 to introduce it and thank you so much for coming. Fabulous, thanks Amy. Greetings everyone, how fabulous to see you all. This is so nice. Particularly welcome, if this is your first unearthed futures, welcome back, the regulars. I am very pleased to be in conversation today with two of my friends and colleagues who work at the intersection of veteran performance and political activism in various ways. And really what we're going to do today is share a series of reflections of particular instances of work where Alex Sutherland and Pumile Languelanga who goes by push, examples of their work that respond to the two broad questions that are kind of on the table for us today to be in conversation about. And the questions are, and these are the ones that went out on the mailer, what is the role of embodied creative practice in moments of resistance and rupture? This is one broad question. And the second one is, how does the work of activism, political organizing and social movement building require re-imaginings of theater and performance pedagogy? And my particular interest in this topic, not only is it an excuse to be in conversation with my friends in a somewhat public forum, but those of you who have been here before would have heard the curator speak about particular quests that we're on. And among my kind of subdivisions of my quest is an interest in thinking together about how we particularly, I suppose, those of us who are practitioner slash scholar types, how to think more expansively about the role of theater and performance now. And a way that I thought we might do that is in looking back at some of the ways that theater and performance and political activism in particular have interacted in a South African context. And it's a conversation. So as usual, the idea is to really use this beginning part, the first 45 minutes, which will be recorded, as a set of provocations, invitations to put to you all that you can respond to as we go in the chat. Feel free to have a side conversation going there, your questions, your comments. We can pull them into the larger conversation, but really feel free as soon as you are inspired to, to use the chat as a place to put your thoughts. We will, the first 45 minutes will be recorded and then it will be unrecorded, but the conversation really can flow, even before we are in the unrecorded time. And that's it, that's the plan. So I'm gonna hand over to Alex and Push in that order to introduce yourselves and to talk about some of the ways that your own paths have crossed and interacted. She chuckles. Okay, hi, I'm Alex, I'm from Southland, I'm based in Cape Town and Push and I have known each other, we've just established since 2008, this as kind of student-lecture relationship and then as co-artists and now as colleagues and comrades. We can talk about how our paths have kind of interacted in weird and wonderful ways. But just to introduce myself, I mean, you've seen my bio, but when I was thinking about this topic, so when I think about theatrical performance pedagogy, I mean, I've worked within a formal institutional context in higher education for 17 years, teaching devised and improvised day tree performance practices, usually for social and political means with students, obviously, but also outside of the academy. So a lot of my work was in prison spaces and forensic spaces as well, which I think I'll talk a little bit about in terms of the power of seeing everyone as potential story makers and how devised collective practices allow for that. And that is a deeply political act. And so I saw that within the theater pedagogy within the university but outside of it. And as we will probably talk, I left the academy for political reasons as well that I have to do with some of what I'll discuss in terms of the raptures that we witnessed. And I now work in political education in the social justice sector, which is a very different dynamic. But my role is usually as art educator within political education. So that is also within the informal sector, so to speak, but also combines the rigor of aesthetics and theory through artistic practice to think about activism and social movement campaigning. So that's me. Do you want me to hand over to Push to introduce herself? And then we, yeah, okay, Push, over to you. Thanks, Alex. Yes, we've known each other since, yeah, 2018. It's very interesting as my lecturer. 2008. Your eighth, exactly. So yes, thank you, thank you so much, Alex. Yes, my name is Pamela Malinga. I've actually known as Upush, so you can also call me Push. I am predominantly a performer educator, and I started lecturing at, I think in 2015 at the University of Guazon Natal in Pietermannsburg. And this was kind of initiation for me into my own practice, pedagogical practice. And I found myself teaching in a moment of rapture, in a moment of protest. And I then started to see that the way in which I had to teach and the way in me had to teach in the department had to really engage with protest and activism. I do see myself as an activist, absolutely. But I think these moments, in moments of rapture, that's where my moment of activism really starts to be performed. So yes, I'm very much interested in indigenous ways in which we perform, such as contemporary isoclosal performances. I'm really drawn into the works of my lecturer who speak to the ontological space in which I am located in my own research at this point. But when it comes to activism, it's predominantly in the classroom and at times obviously on the field where I am in the front lines out there. But yeah, I've only been in the academy as an academic for about six years now. And I suppose this is my first reflection or first moment of reflecting of what happened in 2015, 16, 17 while there was a lot of violence at the University of Guazanatal, more specifically in Peter Marisburg. So I'm reflecting on that moment right now for the first time, because