The Global Cultures Institute and the Department of English hosted Kininso Koncepts for a workshop and panel discussion exploring the intersections of performance, youth agency, and environmentalism.
Kininso Koncepts, a Lagos-based creative organisation, joined King’s on 4 March to share their socially engaged artistry and perform their work Waterside. The event was organised by Dr Ella Parry-Davies, Lecturer in Theatre, Performance and Critical Theory in the Department of English, as part of programming for King’s Africa Week, with support from the Global Cultures Institute.
This opportunity was an immense contribution to the development of our work. It was truly inspiring for us to have all those wonderful people join us to share their thoughts. They were deeply involved in every bit and it was such a generous addition to the day.
Joshua Alabi, CEO/Creative Director of Kininso Koncepts
This was exactly the kind of event the Global Cultures Institute has been created to support: a powerful dramatic performance sharing space and conversing with engaging academic discussion, circulating ideas across disciplines, and confronting pressing issues, to do with the vulnerability of individuals, communities and ecosystems.
Jarad Zimbler, Director of Research, Global Cultures Institute
At the panel discussion, Kininso performed a “rehearsed reading” of their play Waterside, which explores totemisim and cultural memory against the backdrop of oil exploitation in the Niger Delta. Actors Edgar Eriakha and Stankley Okeke took to the floor, improvising around the constraints of the lecture hall to conjure up a fraught family dynamic, playing multiple characters and captivating the audience.
Kininso Koncepts Joshua Alabi
Joshua Alabi, CEO/Creative Director of Kininso Koncepts and writer & director for Waterside, introduced the performance. (Image: Richard Eaton)
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Panellists then responded to the themes of the play from their diverse areas of expertise. Raidat Karim, PhD student in the African Leadership Centre, described the power of youth-led social movements in Nigeria, focusing on the close bonds of mutuality and young friendship that were also represented in Waterside.
Picking up on questions of ecology and extraction, Dr Adelene Buckland, Reader in Nineteenth-Century Literature in the Department of English, offered an intricate close reading of 'Mine Mine Mine’, a poem by Uhuru Portia Phalafala examining gold mining in South Africa and its consequences in pollution, contamination, health, and bereavement.
Dr Clement Sefa-Nyarko, Lecturer in Security, Development and Leadership in Africa at the African Leadership Centre, reflected on approaches to the climate emergency. He emphasised that humans must consider ourselves of the environment, not outside of it, as similarly demonstrated by the depiction of animism in Waterside.
The panel was chaired by Annabel Ali, research assistant for the Department of English research strand for Creative Practice, Performance and Theatrical Cultures, and a King’s PhD student analysing theatrical approaches to codifying collective experiences and black cultural expression.
Kininso Koncepts Annabel Ali
Event chair Annabel Ali, PhD student. (Image: Richard Eaton)
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Earlier in the day, Kininso Koncepts hosted a workshop drawing on their theatre-making processes, where the seeds of lived experiences and encounters are germinated through group exploration and discussion.
Participants played physical drama games to hone group-thinking and sharpen senses, before reflecting on stories that inspire (or otherwise) and learning songs to sign together. Learning from these activities was compiled to create short performances using poetry and music to address themes of migration, climate and coloniality.
kininso workshop 780x440 (Blessing Okunlola)
Group photo of workshop attendees. (Image: Blessing Okunlola)
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The event was part of Africa Week, an annual celebration hosted by the African Leadership Centre, based in the School of Global Affairs at the Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy.
This year’s theme of Disrupting Distances: Nations, Systems, and Leadership explored the traditional dichotomies used to frame the world, such as developed versus developing, Global North versus Global South, and majority versus minority. Africa Week seeks to challenge these definitions through salient conversations reimagining world structures.
This was such a precious opportunity to bring together Kininso’s vibrant socially engaged theatre-making with the research and pedagogy happening at King’s. It was great to see a huge range of participants and audience joining us in the workshop – from undergraduates to professors, to artists and producers at King’s and beyond – and to see interdisciplinary insights coming together through the panel discussion. It was a privilege to be part of such a joyful and thought-provoking gathering.
Dr Ella Parry-Davies, Lecturer in Theatre, Performance and Critical Theory
Kininso Koncepts group photo
Back row, left to right: Joshua Alabi, Dr Ella Parry-Davies, Annabel Ali, Edgar Eriakha. Front row, left to right:Dr Adelene Buckland, Raidat Karim, Stanley Okeke, Dr Clement Sefa-Nyarko. (Image: Richard Eaton)