Quanita Adams is a stage and screen actress, and writer. She has appeared on stage in notable plays, including Valley Song, At Her Feet, and Boesman & Lena, all of which garnered her Best Actress Fleur du Caps in their respective years. She is the 2008 winner of the Fleur du Cap Award for Best Supporting Actress for her roles in Cissie, and the 2003 Winner of the Fleur du Cap Award for Best Ensemble for For Colored Girls. She also performed in Truth in Translation, an award winning internationally touring production, and in Keeper of the Kumm. Quanita’s film credits include Forgiveness, which won her the inaugural SAFTA for Best Actress in a feature film, Cape of Good Hope, Skeem, Material, Tess, and recently, Susters. Television appearances include key roles in Kyknet's Binnelanders and the sitcom Vinkel & Koljander, which she conceptualised and head wrote; hosting a family game show on ViaTv; and the Afrikaans drama Sara se Geheim, for which she was nominated for a SAFTA. She has written for television dramas such as Sterlopers, Swartwater, Sokhulu and Partners III, and Arendsvlei. Quanita featured as Kaye in the Empatheatre production of Boxes.

Dr Kira Erwin is an urban sociologist, and Senior Researcher, at the Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology in Durban, South Africa. Her research and publications focus largely on race, racialisation, racism and anti-racism work within the urban context. Her past projects explore narratives of home and belonging within the context of migration, gender and inclusion; as well as state delivered housing projects in the city. She is currently working on Lalela uLwandle with a team of researchers and civil society organisations to think through how people's economic, spiritual, scientific and symbolic meanings of the sea should be part of ocean governance decisions. Her projects make use of creative participatory methods, and she collaborates with colleagues in various creative fields to produce forms of public storytelling that extend research beyond the walls of academia.

Taryn Kaplan is an activist researcher and facilitator, with a background in urban water justice and social learning to support civil society networks. Taryn is currently a co-investigator on the One Ocean Hub, focusing on the building of solidarity between academic researchers and community based activists working across disciplines, sectors and knowledge systems towards coastal justice. As a researcher and co-facilitator on the Lalela ulwandle project Taryn experienced the incredibly powerful role that Empatheatre can play in bridging many of the intractable dividing lines in our society - lines of race, class, gender, literacy, language - and in so doing to set the stage for the building of equitable relationships between different groups of people, based on critical, reflexive solidarity.

“Guy Buttery is something of a National treasure”, says South Africa’s leading newspaper The Mercury. As an internationally recognised musician, this multi-instrumentalist enjoys invitations to play sell-out performances all over the globe. The USA, UK, Australia, France, Brazil, and Italy have all welcomed him back year after year.  However, to simply label Guy Buttery as one of South Africa’s musical phenoms would be an injustice. His international role has surpassed merely performing concerts to foreign audiences. It has evolved into one as an ambassador of South African music, inspiring people across the world with his homegrown style at the very heart of his talent and tenacity. Guy’s distinct unification of South African guitar music is the musical advocate for everything positive and beautiful about the place he calls home. Guy co-composed the original score for Lalela uLwandle and has lent his musical talents to a variety of other Empatheatre projects over the years.

Rory Booth is an Actor, Screenplay writer, singer and Kathak exponent of Sri Manesh Maharaj. A Communications graduate from The University of South Africa, Rory’s most celebrated works include head-writing the South African cinematic blockbusters Keeping Up with the Kandasamys and Kandasamys the Wedding, and writing and acting in his skit-comedy viral web series Traveeno Talks. Rory is no stranger to the performing arts with fifteen years of experience under his belt. He has toured the world in musicals - notably The Sound of Music and One Man One Light. The national tour of Shrek the Musical scored him a Naledi Theatre Award for his portrayal of Donkey. Rory is equally comfortable in straight plays and Shakespeare, having recently completed the London staging of Ashwin Singh’s Reoca Light. On the music front, Rory’s single Love so Crazy is the official soundtrack for Kandasamys The Wedding and is working on an EP releasing in 2021. One of South Africa’s few male Kathak Dancers, Rory’s love for classical Indian dance has extended into a lead role in the short film ‘The Dance’ and he performed in South Africa’s first Kathak festival Kathak Mohatsav earlier this year. Rory currently plays Devan Gopal on Etv’s Imbewu: The Seed. Lalela Ulwandle is Rory’s debut in an Empatheatre production.