sometimes the body can only remember much later sometimes or wants to engage later rather than in the moment. So that's where I am. Yeah, Ingos. Awesome, thank you both. Great, I feel like we might loop back to some of the particular projects that you have worked on together. But before we do, Alex, can I hand back to you to kick us off to share your kind of first reflection and then push, please come in straight after that. Thanks. Okay, so I think I'm just going to reflect on kind of three moments which speak to your first question about embody creative practice in times of rupture. And because Push and I have both been within the South African University context, teaching and theater performance departments, different ones at the time during the massive student uprisings in 2015 and 2016, I'm going to start with that because my first reflection on this idea of rupture was during, so at Rhodes University, we not only had Fuse, Ms. Ford and Rhodes, Ms. Ford, we also had a very important rape protest called RU Reference List, which was a third level of shutdowns and protests within the university. And it was during that time that I just want to reflect on that first moment. So there was this massive protest against rape culture and inaction and silencing of some woman's voices about a culture of rape on campus, which is a worldwide problem as we know it. And there had been a systematic silencing from senior management about some of the voices and this then erupted into a very, very angry protest that had been simmering for a long time. And it was round about this time that there was a lot of anger with students and it happened to be on the core syllabus which was Boal, wonderful. And there was all these contradictory moments coming from, you just have to carry on teaching, it didn't matter if rubber bullets were on the streets outside the department, you got a SMS the night before to say, can you pitch up at your 8.40 lecture and continue as usual, which I found quite violent and unethical. But this was a moment to get students together. And so I designed very quickly a workshop using Boal techniques for students to reflect in an embodied collective way about how senior management and many, many aspects of the university had responded to this protest. As usual, students were criminalized, they were pathologized, they were just seen as angry black woman and how do we process that in a collective embodied way? And it was an incredibly powerful, important moment of using a collective embodied practice to process and think through in terms of the mind and the body and to express it in a particular way. And it was a very, very powerful moment. And very shortly after that, the university interdicted protest. And part of that interdict was a broad thing about academics trying to stir students up, the silencing of academics. And that resulted in a whole legal process of trying to get that interdict stopped because it was so broad and because it was silencing basically academic freedom and a large respect. And for the first time in my teaching career that I'd been scared that I was going to be come down a con because I'd run this workshop and that maybe people had taken pictures and it just became a really confusing time in this moment of rupture. And I was thinking back to how in other times, my attempts or any attempts of critical pedagogy and asking students to think through difficult questions would be lauded by the university, would go in my teaching portfolio and people would go, clap, clap, clap, isn't this wonderful pedagogy? But as soon as the gaze was turned back on the institution itself as an institution of repressive power, there were many, many layers of silencing that went along with that. And I think about how when you are, the body comes into pedagogy, there was a particular silencing about that as well. I'm thinking about the naked protest that went within that are you reference list and how there were layers of surveillance and judgments about that as well. These kind of resisting performative narratives that went into play. So that's my kind of first reflection about being in the academy. The second one about collective embodied storying is for many years I worked in prisons and I worked primarily with men because that was the context that was available at that time. And my work never starts from why I may not be or the fact that we start from their identity as a prison. I start from identity as a potential theater maker. But through time you start to get to learn because people tell you some of their crimes and some of these crimes are quite violent as well. But what was quite interesting for me was when we don't start with this particular identity, when we open up storying to say, you don't actually have to tell the story about why you got to prison or you don't have to tell the story about how bad crime is. You can tell many other stories. But as soon as we do that, there is a rupture. And so it doesn't matter for me whether I'm doing theater making processes in a prison or theater making processes with university students. The opening up of storying and storytelling through embodied practice I think is a deeply political act. And with prisoners as we went through time they started to really play with their notions of masculinity in a very, very interesting and complex way. So for me that is another kind of reflection on theater creative and body practices as practices of hope, which also they widen aspects of storying and identity, which I think is quite vital actually in terms of a kind of radical political pedagogy. I think I'm gonna stop there. Can I go through there, Obeña? Go ahead, thanks Push. Thank you, thank you so much Alex. I mean, what you're saying about what happened at Rhodes really does resonate to what we experienced at obviously at the University of Guasunatal more specifically at St. Petersburg campus. If I wanna start this