Empatheatre

11/08/2026

Empatheatre is working on an ongoing project on food and seed sovereignty in Africa - we are looking for a Joburg female actor who is either Zimbabwean, Malawian or Zambian - to participate in an ongoing research theatre project in these regions. While we will be working in South Africa and Eswatini as well, we would like to work with actors who can perform and play in vernacular in either the Zim, Malawian and Zambian contexts?

Ideally we would like someone with an applied, playback or forum theatre experience and training.

Please DM us or send us an email on [email protected] if you would like to put your hand up.

27/07/2026

Today Empatheatre Co-founder Mpume Mthombeni Mpume Mthombeni will be performing live our animated film “Indlela Yokuphila: The Soul’s Journey” at a high level global policy event in Kingston, Jamaica alongside a global Indigenous coalition fighting for a moratorium on deep sea bed mining. Co-hosted by the Governments of Palau, Vanuatu, Costa Rica and Malawi, Te Ipukarea Society, Oceano Azul Foundation, IUCN, and WWF International, Mpume will be performing Indlela as part of the “Reimagining Our Ocean Future: Precaution, Justice, and the Deep Sea”. This event comes at a time of heightened international attention to deep-sea mining, with a growing number of countries and stakeholders supporting a precautionary pause or moratorium. This will be the fourth UN address Mpume has made using the film as a generative theme for global policy dialogue.his animation, along with other animated films Empatheatre have created, have been used as evidence in court cases and policy making practices, as well as ocean literacy, challenging what counts as evidence in ocean governance and policy development in South Africa, which previously has failed many South Africans in participating in equitable and collective decision-making for and with the ocean. A collective of Ocean defenders and other activists, using the animations and other forms of evidence successful won three consecutive court cases against Oil and Gas giant Shell, who was trying to mine the South African deep sea for Oil and Gas. Creative storytelling through Indlela Yokuphila can contribute to developing legal fluidity, creating opportunities for reconciliation, social learning, and catharsis that can support indigenous and other ways of knowing and managing the ocean to be included. this film has been presented the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at COP27 in 2021 and COP27 in 2022, at the FAO headquaters in Rome in 2023, the UN Oceans Week in 2024. It has also been used as a contribution for a global storymap for tracking Indigenous sacred knowledge of the deep sea as part of the activism against deep sea mining.

14/07/2026

Umkhosi Wenala: the Festival of Abundance , returns to the KZN coast next week (18 July), with performances and post-show citizen assemblies in St Lucia and Kosi Bay.

We’re returning to stand with the Kosi Bay Displaced Community as they navigate complex negotiations between government, traditional councils, park officials and coastal citizens, offering theatre as a space for democratic dialogue that formal processes haven’t provided.

Born from 18 months of listening to elders, fisherfolk, sangoma, and knowledge holders across northern Zululand, Umkhosi Wenala tells a 200-year oral history through the story of twins Nkosana and Makhosazana, who inherit a coastal kingdom threatened by a fence cutting them off from land, sea, and ancestors.

Empatheatre worked with thirteen young co-researchers from Mbazwana turned their own histories into performance, puppetry, ritual, and music and into a living counter-archive that remaps the region from the perspective of the people who actually live there.

After each show, marine sociologist Dr Philile Mbatha Dr Philile Mbatha facilitates a citizen assembly allowing for diverse audiences to have difficult conversations around shaping the futures of their own coastline.
The performances will take place in St Lucia and Kosi Bay which sit within the iSimangaliso Wetland Park land where conservation, dispossession, and living heritage remain unresolved. This play@holds that contradiction in public view.

Gratitude to the communities who trusted us, and the thirteen young artists of Mbazwana who made this possible.

This documentary made in collaboration with Amehlo Productions outlines the creation of Umkhosi Wenala.

The production features the talents of Mpume Mthombeni, Sphamandla Mzombe, Dumasani Ngubane, Njabulo Zikhali , Mbali Ntuli, Siphamandla Vusi Mafuleka, Noxolo Thandeka Mlungwana, Zimpendulo Petunia Mthembu, Nokubonga Zikhali, Nolwazi Zulu, Nelisiwe Mbuyazi and Nomthandazo Nxumalo.
Umkhosi Wenala was devised and co-created by the Empatheatre team of Mpume Mthombeni, Dylan McGarry and Neil Coppen alongside Mbazwana Creative Arts members.

09/07/2026

09/07/2026

The Empatheatre team is delighted to announce that their production of Isidlamlilo/ The Fire Eater went on to sweep the boards at the 2026 Cape Town Theatre Awards held last Sunday at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town.

The hit production walked away with all seven of the awards it was nominated for, eclipsing the previous record of five shared by two musicals in the late nineties with the panel of judges stating the clean sweep reflected “a single artistic bloodstream pulsing through the show”.

