Studio Julian Hetzel & Ntando Cele
SPAfrica
SPAfrica is the world’s first ever empathy drink: water from South Africa that can only be bought in exchange for a donation of tears. This product is the starting point for an unsparing performance about racism, colonialism and the cannibalisation of sorrow and trauma by the art market.
Language: English with German surtitles
30.5. after the performance: discussion in English with Ntando Cele and Julian Hetzel, chaired by: Wilma Renfordt
Tickets for all Impulse events are also available from our ticket shop.
As a Black actress in Europe, Ntando Cele has become an expert at creating empathy. Because the market demands stories about angry victims full of pain for the audience to be able to feel anything at all any more. Cele is capable of servicing this demand.
But what if empathy does nothing to change existing power relations, and indeed only reinforces them? The white audience sees itself confronted with a dilemma: does it want to empathise and pay for its colonial guilt with its tears? Or does it recognise that an art that reduces black performers to the role of victims deprives them of the opportunity of telling their own story in their own way?
Ntando Cele and Julian Hetzel have previously been invited to earlier Impulse festivals. ‘Enjoy Racism’ (with Ntando Cele in der the leading role, 2018) and ‘All Inclusive’ (Julian Hetzel, 2019) have generated controversial discussions around the complex of themes that they now tackle together in ‘SPAfrica’.
“‘SPAfrica’ succeeds in making complex, neocolonial power relations and our own entanglement within them tangible with painful and perceptive ambivalence.” Theresa Schütz, Theater der Zeit
Credits ›
Concept: Julian Hetzel and Ntando Cele
Direction: Julian Hetzel
Performance: Ntando Cele
Dramaturgy: Miguel A. Melgares
Artistic advisor: Sodja Lotker, Khanyisile Mbongwa
Music & composition: Frank Wienk
Light design: Nico de Rooij
Technical coordination: Vincent Beune, Aengus Havinga
Technicians: Tom Doeven, Simon Kelaita, Bea Verbeek, Wout Jansen
Technical solutions: Merijn Versnel, Guido Bevers
Production manager: Marieke van den Bosch
Production Cape Town: Lungile Mbongwa
Galerist Cape Town: Mpilo Ngcukana
Production assistant: Jana Riese
Assistant costume designer: Merel van Erpers Roijaards
Mask artist: Carly Heathcote
Make-up artist: Julia Markow
Prop maker: Saskia Hartog
Intern: Piet van Duijn Ferreira
Video documentation: Reynold Reynolds, Bongeka Ngcobo
Video performer: Revé Terborg
Photography: Alexandra Masmanidi, Anouk Maupu
Special thanks to the voluntears and the local hosts of the artist talk
Production ›
A production by Studio Julian Hetzel in co-production with Schauspiel Leipzig, CAMPO, Ghent, Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, SPRING Performing Arts Festival, Utrecht and auawirleben Theaterfestival Bern.
Biographies ›
Ntando Cele was born in South Africa and is based in Bern, Switzerland. She studied acting in Durban and also attended DasArts in Amsterdam. Her work overturns the borders between physical theatre, video installation, concert and performance. She combines music, text and video to recreate her own identity on the stage. In 2023 she won the Swiss Performing Arts Award.
Julian Hetzel works as performance maker, musician and visual artist. He develops works along the intersection of theatre, music and media that have a political dimension and a documentary approach. He is Artistic Director of Studio Julian Hetzel, an Utrecht-based organisation that realises and produces his artistic work. Hetzel’s creations are produced internationally. His work has been presented in more than 20 countries all around the world. In 2017 Hetzel received the VSCD-Mimeprijs for ‘The Automated Sniper’ (by Frascati producties and Ism & Heit). In 2019 ‘All Inclusive’ (by CAMPO and Ism & heit) was part of the official selection of the Nederlands Theaterfestival. ‘SELF’ by Julian Hetzel was the national entry of the Netherlands at the Prague Quadrennial 2019. In August 2019 Hetzel presented three works at the Venice Biennale del Teatro. Julian Hetzel is Associate Artist at Kunstencentrum CAMPO Gent (Belgium). Studio Julian Hetzel has received structural funding from Fonds Podiumkunsten (FPK) and the City of Utrecht since 2021.