reflection I just want to just dedicate this moment to one of my students which has passed away, Sendo Simisi, when you saw Rest in Peace he was an incredible drama student at the University of Guasunatal campus in St. Petersburg. So by the time I arrived in 2015 at the University of Guasunatal I've already experienced numerous protests that I've been part of at Rhodes University. But the biggest difference I noticed was violence at UKZN. And when we speak of violence I'm talking about physical intimidation of violence. The first thing you notice is the hypervisibility of security police and campus security, private security. The police only arrive in 2016 which really explodes the violence. So already guns are pointed at you by the gate when you are walking onto class and we absorb this into the body. And we often forget that there's an absorption of this violence in the classroom as well. So one of the things that some of the points that I've come up with is that, well the things that I noticed was teaching in itself during a time of rapture, during a time of resistance is a modality of activism to teach during this time. Because as lecturers in the drama department we had to question the complexity of our own position in this moment. What are we doing here? How are we part of and not part of? Moreover, we picked up that the students themselves who are activists, when we are trying to have this embodied practice it was difficult at times to engage with the body because it was still arrested in the terror of the violence specifically by the security. But obviously in 2016 it gets accelerated because the police arrive and they terrorize the residences. I mean we'll get, let's say for example like situation reports in the morning saying there was a little bit of unrest at two in the morning. And when you start listening to the voice notes of the students at two in the morning they are being shot at in rest and you're going wait, this is not a little bit of unrest, this is terror. So even the languaging of how this is done was something to really look at because we knew what the university was saying was not necessarily the truth. So by creatively engaging we knew this was a way forward for us as the departments. We were finding ways of interpreting life experience for the students and ourselves so that to hold this complexity in this violent moment. It's hard to make sense of this context. However, it seemed that narrative, storytelling, song, dance began to use the imaginary as a critical space to make meaning for ourselves and for the students. We opened the complexity through an embodied creative practice. We couldn't ignore it in other words. Thus an embodied engagement seemed to hold this difficult space. So enter Sarafina for those who don't know this is a play done by Munginigema that reflects at the 1976 student uprising. When we decided in 2015 at the University of Kwasunatal to do Sarafina at the Hexagon Theater, we were, it was not an easy decision because we knew that it was really provoking or was part of this discussion that was happening around campus at the time. And we didn't know how we were gonna hold this but we went for it. And I was very, very, very impressed by Memdokoso Matala who was the director of the production who held over 30 students, musicians, technicians and anyone who has ever done a musical would know it. It's stressful, but at a time of protest it was on another level. And it also meant as a department we all had to be engaged in it somehow, somewhere and we were. And what was quite exciting about this was that it created a space of a teaching and learning experience in as much as a reflective space for the students to talk about the past colliding with the context with the moment. So 1976 and 2016 became blurred all of a sudden in this theater space in the Hexagon Theater. I know what was also interesting was we wanted to hold the substance of the education as well. Especially in your liberal university where numbers matter. You know, how many numbers do you get in? How many numbers do you get out? They don't really worry about whether you're teaching the students or not because usually when there's a protest there's about three to four weeks that you don't have. Meaning how then do you reimagine this curricula? How does it begin to still have substance at the end? And one of the ways in which we wanted to engage with this was how we teach in this moment. And as Memdagoza was holding the space, Ayanna Kalapiri, who was a cost member, for example, she's a staff member, she became a cost member. She wanted also to perform on it so the students can see us in the work itself. Tamata Hamaslach was the designer of the set and I was obviously co-direct, co-cargoughing with the brilliant Mendelecene. And this space was when we took reflections, let's say for example on a scene, it made sense of what was happening outside. So all of a sudden the academic program, even though it was suspended sometimes, we used to just lie and say, oh no, we're rehearsing, we're rehearsing, you know. And the police then were like, okay, it's fine if you're rehearsing because technically to them we weren't teaching. But actually we were. So there were two things that we're then grappling with at that moment. One is that the student protest is happening and how are we contributing by carrying on with the program under cover, but not necessarily under cover. And the second is that the protest is informing, is starting to inform the curriculum all of a sudden. And the curricula is responding to the protest. So we started to see this beautiful dance between the two. And therefore as an education experience happening, we opened up our pedagogical notions of how can we teach during times of protest? How can we teach during times of rupture? And it also then kind of draws to that question of the colonial moment that we're always trying to talk about in academia