Zintle Bobi is an actress, dancer, and writer. She was born and raised in the Eastern Cape Queenstown (South Africa) and went to Ugie high where she fell in love with Drama and Performance. After she obtained her diploma in Durban University of Technology, she went on to pursue a B-tech in Tshwane University of Technology, where she performed in the show, Oedipus - The King, Thathologa (a physical theatre piece about depression she devised), Dead Chant in Death in Grahamstown Arts Festival (2018). Other plays include Kutu the musical, Bloom and various other plays around Gauteng and Durban. Zintle played Aneni in the Empatheatre production of The Last Country. 

Nompilo Maphumulo is a 39-year-old professional actress who was born and raised in KwaMashu, Durban. Nompilo joined Ekhaya Multi arts center in 2011, where she completed a learnership skills program with NQF level 4 in Performing Arts. At the center, she performed in a variety of musical and dramatic shows. In late 2014 Nompilo was cast in the hugely popular SABC 1 soapie Uzalo where she plays the beloved character of Nosipho. Nompilo starred in Empatheatre’s The Last Country as the Somali refugee Aamiina.

Tristan Horton is a sound designer and sound editor living and working in Durban. Tristan settled into a career of Sound Design as it offered him the opportunity to satisfy his needs for creative expression, problem solving, storytelling and technological nerdiness. Tristan’s work includes feature films, Wildlife Documentaries, AAA Game Franchises, Sound Effects Libraries, Installed Sonic Art and Theatre Sound Design. Tristan’s work for theatre includes works like Tree boy, Abnormal Loads, Little Foot, Animal Farm, Boxes, NewFoundLand and Lalela Ulwandle. He is currently experimenting with VR and AR immersive formats and continues to research and experiment with recording and mixing formats.

Nomkhosi Gama Xulu joined UCT Department of Sociology in November 2019, from working as a Senior Researcher at the Christ Hani Institute. She has previously worked at the University of KwaZulu Natal as well as the Durban University of Technology. She is an Honorary Research Associate at DUT. As a Fulbright scholar, she spent two academic semesters at the University of California, Berkeley.

Her research interests range from issues of migration, primarily rural-urban and stretching it to international migration; gender, social reproduction, livelihoods, identity and belonging. She also has a particular interest in higher education, student success, student access and student engagement. Nomkhosi has assisted on research and facilitation for the Empatheatre productions of The Last Country and Lalea uLwandle.

Tshego Khutsoane is a creative practitioner drawn to work of ARTivist/ARTivism orientation and sensibility; exploring complex human and social issues. Tshego enjoys involvement in site-responsive performance; collaborative theatre making/devising; intercultural and interdisciplinary performance and gender studies with a particular focus on Role, Expectation and Behaviour. 

A part-time tutor in Performance Studies with the legendary Market Theatre Laboratory and Development Manager with The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative - a pioneering performance focused social justice organisation, which in 2021 created a world-first WhatsApp #PhoneFestival. In 2019, the Market Theatre Laboratory and diartskonageng published a multi-lingual anthology titled Between Pillar and Post, featuring Tshego as contributor.

Tshego is an MBA degree graduate and the recipient of the 2016 Johnny Clegg Scholarship for Creative Practitioners with Henley Business School of Reading University, with a qualifying LGBT+ focused study intersecting Business and Identity Matters, highlighting policy, culture and social factors influencing visibility/invisibility negotiations.

Prior studies include Acting, Directing, Contemporary Performance, Applied Drama and Theatre through the (UCKR) University Currently Known as Rhodes (BA, BAH) and a Master of Arts degree through Wits University, qualifying with distinctions in their Theatre as Activism and Reflective Practice specialisations.

