Thought Residencies
Short, informal insights into artists’ ideas, feelings and practice. The form is short, but the thinking expansive.
Unwind over a brief interlude with some of our most interesting performance creators. Completely free and digitally intimate.
MAYK’s Thought Residences are presented in collaboration with Canada's SpiderWebShow, who created the original concept.
MAY 2024
Tim Crouch
Tim Crouch is an Obie-award winning writer and theatre-maker. He was an actor before starting to write and he still performs in much of his work. His plays include Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel (Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh and tour), Superglue (NT Connections); Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation (NTS and Royal Court); Beginners (Unicorn Theatre); Adler and Gibb (Royal Court and tour); what happens to the hope at the end of the evening (Almeida); I, Cinna (the poet) (RSC and Unicorn Theatre); I, Malvolio (Brighton Festival and tour); The Author (Royal Court and tour); ENGLAND – a play for galleries (Traverse Theatre, Fruitmarket Gallery and tour); An Oak Tree (Traverse Theatre and tour) and My Arm (Traverse Theatre and tour).
Directing credits include House Mother Normal (New Perspectives and Brighton Festival); I, Cinna (the poet); The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear (RSC); PEAT, (Ark, Dublin), Jeramee, Hartleby and Oooglemore and Beginners (Unicorn Theatre) and The Complete Deaths (Spymonkey).
For radio, Tim’s adaptation of Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveller was given a special commendation at the BBC Audio Awards 2024. Tim created and co-wrote Don’t Forget the Driver, a six-part series for BBC2 which won Best Comedy at the Venice TV awards, 2019.
Tim is performing Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel at Mayfest 2024 at The Tobacco Factory Theatres (17–19 May)
AUGUST 2021
Noncedo Gxekwa
For our August Thought Residency we introduce Noncedo Gxekwa. nominated by our previous resident Khanyisile Mbongwa.
Noncedo currently lives in the Cape Town. Her practice engages will collaborative forms of photography, individuals and nature.
She completed her studies at CPUT in 2010. Noncedo collaborated with Resonance Bazar on the Moonsoon Project- a performative research project looking into decolonizing cultural practices emerging in South Africa. In 2016, whilst on residence with Amplify Studio, began work on a solo exhibition - To Love and Not To Love: A Street View (2017). This project helped Noncedo rethink her use of the camera.
An ongoing project, Carbon Copy which started as an interrogation of the lives of twins and has evolved into a creative space for explorations of our multiple artistic expressions.
Noncedo participated in various group show with Subtle Agency, Intermission, We All Fall Down, Gordon institute for performing and Creative Arts, Cape Town (2014) Resist(E) Printemps, Negpos(2017),The Same Same Show, Gallery One11, Cape Town(2018),Soft Machine, PH Centre, Cape Town(2019), Welcomehomeall. Cape Town(2020), Content, Quoin Rock Wine Estate, Cape Town(2020),Connecting Views, Dutch Museum of World Cultures (2021).
JULY 2021
Khanyisile Mbongwa
Khanyisile Mbongwa is a Cape Town-based independent curator, award-winning artist, and sociologist who engages with her curatorial practice as Curing. Thus using the creative to instigate spaces for emancipatory practices, joy, and play.
Mbongwa is the curator of Puncture Points, founding member and curator of Twenty Journey and former Executive Director of Handspring Trust Puppets. She’s one of the founding members of arts collective Gugulective, Vasiki Creative Citizens and WOC poetry collective Rioters In Session. Mbongwa was a Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Institute of Creative Arts at UCT, where she completed her Masters in Interdisciplinary Arts, Public Art and Public Sphere. She has worked locally and internationally.
In 2012, together with the late Unathi Sigenu, Mbongwa won the MTN New Contemporary Award. As part of her Honors in Curatorship, Mbongwa curated Demonstrations: Performing Being Black, a two-part exhibition that questioned the idea of ‘authentic blackness’ manufactured by township tourism agencies and the concept of legitimate and illegitimate spaces. The exhibition was housed at Brundyn + Gallery which was seen as the legitimate space and a series of demonstrations were staged in township alleyways seen as illegitimate spaces.
In 2014 she won the Africa Centre - Artist In Residency Laureate and took up residency at JIWAR in Spain in 2015. Mbongwa was the Special Guest at Liste Art Fair Basel 2015. In 2016 she curated What Will We Tell Freedom?, a series of public interventions kwaLanga as part of Africa Centre’s Infecting The City. And her Offering pieceUmnikelo Oshisiwe formed part of the 2016 Afreaka Festival in Brazil, BONE 19 Festival in Switzerland 2017 and the National Arts Festival in South Africa 2017. In 2018 she took up a curatorial research residency at CAT.Cologne, Germany focusing on the public sphere, interventions and public policies. As a result curated BLUEPRINT: Where There’s Nowhere To Go, Where Is Home?
Mbongwa has been a guest lecture at UCT (University of Cape Town), DUT (Durban University of Technology), University of Zurich, University of Basel and Rhodes University. Currently she works with Norval Foundation as Adjunct Curator for Perfomative Practices and with Cape Town Carnival as Curatorial and Socio-Critical Development advisor. Mbongwa is the Chief Curator of the Stellenbosch Triennale 2020.
JUNE 2021
Ntando Cele
For our June Thought Residencies we introduce Ntando Cele, nominated by our previous resident Monika Truong.