in South Africa. Oh, how are we decolonizing the curricula? For us, this was a big clue that we couldn't escape the context, the violent context that was happening. So I suppose to sort of look into these questions of yours, Rania, I was, I kind of then came up with this sort of idea that embodied practices give us understanding of the moment is a moment in itself. It is telling us that students are not satisfied with what and how we are teaching, including the conditions at Peter Merrisburg where the students were living was horrible. And by engaging and listening to bodies, listening to students, because I think this was a big thing, especially in 2016, in as much as protest was always engaged with violence by the institution, there was another type of violence that happened in 2016 that never usually happened. And there was silence. It took the vice chancellor about six weeks to respond. And that speaks volumes to how the, obviously how I upset the students were. And so, yeah, I just want to leave it there for now. So that's perhaps just a moment that I wanted to look at specifically Sarah Fina, just as that moment of teaching, the moment of us engaging and also a moment for us just to figure out pedagogical practices that can actually help us in this moment. Yeah, thank you. There's so much on the table already. Thank you both immensely. I want to give you an opportunity to respond to each other, actually. If there's anything that has come up from either Alex or Push that the other of you wants to pick up on, please feel free. And also anyone else, if there's things that are sitting in a particularly present way for you, please bring them in. I also want to mention Alude has put a reference, a really important reference in the chat to make sure you catch. And great, this chat is happening. So some things that I, oh, my pen couldn't move fast enough, but some things I was particularly struck by when both of you were speaking is, I mean, Push, verbatim, you said thinking about teaching as a modality, a modality for activism feels like a particularly poignant way to think about the teaching project as a modality for activism. And that phrasing really struck me. And this question of, you know, a question that I feel like I'm sitting with now, you know, if we consider obviously not to the same, it's a different kind of rupture now. I feel like we're sitting in a particular kind of rupture and unrehearsed futures as a series has emerged in a way out of the different kinds of ruptures that the pandemic has created for all of us, right? And this question of what we're doing here, verbatim, what the rupture forces us to ask feels particularly present for me now. And that there's something about being conscious about what that question is that feels useful as well, you know, in the moment of rupture, to ask the question, as educators, as makers, what are we doing here as in, what do we now teach and how do we teach and who do we teach under the changed rapidly evolving circumstances is something that I'm really holding on to. The notion of the imaginary as a political space, I mean, you know, always. And something else I want to make mention of is something that came up in our, Alex and Push and I spoke a little bit this morning just before this session. And something that came up there that I wanna pull in is this idea of different kinds of enactments of privilege in moments of rupture, particularly at university settings, where there are the kind of on the ground activists type, those who might self-identify as activists and do the kind of boots on the ground work and teaching. And then the opportunity that is taken in the moment of rupture to publish. And usually we're talking about different types of ways of being in academia, but it really, I remember being very struck at the place where I was teaching in the 2015, 2016, 27 time of this incredible tension between these different ways of being in academia. And they show up in different, it shows up all the time, but there's something about the rupture moment that is like, oh, there's the ladder climbing, there's the academic ladder climbing project happening alongside the, I guess, more ground level, if we kind of use the image of climbing the ladder and being on the ground. And there's a real, I recall some real tensions at that time as some real staff room tensions, I should say. So that's just something that I want to pull in in, if it resonates great. Curious also to hear about non-South African contexts of rupture moments in which teaching and making has happened and evolved in a particular kind of way that might be interesting to pull in. Can I respond? Alex, go ahead, please, yes. Yeah, I mean, I think it almost fascinates me, you know, as practitioners and educators, you're often talking about issues of representation, who's telling the story, whose body's on the stage, what does it mean, you know, those are all critical questions that we should be asking ourselves and our students when they're making work. Yet for me, there's always this kind of strange juxtaposition from certain academics who will then write about a moment of rupture. They will write about performances during roads must fall, having never even attended a protest, put their bodies on the line, sparking up against anything, but those performance activists become an object of their own research. And very little is said about that and there's very little critique on that. And I found that really disturbing within the academic project that when you are writing about something, it's open season apparently, but when you are in the classroom as an artist, educator, practitioner, you're thinking about notions of representation and story and continuously and what does it mean and who we're putting on the stage and who's witnessing them, issues of power. So that's part of it. But another thing that we've also talked about, the three of