Bengisola is a multisensorial performance piece aimed at bearing witness to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), historical and current, in South Africa. Survivors of SGBV carry what communities choose not to speak. This work speaks/sings/senses that silence. The title of the work is a Zulu word that means ‘I was suspicious’, and refers to the ways in which communities are, through silence and silencing, complicit in suspected cases of SGBV. As such, Bengisola could be interpreted as an exploration of rehearsed conversations, practised within but ultimately left unsaid.

Bengisola is presented by us, Sami, David, Liam, and Alida, an ensemble of artists from diverse disciplinary backgrounds – classical singing, academia, dramaturgy, acting, movement and physical theatre, directing, and conducting. The piece is the artistic component of Alida’s doctoral research, which grapples with questions of witnessing and representation of sexual and gender-based violence in musical performance.

Join us for our investigation – assemblage – exploration – in which we think through questions such as: In what ways have we held our tongues? When have we looked away? What guilt do we carry for our silence and inaction? What are the possibilities for bearing witness now, alone and together, having confronted the ways in which we have failed to bear witness before?

To RSVP click HERE.

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The names are many. May they not be silent in your ear.

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With Sami Maseko, David Wolfswinkel, Liam Jaftha and Alida van der Walt:

Sami Maseko

Sami Maseko is a South African Actor, Theatre Maker, and Cultural Researcher whose work spans stage, screen, voice, and interdisciplinary performance. Trained in Drama & Theatre Studies at Stellenbosch University, with an Honours in Physical Theatre, her practice is grounded in Movement, collaboration, and socially responsive storytelling.

As an actor, Sami Maseko has performed in major South African theatre productions, including ‘For Colored Girls’ (Moscow, Joburg Theatre 2024), directed by James Ngcobo and ‘Ruined’ (Market Theatre, 2022), directed by Clive Thoko-Mathibe. Her screen work includes DIE VEGAN EN DIE JAGTER by Francois Maree (Silwerskerm 2022), Oksalayo Ngiyashisa (Lokshin Bioskop 2022) and her recent telenovela debut as Ikanyeng in House of Zwide Season 4 (2025).

Outside of extensive independent work on plays such as ‘IGAMA?’ (Slindile Mthembu, NAF 2020), The Coin (Hannah Noko Maja, Tour 2021), Dramaturgy on ‘What We Bring to the Table’ (Mbali Ndlozi, UJ 2026), and experimental workshops at The Centre for the Less Good Idea (2023-2025), she also works extensively as a voice artist, contributing to radio and audio drama, including Zulu-language storytelling for Africa’s first audio library.

As a theatre maker and researcher, Sami Maseko’s work explores movement, migration, identity, and belonging, with a particular interest in how bodies carry cultural memory across geography and time. Her research-led practice draws from urban sociology, indigenous knowledge systems, and black feminist thought, positioning performance as both an artistic and social inquiry. Through facilitation, dramaturgy, and collaborative creation, she remains committed to developing new voices and using performance as a tool for connection, reflection, and transformation.

David Wolfswinkel

David Wolfswinkel is a South African dramaturg and opera maker based in The Netherlands. Alongside his studio, David is the founder of spityellow! and currently works as a creative producer at Het Nederlands Kamerkoor. David has worked as a production dramaturg at the Dutch National Opera, as a guest curator at Concertgebouw Brugge, and as a lecturer at the universities of Stellenbosch and Cape Town. Some of his recent artistic work includes The NPC Etudes (2026), No Time for Crying (2026), Mijn Paard Heet Dood (2026), brb<3 (2024), and Hänsel und Gretel or The Incident (2023). David has recently collaborated with composer Michel van der Aa on the acclaimed operas Theory of Flames (2026) and From Dust (2025), and with director Marthinus Basson on the award-winning productions of Breyten Breytenbach’s Boklied (2025) and Tom Lanoye’s Die Fel Omstrede Kroon van Edward II en Gaveston (2023) – for both of which he received Fiësta Award nominations. David holds a Master of Music degree from Stellenbosch University and a Master of Arts in International Dramaturgy from the University of Amsterdam. His most recent scholarly work includes an article published in the 2026 issue of TURBA: The Journal for Global Practices in Live Arts Curation, as well as the 2025 publication by African Sun Media of the first complete and critical edition of the works of Jan Coetzee (1912–1999).

Liam Jaftha Bio

Liam Jaftha is an opera singer, voice teacher and opera maker based in Cape Town completing his Master of Music in Opera (University of Cape Town). He is the founder of spityellow! and the Converse discussion series. His own artistic projects include NPC Etudes (2026), the little match girl passion (2024), silent Rage, digital Noise (2023) and Hänsel und Gretel or The Incident (2023). He has worked as an assistant director in Opera UCT’s Die Fledermaus (2025) and as an assistant director and stage manager in Opera UCT’s Schumann & Janáçek Unbound (2025) during Cape Town Opera’s Shorts festival. Liam has collaborated as a noise artist on Jan van Esch’s Mitumba: Invasive Species (2023). He was also a participant in Cape Town Opera’s Staging Stories: Libretto Writing Workshop (2026). He was a finalist in the 4^th Aviva Pelham Operetta Competition (2025) and has performed the roles Ubaldo in Dalinda (2024) with Opera UCT, and Betto in Gianni Schicchi (2021) with Stellenbosch University’s Vocal Division.

Alida van der Walt

Trained as a classical singer, Alida van der Walt (mezzo-soprano) holds BMus and BMusHons degrees in vocal performance from Stellenbosch University, as well as an MMus degree in Musicology from Rhodes University. Alida’s Master’s project, which investigated expectations of female respectability in classical vocal performance in South Africa, contained an artistic research component, thus positioning Alida in a space between practical musicianship and academia. Simultaneously musician and academic, her musical and academic projects are mutually constitutive and inform each other in an ongoing loop. Alida is currently a final-year PhD fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVReQ) at Stellenbosch University. Her research and artistic creation are supported by the National Research Foundation through the SARChI Chair in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma, as well as by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation through a 2025-2026 African Fellows award.

Alida’s PhD project, entitled ‘Sensing sexual and gender-based violence in South Africa: Vocal performance as witness and apology’, investigates the act of bearing witness and/as apology through musical performance in the context of sexual and gender-based violence in South Africa. Supervised by Dr Carina Venter (Music Department, SU) and Dr Samantha van Schalkwyk (Community Engagement Unit, UWC) this study is a necessarily interdisciplinary project, situated at the intersection of trauma studies, studies of music and violence, and performance studies. As such, the study takes the form of an integrated PhD, consisting of both an artistic performance component and a full monograph. Bengisola is the artistic component of this research.

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This work has been generously supported by the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest and the National Research Foundation (doctoral fellowship and scholarship) and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation (2025-2026 African Fellows award).

To RSVP click HERE.