 2010 for Best New South African Play.
The music on offer during the festival includes rhythm and beats from the lively Sibikwa Arts African Indigenous Orchestra (18 October) and there will be a dance double bill on 20 October showcasing the dance solo Inception by Sonia Radebe and physical theatre piece My Exile Is In My Head, choreographed and performed by Qudus Onikeku with music by Charles Amblard.
On 19 October, there will be a screening of The Three Furies, a poetry in performance film by Zena Edwards, Mbail Vilakazi and Clara Opoku.
Jan Ryan, director of UK Arts International says: "Afrovibes is a festival that connects artists in the UK with artists in South Africa.
"It enables people to not only experience the work of a range of South African performers, but to contextualise that work through events that take place in the Township Cafe.
"Although we have been presenting theatre, dance and music from South Africa since 1995 - from solo performances at the Edinburgh Fringe to large scale music theatre productions at the Kennedy Centre in Washington - Afrovibes invites discussion around both artistic and social issues affecting contemporary South Africa, in a way that a stand-alone piece can never do. It allows audiences and participants to dig deeper into the life and mindset of this extraordinary country."
For full details of the Afrovibes Festival please visit shermancymru.co.uk or contact Sherman Cymru's ticket office on 029 2064 6900. Ticket prices vary and there's also a festival ticket offer if you book to see more than one performance.