Through various creative international collaborations and exchanges as Performer, Theatre-Maker and Facilitator, Tshego has travelled abroad to Ethiopia, Germany, Netherlands, Senegal, Switzerland, Zambia.

As Director, Tshego has enjoyed Standard Bank Ovation celebration for works produced in collaboration with UJ Arts and Culture, For Colored girls (2016) written by Ntozake Shange and ChoirBoy (2018) written by Terrel Alvin McCraney. As Teaching-Artist Tshego has developed undergrad and postgraduate curricula and led participatory Applied Drama and Theatre oriented projects and works within Wits and Pretoria Universities.

Tshego is currently working with Empatheatre, co-facilitating and designing an online collaboration between young female leaders and artists from Oudtshoorn (SA) and Manchester (UK). The project, supported by the British Council, is a collaboration between The Klein Karoo National Arts Festival, Empatheatre, The SICK! Festival (UK) and Young Identity in Manchester. 

Marí Stimie has worked as journalist, publicist, marketer, project coordinator and production manager in the arts and culture industry for just over two decades, mostly in a freelance capacity. Her most recent - and some ongoing - relationships include the "dancing in other words" Spier International Poetry Festival from 2013 to 2016, the Institute for Creative Arts at the University of Cape Town from 2017 to the present, MvG Productions and the Baxter Theatre Centre last year and now Empatheatre. She is currently contracted by a Cape Town-based non-profit, MusicWorks, to coordinate a national network around non-profit organisations practising arts-related activities to promote psychosocial wellbeing; and will be in involved in the 2019 rendition of one of Cape Town’s flagship public, live art events, Infecting the City, curated by Jay Pather. Mari worked as production manager on the Empathatheare production of Boxes.

Gary Thomas is a musician, producer and composer in Cape Town, South Africa. Mostly known as a recording and internationally touring artist from 2006, he is also an accomplished composer for film, documentary and various other mediums. Since his last SA tour, Thomas lived in and performed 30 concerts across Europe, began the ongoing process of recording his new musical outfit ‘Moodship’ and won an Ovation Award at this 2018’s National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. He has been nominated for a Naledi Theatre award for Original Score for Neil Coppen’s Abnormal Loads. Gary co-created the score alongside Guy Buttery for Empatheatre’s Lalela uLwandle.

The Big Brotherhood is an award- winning theatre and production company based in Durban, South Africa. The company was formed by a dynamic group of artists: Vumani Khumalo, Phumlani Ngubane, Ngcebo Cele, Sandile Nxumalo, & Zenzo Msomi. The Big Brotherhood started under the wing of K-Cap, conceiving productions about crime and jail-life, and performing them in different schools and theatres in KZN. The company is managed by the artists themselves, and was one of the first TWIST theatre development project groups in KZN. The Big Brotherhood is more than a theatre company, but also a social development and transgressive learning laboratory, which aims to create socially relevant theatre in South Africa, honouring the memory of powerful struggle theatre makers that came before us. The Big Brotherhood co-created and performed in the Empatheatre production of Ulwembu.

Alison Cassels trained at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Alison took time out to bring up three daughters and since coming to South Africa in 1982, has worked for most of the theatre companies in Durban. She won best supporting actress for playing Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest and won best actress awards for Miss Helen in The Road to Mecca, and for Emily Hobhouse in Dear Mrs Steyn. Although this is the first time she has worked with Empatheatre, she worked with Neil Coppen in his production of Abnormal Loads playing Moira. Alison recently starred in the Empatheatre production of Lalela Ulwandle as the marine biologist Faye.

