Bitch where the Fuck is my manifesto?! is a one-woman show: written, directed and performed by Duduzile Mathonsi. Developed in collaboration with scenographer Liam and by Deise Nunes and Camila Egg.

The piece has a duration of 50 minutes and uses the languages English, Tsonga, and Zulu.
The solo production investigates the narratives of the black female body and centralises the black female experience, giving space to address the body’s agency of exploring the sexuality and vulnerability of a black woman. The work uses space to create different shifts of “the spectacle vs. spectator”, reclaiming and attempting to indigenize space.

“Bitch where the Fuck is my manifesto?! is based on research sparked by meeting points of intercultural intersectionality relating to voice, body and movement. The piece is relating Africanism and Norwegian meeting points of interaction.

The performance is in a Contemporary/experimental means of delivery. There are 15 to 20 audience members sitting on stage, lit up in white floor taped boxes, while the ‘witnesses’ sit in the Amphi. As a performer. I choose when to come into the light while moving in circles and in between the audience on stage, as a way to claim and indigenize space. The spatial concept is to challenge the spectator vs the spectacle. The environment of the space is likely to vary. I sing, hum and use my feet to create different beats when moving, using sound to trigger movement and movement to trigger sound with my body.
Working with the voice and text, playing with the tonality of the voice and song, exploring where the voice is in the body and what sounds it can make when allocated or moved. Therefore creating a visual display of the body working with sound.

The materials I am using in the performance includes self-written texts, voice and objects, recordings, body sounds, song and archived movement.

What the piece questions:

– Can the female black body be seen as human and not other?

– Can the audience successfully not move and interact within a political performance and if so how?

– As a performer, am I putting the needs of the audience ahead of mine? Or vice versa?

– How to be direct in one’s conviction without losing the audience?

– Who is the spectacle and who is the spectator?

– Can the black body have its own agency outside of the white gaze?

Originally Supported by, and created at the Norwegian Theater Academy. previous tour at Nordic Black Theatre supported by Kulturråde.

“Bitch Where the Fuck Is My Manifesto” has previously toured in Blackbox Teatre (Oslo), BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), Nordic Black Teater (Oslo) and Rosendal Teater (Trondheim), and makes its way back to Rosendal teater in November 2021.

The piece did on its first international tour to the Kampnagel theatre as part of the Nordwind Festival in Hamburg (Germany) in December 2021.