as british as a watermelon
as british as a watermelon
Join queer Zimbabwean performer mandla for this colourful and personal exploration of childhood migration memories.
‘My name is mandla.
It means power.
I gave it to myself.’
Zimbabwean writer and performer mandla has a selective memory and is scrambling to piece together a life mostly forgotten in the name of survival. Through the exploration of mandla’s fragmented LGBTQ asylum and childhood migration memories, as british as a watermelon asks powerful questions about belonging, trauma and forgiveness.
Told through an unflinching narrative, weaving poetry and storytelling together with destruction and colourful chaos, you are invited to join mandla’s rise from the dead and reclamation of misplaced power.
Beautifully intrusive
The Refuge series is supported by British Council, Edinburgh Futures Institute at the University of Edinburgh and Claire and Mark Urquhart
Made possible through the PLACE programme
Programme
mandla Writer and Performer
Producer Switchflicker Productions / Jayne Compton
Collaborator, Lighting and Staging Concept, Voiceover Recording Graham Clayton-Chance
Creative Advisors Sonia Hughes, Jo Fong
Costume John Krausa
Set Design Michael Hankin
Lighting Design Phil Buckley, Benjamin Liddell
Sound Design Xana
Production Manager Phil Buckley
Outside Eye Pelin Basaran, Matt Fenton, Dan Watson, Yandass Ndlovu