Elize Cawood is a multi-award winning stage and film actress and one of South Africa’s national treasures. Elize studied BA Drama at the University of the Free State and started her professional career in 1974 as a member of the Performing Arts Council of the Free State. (PACOFS). She has subsequently gone on to feature in hundreds of notable theatrical productions, films and television series working with the likes of Pieter-Dirk Uys, Athol Fugard, Gray Hofmeyer and Paul Slabolepszy. Elize appeared in the SABC3 soapie Isidingo, playing the mother of her own, real-life daughter, Jenna. She also featured in Katinka Heyns’ feature film Die Wonderwerker dealing with a period in the life of the renowned writer, doctor, lawyer, scientist, philosopher and morphine addict Eugène Marais which won her a Best Actress Award at the Silweskermfees in 2012. In the same year she played a small part in Leon Schuster’s Mad Buddies, and a leading part in Lien se Lankstaanskoene. Elize worked with Empatheatre on the first iteration of Lalea uLwandle, where she originated the role of the retired marine biologist Faye, written by Helen Walne.

Ameera Conrad is a recipient of the 2016 Theatre Arts Admin Collective’s Emerging Theatre Director’s Bursary and an alumnus of the 2017 Lincoln Center Theater Directors’ Lab in New York. She is a co-curator, co-writer, and performer in The Fall, which made its international debut at Edinburgh International Festival Fringe (2017) where it received the Scotsman Fringe First Award for Writing, The Stage’s Ensemble Award for Acting, and was Shortlisted for the Amnesty International Freedom of Speech Award. The Fall has performed to sold-out audiences and to 76 critically acclaim in the UK and US where it was nominated for the Helen Hayes award for Best Visiting Production (Studio Theatre, Washington DC, 2018) and was named the New York Times’ Critics Choice (St. Ann’s Warehouse, New York, 2018). Ameera is also a twice-published playwright, and one of the co-founders of the womxn-centric theatre collective, The Furies. Her most recent project was devising and directing a new production at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, titled Towers. Ameera co- wrote the Empatheatre production of Boxes alongside Neil Coppen..

Tamlynn Fleetwood (PhD) is a research and evaluation specialist with extensive research, monitoring and evaluation, and project management experience. Tamlynn has post-graduate degrees in Environmental Management (BSoc Sci Hons), Human Geography (MSoc Sci) and Community Development (Post-Doc) from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), as well as a Doctoral degree in Geography from Durham University (UK). Her research interests and work experience span a range of topics within the social sciences; namely, urban and environmental issues, education, social housing and informality. Over the past couple of years, Tamlynn has worked part-time in a production management/co-ordination role for a number of Empatheatre productions, including The Last Country, Lalela Ulwandle and Ulwembu.

Philisiwe Twijnstra is a writer, director and actor. She resides in Durban where she co-founded Durban Womxn Playwrights in 2017. She was also selected as one of the female directors for a Women’s' Theatre Festival in Johannesburg (2016). Philisiwe was shortlisted for Short Sharp Stories (2017) for her short Story Little Black Sandals. She received a fellowship in Germany (2018) and her play The Red Suitcase was selected for staged readings in Canada by Zee Zee Theatre (2018). Philisiwe was the recipient for CASA playwright award residency (2018) to write her new play Not Enough Buses in Spring. Directed Nongogo at University of KwaZulu Natal (2019). More recently Philisiwe was a (2020) Distell Playwright Finalist for her play Itshali. She has a master's degree in creative Writing from Rhodes University. Philisiwe played Orfrah in the Empatheatre production of The Last Country.

Mark Elderkin graduated from UCT Drama School in 2003. His theatre credits include: Shakespeare in Love and Champ for the Fugard Theatre, The Frontiersmen and Ashes to Ashes at Alexander Bar, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As you Like It and Macbeth for Maynardville; and Bouncers and The Secret Love life of Ophelia for the Baxter Theatre. For his role in the Afrikaans play Bethesda, he was nominated for a Kyknet Fiesta Best Actor Award. Film and television include: Black Sails, Dark Tide, Skeem, Konfetti, Restless, Long Walk to Freedom, Goodbye Bafana, Madiba, Death Race: Inferno, Good Omens, Troy: Fall of a city, Outlander, Tali’s Wedding Diary, The Dark Tower, Tess and The Book of Negroes. Mark is a past recipient of The Fleur du Cap Award (Most Promising Student) The FNB Vita Award (Best New Actor) and the 2018 Fleur du Cap Award (Best Supporting Actor). Mark featured as Lawrence in the Empatheatre production of Boxes.

