The X-Homes experience through the senses of a DFL student
July 28, 2010 - Drama for Life scholar Tonderai Chiyindiko tells us how he experienced X-Homes Johannesburg.
What do you get when you take simple yet profound, cutting edge, thought provoking, downright absurd and out of this world theatrical, dance, visual, music and other artistic works and installations and put them in the most unconventionally intimate and personal of spaces, like ordinary people’s homes and living rooms?
The X-Homes experience is not necessarily new concept, but rather one that has surfaced in various cities around the world since 2002, when Matthias Lilienthal created it for the Theatre of the World festival. Since then the concept has evolved and been applied in many world festivals and, during the Goethe Institut’s “Football meets Culture” 2010 programme,X-Homes was once again an experience not to miss!
The X-Homes concept plays on “the gap between documentary and fiction”. According to curator of X-Homes Johannesburg, Christoph Gurk, doing this form of work in the city, with its history and politics of space that stretch back to apartheid, was a challenge that local and international collaborators had to deal with while creating their ‘site specific’ pieces for the project.
From straight-in-your-face drama and rib-cracking comedy to touching personal stories of tragedy and perseverance of the human spirit; to seeing (and visiting for the first time) urban spaces as you have never seen them before; to walks around places of historical significance as backdrops of present socio-political realities of unfulfulfilled promises, X-Homes takes you on a whirlwind guided (and guarded) tour where you as the audience member are at the mercy of the different local and international directors and collaborators. They carefully conceived different offerings for the different settings and spaces for maximum “docu-dramatic-realistic effect”, blurring the preconceived notions of what art is and how it is presented, but also and most importantly where it can take place.
Drama for Life students had the chance to go on both X-Homes tours (Hillbrow and Kliptown, Soweto locations) courtesy of the generosity of the Goethe Institute of South Africa. It was such a fantastic, scary and yet gratifying and humbling experience to be in the homes of strangers and witness something profound. X-Homes plays on the notion of surprise, as the participants or audience members (although ‘intruders’ may be a more appropriate term, considering my own experiences of X-Homes) are not aware in advance of what secrets lie in wait for them as they move from place to place, house to house, in different directions carefully chosen to add to the experience.
In the post-performance discussion with Christoph Gurk, many of the DFL students who saw the shows had lots of questions and comments about the concept. We had a very fruitful, educational and artistically inspiring ‘talk back’ after the experience, and also explored the challenges and possibilities of drawing from this concept as part of our own artistic work as drama students.