Brett Bailey

For the Australian rules footballer, see Bret Bailey.

Brett Bailey (born 1967) is a playwright, artist, designer, play director, festival curator and the artistic director of the group Third World Bun Fight.[1] He was the curator of South Africa's only public arts festival, Infecting the City, in Cape Town, South Africa, from 2008 until 2011. His works have played across Europe, Australia and Africa, and have won several awards, including a gold medal for design at the Prague Quadrennial (2007).[2]

History

Brett Bailey was born in 1967 and completed a postgraduate diploma in performance studies at the Dasarts Master of Theatre in Amsterdam. He has worked throughout South Africa, and in Zimbabwe, Uganda, Haiti, the UK and across Europe.[3] His acclaimed iconoclastic dramas, which interrogate the dynamics of the post-colonial world, include Big Dada, Ipi Zombi, iMumbo Jumbo and Orfeus. His performance installations include Blood Diamonds: Terminal and Exhibit A: Deutsch Sudwestafrika. He directed the opening show at the 4th World Summit on Arts and Culture (2009),[4] and from 2006 until 2011 has directed the opening shows for the Harare International Festival of the Arts.[5] He has been the curator of Africa Centre's Infecting the City since 2008.[6]

Works

The work of Bailey investigates the many layers and intricacies of colonial and post-colonial Africa.[7]

Bailey's earlier works – Ipi Zombi, iMumbo Jumbo and The Prophet – are grouped together under the title Plays of Miracle and Wonder (which is the title of a book on Bailey's plays) and incorporate ceremony and sacrament. These works are aggressive with Bailey using drums, screams, knives and broken glass to break down the audiences' defences.[8]

In Ipi Zombi, Bailiey evoked a 1996 witch-hunt in which several women were blamed and killed for the death of twelve boys in a minivan accident. It combined Xhosa and Christian ritual. Author Zakes Mda claimed Ipi Zombi to be a "A work of genius that maps out a path to a new South African theatre ..."[9]

In other works, such as Orfeus, Bailey takes a softer approach, and looks to highlight the blind, forgotten, the broken and the voiceless. In Orfeus, specifically, the audience is drawn down into an African underworld that is governed by a seedy businessman. Orfeus, and other works, look at a post-colonial, showing a "decaying globalised world in which not only shamanic rituals but also moving music create an entirely unique African atmosphere".[10]

First staged in 2004 in Bern, Switzerland, House of The Holy Afro has been repeatedly staged in Europe and Australia with its last iteration at the Market Theatre Laboratory, Johannesburg, in June 2010. Performer and drag diva, Odidi Mfenyana plays the high priest of the holy house, and leads the performance through an urban funk cabaret that borders on spiritual ritual.[11]

In the site-specific work medEia, the audience walked in silence for at least ten-minutes before the production. The audience's emotional and intellectual journey through works were physically manifest in the installations Blood Diamonds: Terminal and Exhibit A: Deutsch Sudwestafrika.[12]

Exhibit A: Deutsch-Südwestafrika, staged in the Museum of Ethnology in Vienna's Hofburg Palace, is a "meditation on the dark history of European Racism in relation to Africa".[13]

For the 4th World Summit on Arts and Culture, Bailey presented 3 Colours – a one-off mixed media performance piece. Bailey collaborated with award-winning choreographer Gregory Maqoma and Congalese musician Mapumba Cilombo.[4] The piece represented the complexities of inter-culturalism, in which Bailey "chose to portray different societies or cultures symbolically as shrines. Indefinable as they are, our cultures are sacred to us. At the heart of each glows a unique cluster of precious jewels; our myths and histories, our heritage, our values and social structure, our cosmology, and relationship to the ultimate."

Bailey's curated the Infecting the City Festival from 2008 until 2011. It is currently Africa's biggest public arts festival that takes place in the public spaces of Cape Town during February or March of every year. During Bailey's tenure, the Festival chose a theme that had social relevance: "In a society that has as many complex issues as ours, if one is commandeering the communal spaces of the city, it is not enough merely to provide entertainment for the public. There is a moral imperative to tackle the pressing issues of our day, and to ask artists to apply themselves to these."[14]

Productions

Performances

Exhibit A: made with Namibian Performers and Musicians, writer/director/designer

Orfeus: writer/director/designer

macbEth: the opera: director/designer (written by Verdi)

House of the Holy Afro: director/designer

Talking Heads: developed concept

medEia: director/designer (written by Oscar van Woensel)

Big Dada: the rise and fall of Idi Amin: director/designer/writer

Vodou Nation: made in Haiti, director/designer/writer

iMumbo Jumbo: writer/director/designer

Safari: C. G. Jung in Africa: made in Uganda, director/writer/designer

The Prophet: director/writer/designer

Ipi Zombi: writer/director/designer

Awards

Installations

Publications

References

  1. ↑ Third World Bunfight website.
  2. ↑ "List of the Jurors for the Prague Quadrennial, including reference to Bailey's 2007 award". Pq.cz. 20 May 2008. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  3. ↑ "C.V. of Brett Bailey, director of Third World Bunfight" (PDF). Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  4. 1 2 3 "Curtain Rises on 4th World Summit of Arts & Culture" (PDF). 22 September 2009. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  5. ↑ "HIFA kicks off on a High Note,". The Zimbabwean. 28 April 2011. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  6. ↑ "Curator's Note". Infecting the City. Infectingthecity.com. 2011. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  7. ↑ "Exhibition A: Deutsch Sudwestafrika". Ukarts.com. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  8. ↑ "Ritual theatre alive in Brett Bailey's Orfeus by Brent Meersman". Cue.ru.ac.za. 4 July 2007. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  9. ↑ "South African Drama after 'Albert!' David Graver, Drama for a New South Africa Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999, 228 pp. ISBN 978-0-253-21326-6; ISBN 978-0-253-33570-8". H-net.org. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  10. ↑ Jos Schuring. "The Power of Culture, Brett Bailey: "I want to fire people up with stories"". Powerofculture.nl. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  11. ↑ Matthew Krouse, "'Odidiva' climbs the stairway to heaven", Mail and Guardian, 18 June 2010. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  12. ↑ "UK Arts reviews Exhibition A". Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  13. ↑ "Resisting the Muse of Imperial 'Science' by Brent Meersman, Mail and Guardian, June 2010". Mg.co.za. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  14. ↑ "Art is Contagious", www.mahala.co.za, 18 February 2011.
  15. ↑ "Jury of Prague Quadrennial 2011" (PDF). Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  16. ↑ Infecting the City website.
  17. ↑ "HIFA official site, review of opening night". Hifa.co.zw. 28 April 2010. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  18. ↑ "Rob van Vuuren reminisces about taking part in Bailey's tribute to Mandela". Zalist.co.za. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  19. ↑ "Prague Quadrennial Juror's list, noting Bailey's 2007 award". Pq.cz. 20 May 2008. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  20. ↑ "List of FNB Vita (Cape) Winners". Baxter.co.za. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  21. ↑ "List of Fleur Du Cap Winners". Baxter.co.za. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  22. ↑ "Cleaning Up, Matthew Krouse covers the Theatre Awards in July 1998 for Mail and Guardian". 31 July 1998. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  23. ↑ "The Plays of Miracle and Wonder". David Krut Publishing. Retrieved 15 July 2011.

External links

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