us, you know, is, no, actually I'll pause there, I'll pause. Don't lose your thoughts, no. No, I'll come back to them, I have lost them, sorry. Oh, good. Push, come in. Yeah, you know, I haven't, I experienced this during Fismas 4 where there were moments where after I think it was a protest we were sitting amongst as concerned lecturers. We saw books coming out about Fismas 4. During Fismas 4, it was something that I was like, and then when were we in the, and what was also quite interesting, I remember when Spivek came to UK at the end and it was during this time. And we went, a colleague of mine went, me and Ayanda Kalapiri went to the talk and we were quite interested to hear how Spivek is kind of articulating this moment. And what was interesting was the panel. The panel I've never seen in protest, speaking to the students, it was like this concept of protest that was outside of UKZM. And it bothered me, I was like, where are the students who are protesting in this panel? Where are the lecturers who are part of it? And I remember being part of this concerned group and of lecturers, there were about 13 or 14 of us. And what was quite specific, interesting about this was that we were then reported to the thing that was the mailing guardian that we were co-hosting the students to protest. We were forcing them to burn buildings and do things. And this is when I realized that who narrates this is as important as who does it. And a group of academics came together and we started to write an article back and the title they had for the article, I think was Professors of Protest, they called us that. So these professors, they're telling students that they must go and burn buildings and I thought, yay. So what we then did was we claimed that term. So I go, okay, we like this actually, we are professors of protest and we will call ourselves that. Number one, two, we are gonna go and also create a protest for ourselves. But most importantly, write back to this and write back to how the journalism, and I think we always forget how the media is also part and parcel of this protest, whether we like it or not and what they choose to describe in the media. And in doing that, we kind of claimed the narrative of how we were positioned in this complex situation. So yes, there are people who take advantage of the moment. There are people who, and I remember at one point my line manager because we didn't have HODs, we didn't have HODs because then we had line managers and it just speaks to the language of the neoliberal university, where they wanted us to do a conference, for example, during the protest and we wrote extensively and said we can't do a conference when the students are being shuttered. And we were kind of threatened by our email that we need to go to this conference. And I remember feeling extremely angry at the institution and how it was violently ignoring the fact that we were in protest and we were in a violent situation. And I remember going into Howard campus to this conference, it was called the Decolonizing Shakespeare Conference and feeling in a sense of, I mean, we are decolonizing Shakespeare in a half, and feeling a sense of defeat and a sense of what are we doing as academics? What are we doing in our practice? What are we here to do really? If we are not engaging with the context, if we're not engaging with what's happening outside, we can't even hear each other because they're singing outside. And yet we're thinking that we can just silently close our eyes, take a big breath and just talk about Shakespeare through a decolonial lens. And that for me was a moment I realized that the institution itself was as violent as the police at that time. So, yes, being in these new liberal institutions was something that I think is part of the violence as much as the police, et cetera. So I don't know if I'm answering your questions today but I think I'm dancing around them. We love the dance. We love the dance. And Moine, you've got, go ahead. Yes, Alex, go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, sorry, I remember what I was, yeah. Go for it. Thank you, Bushful, bringing me back. Yeah, I mean, I was also wanting us to think about when the academy finds the theater and drama department useful and when it doesn't. And so often the theater department is, oh, yay, they can do X, Y, and Z for us, you know, and tick a whole lot of boxes. I mean, this happens a lot. It happens a lot in South Africa. And Jill Dolan in America talks about this, is how the theater department is harnessed for certain agendas within the academy. But then obviously when it's no longer useful, you know, the theater department doesn't get funding or no one comes to see your student works or you expect it to suddenly teach online when it's impossible, you know. So I think those are also important questions about how the academy responds to a theater pedagogy as well. And so Push and I worked in many different guises on something at Rhodes, which ticked many boxes for the university for first year students during orientation week. But then of course, you know, when the drama department at Rhodes became often the site of protest, you know, that was a very, very, very different reaction from senior management. But you know, again, where is the critique in the power directed? As soon as it is directed towards the university, then it's shut down and it's silenced as well or performances become silenced. I think Alexi raised in such a good point there. I know for example, you know, usually theater we use as an item in a conference or can you just make a play quickly about HIV AIDS, quick, quick, quick. You know, we kind of approached in that manner. I don't know if anyone resonates. I mean, I want to go back to what you're saying about Fisma, about the most amazing other show. But what was interesting at the Hexagon Theater was that there was this amphitheater where students would go