The acclaimed one-woman production starring Mpume Mthombeni was awarded top prizes at a ceremony including Best Production (Empatheatre, Baxter Theatre and The National Arts Festival) Mpume Mthombeni for Best Performance in a R***e, Cabaret, or One-Person Show, Neil Coppen for Best Director, Neil Coppen and Mpume Mthombeni for Best New African Script, Tina Le Roux for Best Lighting Design, Tristan Horton for Best Sound Design, Original Music, Soundscape or Live Performance and Greg King for Best Set Design. Tina Le Roux Greg King Mpume Mthombeni Neil Coppen Tristan Horton

Isidlamlilo/ The Fire Eater which has been dubbed by critics as a contemporary South African masterpiece and acting masterclass offered by Mthombeni, is inspired by the true story of a woman who served as a political assassin for the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in the build up to South Africa’s first democratic elections. Zenzile Maseko, the protagonist, is a sixty-year old Zulu grandmother living in a small women’s hostel in downtown Durban. Falsely declared dead by the Department of Home Affairs, she finds herself cast into a Kafkaesque nightmare that forces her to confront her past as a hitwoman for the opposing party, the African National Congress, during the 1980’s. Through modes of magical realism and African folklore, the play explores KwaZulu-Natal’s turbulent history of violence and revenge but above all it looks at the remarkable resilience and reinvention of its protagonist.

07/07/2026

https://www.bizcommunity.com/article/isidlamlilothe-fire-eater-dominates-at-the-61st-cape-town-theatre-awards-731182a

The newly renamed Cape Town Theatre Awards honoured the Western Cape's top theatre talent, with Isidlamlilo/The Fire Eater emerging as the night's biggest winner...

07/07/2026

https://sosuterbill.com/2026/07/07/durban-team-cleans-up-at-awards/

BILLY SUTER reports that Durban talent cleaned up at the 61st Cape Town Theatre Awards, formerly known as the Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards.

07/07/2026

Buyela! A new production by Empatheatre in partnership with groundWork

On the final afternoon of one of Durban’s last working landfills, two women meet amid mountains of discarded things. Mam Nothemba (Mpume Mthombeni) is a waste picker, matriarch, and daughter of the dump, a woman who has spent forty years transforming other people’s rubbish into a livelihood, a brick house, and eight grandchildren. Nokwanda, a journalist (played by Minenhle Sikhosana) arrives claiming to want her story, though she carries a quieter desperation she’s slow to admit.

What unfolds between the two of them is part detective game, part oral history, part fairy tale: the two women read the lives of strangers from their rubbish, trace glass back to mountains and plastic back to ancient seas, and weave mythological and very real stories together, all threaded through their conversation is the looming arrival of an incinerator and the knowledge that the gates to the landfill will close at five, for good.

Buyela! is a play informed by over four years of collaborative research, story-listening and citizen-led enquiry with informal waste collectors this play aims to create a third space to explore how we might choose to live closer to the earth and with each other.

Buyela premiered at UKZN Sqaure Space theatre for a short run and we will be touring the country for the rest of the year. Check our website for further details and dates. Directed by Roshina Ratnam & Neil Coppen . Starring Mpume Mthombeni@minenhle_sikhosana_phetha. Set Design Dylan Whale Written by Dylan McGarry, Neil Coppen & Mpume Mthombeni with additional text by Tony Bonani Miyambo
Lighting by Tina Le Roux. Original Score/Soundscape- Ghia Leigh. Guitar and Sound Contributor- Andrei van Wyk. Additional sound design and mix Tristan Horton. Puppetry direction Roshina Ratnam. Stage Manager- Bongumusa Thulasizwe Masondo and Kwanele Nyembe.

Pics Val Adamson

07/07/2026

https://iol.co.za/weekend-argus/entertainment/2026-07-07-isidlamlilothe-fire-eater-wins-big-at-the-cape-town-theatre-awards/

Isidlamlilo/The Fire Eater’, a gripping stage play about a female assassin, swept the Cape Town Theatre Awards, winning all seven categories it was nominated for, including Best Production and Best Performance. Discover the powerful story behind the accolades and the voices of the artists who brou...

16/06/2026

What if the story of our city could be told through what we throw away?

Buyela (“return”) is a powerful new play set on the final afternoon of one of Durban’s last working landfills. Through humour, storytelling and extraordinary performances, two women uncover lives, memories and histories hidden within mountains of discarded things.

Developed through more than four years of collaboration and story-listening with informal waste collectors, Buyela is both deeply local and universally relevant – exploring waste, belonging, grief, resilience and our relationship with the earth.

Presented by award-winning KZN-based theatre company Empatheatre, Buyela is a rare opportunity to experience a moving new work performed by two exceptional actors in an intimate setting.

FOR TWO PERFORMANCES ONLY
Square Space Theatre (UKZN)
Booking is essential as seating is limited.

For bookings and enquiries:
[email protected]