Kiroshan is an award-winning actor based in Cape Town. He graduated from the University of Cape Town with a BA in Theatre and Performance. At the end of his final year he was awarded the prestigious Fleur du Cap Award for most promising student (2016). Kiroshan completed his actor training at the University of Cape Town to obtain a BA(hons) in Theatre and Performance. His theatre credits include, William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, Athol Fugard's People Are Living There, Anthology, People Beneath our Feet, Reparation, Single Minded and The Eulogists which premiered at the Fugard Theatre. ​ Kiroshan's television and film credits include Waterfront, National Geographic’s Origins: The Journey of Humankind, Love Jacked, Bring it on 6 and Tremors 6: A Cold Day in Hell. 

Daneel Knoetze is a journalist and activist based in Cape Town. His work has largely focused on land struggles in working class suburbs, townships, farms and surrounding Cape Town. He recently returned to South Africa from a Hubert H. Humphrey fellowship in the United States, and is in the process of getting an investigative journalism start-up off the ground. He is a graduate of Rhodes University. Daneel collaborated with the Empatheatre team on the scripting of their production of Boxes.

Prof. Monique Marks currently heads up the Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology (UFC@DUT). Initially trained as a social worker, she has a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Natal. She has worked mainly as an (activist) academic but has also worked in an NGO (the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation) and for the African National Congress in the period leading up to the first national democratic elections. Monique writes predominantly in the field of criminology and urban studies. She has published widely in the areas of youth social movements, ethnographic research methods, police labour relations, police organizational change and street level drug use. She has published six books: Young Warriors: Youth Identity, Politics and Violence in South Africa; Transforming the Robocops: Changing Police in South Africa; and Police Occupational Culture: New Debates and Directions (edited with Anne-Marie Singh and Megan O’Neill); The Spaces In Between; and Police Reform from the Bottom Up (edited with David Sklansky); and Voices of Resilience: A Living History of the Kenneth Gardens Municipal Housing Estate in Durban (co-authored with Kira Erwin and Tamlynn Fleetwood). She has also published over 54 peer reviewed articles and numerous reports. She sits on a number of journal editorial boards, both national and international. She co-founded and established South Africa’s first low-threshold Opioid Substitution Project. Monique worked closely with the Empatheatre team on the research and touring of their award-winning production of Ulwembu.

Before 2015, Raymond held leadership positions in different Catholic NGOs: as Director of the Jesuit Institute in Johannesburg; as project director in a Ugandan refugee camp with the Jesuit Refugee Service; and as Head of Communities for CAFOD, a leading UK development charity. 

For 14 years he worked professionally for global marketing consultancy Interbrand, eventually as Managing Director of their New York office. 

Born in the UK, Raymond holds a BA in Philosophy and Theology from Oxford; an MA in Philosophy from the University of London; and an MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics. He is a PhD candidate at UKZN on the subject of Theology and Development. He is also a frequent writer and commentator in newspapers, radio and television, including a regular column in ‘The Mercury’ in Durban. Raymond and the Denis Hurley Centre team were involved in the Emptheatre productions of Ulwembu and The Last Country.

Blythe Stuart Linger is a dynamic Arts administrator, production manager and artist manager based in Cape Town. On any given day, Blythe can be found negotiating artist’s fee with producers, reading, amending and signing contracts, drawing up budgets, doing a financial recon of projects to designing social media posts, sourcing costumes, planning logistics of international tours, the list goes on and on. It’s for this reason, Blythe tends to favor the title Arts administrator as it encompasses the interlinking fields of business, creativity, and administration he works within. In 2019, Blythe worked with the Empatheatre team as production manager on the first iteration of Lalela Ulwandle. 

www.bslmanagement.com