specifically to go and sing there because their voices would be amplified. And it reminded you that obviously protest is a performance in itself. And the students knew where to go directly. They needed to go to the theater to be seen and their bodies to be seen and their voices to be heard. And for us, it forced us then obviously to engage because when it's that loud, when it's songs and the music and everything is that loud, you have no way of ignoring it. So it's interesting how the architecture of theater itself, the protest kind of, it's kind of, it's like a magnet. It kind of goes there in the institutions. You start seeing students going towards the theater, whether we like it or not. And I think that was something very useful for us as a staff to go, wow, we didn't realize that the amphitheater would be the site of performance for the protest itself. So yeah, how we are used is crucial. Usually I always say we are items. We need to fit into the agenda with the performance, but we can't critically engage apparently with performance because the moment there is some critical engagement, it's like, well, now you're being preachy, go away, blah, et cetera. So it's interesting how we are positioned within the academy. Thanks for saying that, Alex, and taking us there as well. I mean, also it's making me think about ways that ways to resist being co-opted in some way into where the agenda of the university at large might contradict a kind of personal teaching activist agenda in that moment. And of course, these are decisions that get made very quickly and are responsive and the work is often devised and totally responsive. But there's also when the call comes from the university to say, won't you pull together a panel quickly so that we can be seen to be having a conversation about this very important thing, that there's a kind of co-option to also deal with in that moment. I want to pull in, Mungini, you have a question here. I don't know if you want to ask it out loud. The one that starts, I wonder whether you might talk a little bit about the students' own professed awareness of the power of working through the repertoire. Hi, guys, thank you so much. This has been so juicy already. And it's got me thinking along these lines, right? I find this idea and found it both fascinating and troubling in equal measure at the time. This professed need compulsion to put the body on the line, which I'm literally using the words, right? Often students feel like we're putting our bodies on the line and come out of high water. It's about risking it all because of what we stand to gain from the sacrifice. I guess I wanted to say a word that we are making in this particular instance. Yet at the same time, and this critique came from various quarters, including from within the student body itself, is that the capacity to put one's body on the line is an aimless position in some ways, right? Is that there'd be an expectation in some ways that if you were committed to the cause, quote, unquote, if you were committed to the student, actually you had to be there on the front line performing protest in a particular way. Which I think I found troubling like other people did in that it assumed that we all arrived at that moment with, I guess the same kind of corporeal but also psychological research that allow us to kind of throw ourselves at the core phase, to throw ourselves at the violent apparatus in order to kind of do something. And part of the reason why I found that troubling and that assumption troubling as well is that it also failed to address in some ways how some bodies are always already on the line more so than others. And yet often those bodies, which are usually the bodies of women and the bodies of black women, particularly in the bodies of queer people were also then expected to lead the charge and bring everyone else dragging, kicking and screaming along with them to the party. So I found myself kind of trying to manage that tension between recognizing that we have this capacity to do this really important imaginative work that is deeply political that is absolutely shifting the world around us. But also the patient that there are certain kinds of people who are more fit for purpose in that particular scenario than others without necessarily naming it so. Yeah, so I guess it wasn't a question it's more of an observation that there's also this kind of other thing with this other kind of tone that's happening there that kind of I certainly started thinking more explicitly about the complicated intersections that the students are working from but also that that faculty are working from especially again, black faculty who are complicatedly oriented towards what the institution represents. Yeah, and this idea of the body being a forefront of kind of pushing the body to the front brings all of these things into play and also throws them into disarray and really I think kind of critically generative ways. Thank you, thanks for that. Alex or Push, either of you want to respond to any of what Mulaney has said? I mean, I think yeah, I mean, I think these are really, really important issues and I mean, it's not an easy answer because I think it depends on the kind of the way the political organising has worked. Some political organising has that demand you've got to be there and if you're not there then you're not there I've been in other spaces where I've been in other activist spaces where it has been okay to say actually I'm not psychologically okay to be there and that's been recognised and that's a different kind of politics of care that plays out in different ways in different organising. But it's very different, I think for example with the student work what I think was really hard was that it was very sudden and the youthfulness of it was an advantage but it also meant that there was a lot of privado and demand for the bodies on the line discourse. I'm not, yeah, I