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TWO PLAYS. ONE CITY. DIFFERENT KINDS OF LOVE.
Bcoz Wow presents What We Bring to the Table and Wrong Emotional Address, two original plays written and directed by Mbali Ndlozi
What does it mean to prepare yourself for love? And what happens when love arrives, but cannot offer you what you need?
16+ (strong language, mature themes and sexual content)
This October, Johannesburg-based creative company Bcoz Wow brings two intimate, contemporary South African plays to The Basement Theatre at Roodepoort Theatre.
Written and directed by Mbali Ndlozi.
Set in two Johannesburg apartments, the productions explore the often-unspoken negotiations of modern relationships: the pressure to be desirable, the emotional labour of dating, the complexity of queer intimacy, and the difficult decisions people make when love alone is not enough.
One story unfolds around a dinner table. The other begins in the aftermath of intimacy. Both ask what we are willing to give, compromise and ultimately protect in the pursuit of connection.
WHAT WE BRING TO THE TABLE
Four hours to dinner. One carefully prepared meal. An evening that could change everything.
Nomfanelo Phiri has a date.
She has planned the evening, chosen the wine and prepared a meal that says everything she is not quite ready to say aloud. Her best friend, Sifiso Nkosi, arrives with groceries, opinions and very little patience for the romantic expectations she has placed on herself.
What begins as an ordinary afternoon in a Johannesburg kitchen becomes a funny, uncomfortable and deeply recognisable conversation about contemporary dating, gender expectations, friendship and the exhausting business of trying to be chosen.
As Nomfanelo prepares for a man who has yet to arrive, she and Sifiso confront their own contradictions about love, independence, desire and the compromises they are prepared to make.
Drawing on the language of contemporary relationship culture, including the ideas of psychotherapist Esther Perel, What We Bring to the Table asks a deceptively simple question:
When we say we are bringing something to a relationship, what exactly are we bringing, and what are we hoping to receive in return?
Cast: Sihle Shona and Kgomotso Nkomo
Running time: Approximately 70 minutes.
WRONG EMOTIONAL ADDRESS
Two women. One night. A connection that refuses to be simple.
Amahle and Naledi have shared a night of intimacy.
In the quiet that follows, tenderness gives way to a conversation neither woman can avoid. Their attraction is undeniable, but their expectations of love and commitment are not the same.
Amahle believes love can exist beyond traditional exclusivity. Naledi wants a relationship in which commitment means choosing one person. Neither woman is necessarily wrong, and neither is prepared to pretend that the difference does not matter.
Set in a single room over one night, Wrong Emotional Address examines the emotional consequences of wanting someone whose understanding of love does not align with your own.
Rather than presenting a conventional story of betrayal, the play explores a more complicated reality: two people can be honest with each other, care deeply for one another, and still find themselves unable to build the same future.
At its heart is a question many people recognise but struggle to answer:
Can someone be right for you emotionally, yet unable to love you in the way you need?
Cast: Sami Maseko and Ziaphora Dakile
Running time: Approximately 45 minutes.
TWO STORIES, ONE CONVERSATION
Although the plays follow different characters and relationships, they share an interest in the private moments that shape how people understand love.
In What We Bring to the Table, the possibility of a relationship hangs over an ordinary domestic evening. In Wrong Emotional Address, a relationship's possibilities are tested after intimacy has already taken place.
Presented together, the works invite audiences to consider the distance between romantic expectation and emotional reality.
The double bill also forms part of Bcoz Wow's commitment to creating original contemporary South African theatre that centres recognisable experiences, complex characters and stories often left outside mainstream romantic narratives.
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