Ntando Cele was born in South Africa and is based in Bern, Switzerland. She studied acting in South Africa and has a Master of Theatre from DasArts - Amsterdam. Her work with Manaka Empowerment Prod. (since 2013) overturns the borders between physical theatre, video installation, concert and performance. Face Off (2012), Black Off (2014), Black Milk (2018), Black. Space. Race. (2019), Go Go Othello (2020) address and gleefully dissect prejudices, stereotypes using humour to confront the audience with their own racist perceptions.
She has given several workshops and talks on self-healing and black empowerment and is currently working on ways to create platforms for artists to reflect on limitations and racial freedom on European stages.
FEBRUARY 2021
Monika Truong
Our 2021 Thought Residencies begin with Monika Truong, who was in residence with MAYK as part of a series of virtual residencies supported by Pro Helvetia.
Monika Truong is a sinologist, sociologist and theatre professional based in Zurich. She combines different disciplines and perspectives, draws from personal experience in order to artistically work on the phenomena of our time. Her academic training shapes her understanding of the cultural heritage of communities. Her Chinese-Vietnamese origins, her Asian appearance as well as her socialization and everyday life in Switzerland complement and sharpen her perspective. In her theatre work, she focuses on interpersonal relationships, on what connects or separates people in social interactions. She stages participatory performances, which deal with the asymmetry of social possibilities and power relations and show alternatives to today's reality. Her last work “Enjoy Racism” (together with Thom Reinhard) in coproduction with the Fabriktheater Zürich and ROXY Birsfelden was shown in 2018 at the festivals Impulse in Mühlheim an der Ruhr and Politik im Freie Theater in Munich, where it was awarded the festival prize. Monika Truong is currently working with Gessnerallee Zurich on a new piece on rituals and collective identity.
MAY 2018
Ridiculusmus
Ridiculusmus is a multi-award winning theatre company that has been producing seriously funny theatre since 1992.
The company’s co-artistic directors, David Woods and Jon Haynes, have established the company as a flagship UK performance group touring nationally and internationally with works passionately wrought from minimal resources that achieve the oxymoronic aim of being both serious and funny.
The company has created over 25 original theatre productions and is regularly commissioned by venues including the Barbican, National Theatre, Royal Court, Soho Theatre, BAC and Arts House, Melbourne.
MAY 2018
Caroline Williams
Caroline’s ongoing practice is to explore how the dramaturgy of reality can activate conventional theatrical forms. With a background in social and environmental activism, her work is often in dialogue with current political issues, for example the semantics of screens in relation to the war in Syria (Now Is the Time to Say Nothing, extensive touring 2018/19 produced by MAYK), multiple deaths in police custody in East London (You Do Not Have To Say Anything, The Yard Theatre) or the relationship between loneliness and technology (Can You Hear Me Now –British Council/ MAYK). Using personal narratives, she works to find a performative language that can most powerfully communicate the heart of these stories. At the core of Caroline’s work is a passion for people who wouldn’t consider themselves artists to create powerful works of art. Caroline’s work has ranged from a flash mob opera in the British Museum (Millions of Years, ENO) to a one-on-one installation-performance inside a cardboard box performed by migrants (Make Yourself At Home, Nuit Blanche Brussels).
Caroline was one of the first Associate Artists of the Yard Theatre and invited to take part in the National Theatre’s Directors course in 2016. The same year she was awarded a Somerset House Studio residency and chosen by the Victoria and Albert Museum to represent the UK at the Prague Biennial with her performance installation Shakespeare’s Fools. Caroline is currently a Leverhulme Scholar on attachment to The Bristol Old Vic and resident at The Pervasive Media Studios, Watershed.
FEBRUARY 2018
Selina Thompson
Selina Thompson is an artist and performer based in Leeds. Her work is playful, participatory and intimate, focused on the politics of identity, and how this defines our bodies, lives and environments. She has made work for pubs, cafes, hairdressers, toilets, and sometimes even galleries and theatres, including Spill Festival of Performance, The National Theatre Studio, Birmingham REP, East Street Arts and West Yorkshire Playhouse. In 2016, Selina presented salt at Mayfest, commissioned by MAYK, Theatre Bristol and Yorkshire Festival. salt has gone on to win critical acclaim and numerous awards.
DECEMBER 2017
Richard Allen
Richard Allen's work investigates the agency and theatricality of objects through the making of sound installations, performances, films, essays and publications. He makes sound and visual works with theatrical props, stage hardware, novelty items, instruments, machines, apparatuses and artefacts that play with how narratives and animations are formed between objects, sounds and spectators. He has presented work at the National Review of Live Art (Glasgow), Chapter Arts Centre (Cardiff), and Oriel Moystn (Llandudno). You might remember Richard from 2012's Garage Band, and as one of our SENSE commissions in 2013. He is currently working on The Killers, a new audio work for roadside diners, based on the Ernest Hemingway short story. He is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Worcester School of Art (UK) where he is the co-founder of the Fabrication Research Group.
All of Richard's Thoughts are transcribed. You can find the transcriptions on SoundCloud.
NOVEMBER 2017
Sleepdogs
Sleepdogs is a collaboration between writer/composer Timothy X Atack and director/producer Tanuja Amarasuriya. We make work for theatre, film, audio, online and other spaces. More than anything, we want to tell really great stories – gripping, unexpected, thrilling stories that surprise and move audiences. Sleepdogs' recent work includes Dark Land Light House, Circadial and The Bullet and the Bass Trombone. They are currently working on a new electronic musical about grief called A Million Tiny Glitches.