| What: Working Title, Live Art Weekend at Masambe Presents – Soft Rebellion When: December 11 – 13, 2025, Thursday – Saturday Venue: The Masambe Theatre at The Baxter Theatre Centre Venue: Masambe Theatre, Baxter Theatre Centre, Cape Town Time: 7pm. The programme is about 90 minutes. Bookings: Webtickets Direct booking link: https://www.webtickets.co.za/v2/event.aspx?itemid=1558924248 Tickets: R160 full price, R100 students /seniors/group booking Curator: Carin Bester Featured artists: Amogelang Pila Ditlhale & Thato Ditlhale – Reimagination of Blackness: Re-narrating Perceptions (Video Art) Cheryl Traub Adler & Garth Erasmus – Erase / Mark / Hold Nomandla Vilakazi – “The Exhibition” Smamkele Mentyisi & Sange Mpambani – Nkanyezi kaSililo: Initiation Zizi Onkabetse Masizana – Vroulikheid Note: There will be a short Q & A session with the artists after the performances on Thursday December 11. Some of the performances will be taking place outside. It is summer but do take something warm in case it is a chilly night Age restriction: No under 16s |
Live Art Weekend is inviting us to gently approach, with care and consideration a Soft Rebellion which is happening December 11 – 13, 2025, in the Baxter Masambe, Cape Town. “Soft Rebellion asks how tenderness becomes a way to unmute ourselves when the world pushes us toward emotional numbness,” reflects Curator, Carin Bester. She gives us a peek at what will unfurl in the Masambe precinct over that weekend:
TheCapeRobyn: Was there something specific that prompted the curatorial prompt, Soft Rebellion? Or was it just a general sense of the malaise around us?
Carin Bester: Soft Rebellion was inspired by a talk by Cornelia Faasen titled On Beauty: Wat Staan die Teater Te Doen? presented at a Tribuo session in June this year. And the thought of finding beauty in a time of so much violence and heaviness in all aspects of life was one that moved me most
As an activist and a maker, I have often personally struggled to locate beauty inside the chaos and brutality. To understand how softness can survive in an environment shaped, outrage and harm. So Soft Rebellion grew from a need to explore that tension not just in my own work but as a theme for us collectively. It felt like a way to reclaim tools for expression when words fail or when resistance is expected to look loud and forceful.
Soft Rebellion asks how tenderness becomes a way to unmute ourselves when the world pushes us toward emotional numbness.
TCR: Can you expand on Soft Rebellion in the context of performance and your platform of Live Art? I am intrigued by Shannon Willis’ manifesto for a “slow resistance movement” https://www.kosmosjournal.org/kj_article/the-mycelial-art-of-soft-rebellion/ She writes “Soft Rebellion is the way water carves stone—not through brute force but through patient insistence, through intimate knowledge of the cracks, through the whisper of time.” Your platform is art/performance art – not nature. It is within a safe and contained space of theatre?
CB: Soft Rebellion fits naturally within performance because Live Art works through presence. It slows us down and gives space for gestures that are quiet but deliberate. Shannon Willis’s idea of slow resistance makes sense in this context. Like water shaping stone, Live Art creates change through attention rather than force, by being flued and open to change. Live Art adapts to its environment; in the same way water does.
Although our work is based at the theatre, we do not stay enclosed. We move to the open air. That shift is important. It breaks the sense of being sealed off and brings the work closer to the world outside. It allows for the space to influence the performances, I guess one could look at it as a need to be closer to nature.
So while we are not in nature, we move toward something more open and less controlled.
TCR: Can you talk about the placement of each piece – from inside the Masambe to outside, to exhibition?
CB: One of the strengths of the Live Art Weekend format is that the audience moves through the works rather than consuming them from a single fixed viewpoint. The Masambe Theatre is an intimate space, but it offers multiple entry points for exploration.
For Soft Rebellion, we will be moving from inside the theatre to various outside spaces, from the deck through to the main entrance, and we will end the evening with our video art piece inside the theatre, followed by a short Q&A on Thursday the 11th. Final positioning will only be established on the technical day before the performance.
TCR: Anything else to add about Live Art Weekend 2025 and what is in store for 2025?
CB: Soft Rebellion is the 6th iteration of Live Art Weekends, and we are incredibly grateful to all the Artist who have taken part in a Live Art weekend be it as performer, assistant or mentor and we are so excited for 2026, we have been in conversation with many people in an effort to continue and expand the Live Art offerings from Working title and even though we cannot at this stage confirm any specific events we do want to ask everyone to keep an eye out on our social media as there will be exciting things happening in 2026 including Live Art Workshops.
❇ Sange Mpambani is a featured artist at Live Art Weekend, Soft Rebellion, The Masambe Theatre,The Baxter Theatre Centre December 11 – 13, 2025. Pic: Supplied.
