The award-winning choreographer, director, and performer Mduduzi Nhlapo is happy to be named The South African State Theatre’s new associate creative director (SAST)
Nhlapo stated upon his appointment that his lifelong goal was to utilize theatre as a means to heal social evils and make theatre accessible to all.
He stated, “Now that I am the assistant creative director, I am ecstatic and have fully realized a long-held dream.
“My primary responsibility is to reassert and reinvent the SAST brand as the greatest theatre complex in the Southern hemisphere, as the trendsetter and the barometer of Africa’s creative and intellectual greatness.”
Aubrey Sekhabi, creative director of SAST, welcomed Nhlapo to his team by stating, “Having viewed all the programs that we produce, he is the most qualified candidate.
“He is young, dedicated, and gifted. It is just what the industry requires: skill, drive, and discipline.
“I am pleased for him, and I wish him the best of luck in his new position. We have a creative director in the pipeline.”
During his teenage years as a part of community groups performing traditional dances and township theatre in his village of Soshanguve, Nhlapo discovered his passion for the arts.
In 2006, he joined in the SAST’s first “Mzansi Fela” community development initiative, currently known as MCO. He later participated in the Ishashalazi programme as a performer and director, and his athletic production “Last Breath” got him the Best Production award.
In 2019, he was nominated for the Best Choreography Naledi Theatre Award for “Freedom the Musical” by Sekhabi. In 2020, he got the award for Sello Maseko’s “Angola Camp” 13.
The previous year, at the Kucheza Africa Festival, he debuted his latest work, “Magnificent 7.”
Nhlapho is the playwright and director of the contentious theatrical parody “Lesilo Rula,” a biographical drama about the renowned Boikie Moditle Pholo that was performed at the SAST as part of a Department of Sports, Arts, and Culture programme honoring the legends.
As part of “Season 5” of The Centre for the Less Good Ideas, he co-created “11 Minutes Before Assassination” with Lulu Mlangeni and “Escape,” an epic politically-motivated visceral solo production, in which he added a muscular style to the art of theatre.