mean, that's part of that's part of a politics, I think. When I made the critique of academics who then go and write about it I'm not talking about academics who were always there but even academics who I know don't have a progressive politics using the moment to go, oh, this is a nice performance, oh, this is hot, I can write about the decolonial projects you know now because you know I was kind of part of that department. So that's kind of my response about I mean, we also wanted to touch about the relationship between kind of devised theatre pedagogy and political organising which I see as very close actually that the classroom space of the devised theatre embodied praxis in which you are democratically negotiating the kind of stories you want to tell is also echoes activist organising actually you are kind of in this contested space of trying to figure out how do we tell the counter narrative or for example I'm not directly addressing that but I do think a discussion needs to be have about the vulnerable body and what does that mean for the political precariousness in political and arts activism? Jo, Wangena you're raising quite an interesting point here because the bodies, you're right the bodies that are on the line are usually the bodies that are often targeted they're often hyper visible and I think my first observation when I arrived at UCSN at that time was that the black body and I'm not going to even mince it the black body was a target you know the gun was pointing at it often from classroom to another classroom and the articulations of protest began to sort of embody the violence themselves so you start to see the burning of buildings you start to see to hear the violence coming out of speeches from students that we're gonna meet them with those rubber bullets with other things that they have whether it sticks or stones whatever and so I mean I remember quite vividly being in a meeting with the DVC during Feastmas Fall and saying why are the security officers here and they say they're all here to protect you and I said from whom and they couldn't answer that question because HR said don't answer that because they couldn't say we are protecting you from students because technically they're also there to protect the students and eventually after a moment of anger the DVC then answers we're protecting the buildings more than anything else actually your bodies are not that important and that spoke volumes then to how these bodies were just they didn't care they didn't care they were the bodies that are coming from rural areas the black bodies they were poor bodies it would take about three to four weeks for the media to pick up a protest if you give them and that spoke volumes to who cared about that type of body in society they just didn't and so therefore they were disposable and the only way to be visible and to be recognized was this violence to meet the balance with the violence and I remember in one student meeting saying I can't protest I can't jump over a fence guys my big bum can't do that is there any other way really and you could see that there was like a commotion of I would have been what other ways there either you run or you don't run and I mean it's funny to say it like this now but I remember the moment going okay well I'm not gonna participate then in that protest because I can't run anymore I'm tired so yes Wangen you're raising a huge point about the bodies that are on the line and also articulations of protest but what was also interesting I don't know if it kind of feeds back to your question or to your comment Wangen it was that there were types of protest that started to emerge so the singing and dancing were not the only ones started to see people running in the airport instead of seeing people using prayer as protest for example at the Argy department came with their students to pray as a set of protest so you started to see okay there might be have to be alternative ways and in fact with a group of academics we started to list alternative ways in which we can protest that are not necessarily going to counter the interdict that was there because they were not we're not allowed to be more than 12 people at the time so we knew that the classroom was the only place where people could meet so we created these open lectures for example and when the police arrived and said why are the people singing in that room I was like oh we do drama, we're singing drama class we sing, what's your problem and I remember this conflict between me and the police there were 10 police officers between me and my colleague Marie Eng, my Dr. Eng they were pointing the 10 or 11 of them saying why, why, why, why do you see people singing you shouldn't be having a meeting like no one having a meeting, having a drama class and when we start to frame and start to be more creative and imaginative you could see the interdict couldn't affect us at that time but I was very keen to see how spirituality was another approach was another way into this moment and how to navigate it without having to meet violence with violence so yeah I mean that's probably just a little point I thought to just raise So I need to pause us here because we're seven minutes over the time that we said we would stop recording but what I actually want to do is to say that there's a question in the chat from Camille and Camille I want to if you would like invite you to speak it out loud the one that starts with do Alex or push for see a future between theatre and university support and if you would I'm happy to read it but please also jump in but for the sake of the agreement that we made at the beginning we are going to end the recording and continue the conversation and just move we're just going to keep going formally like this until quarter past the hour and then after party is also another continuation but just to honour the plan at the start we're going to end the recording now