{"id":3445,"date":"2019-07-02T08:59:05","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T07:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=3445"},"modified":"2020-10-14T12:40:08","modified_gmt":"2020-10-14T11:40:08","slug":"when-coasts-meet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=3445","title":{"rendered":"When Coasts Meet: Seeking home, finding self"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_3446\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3446\" style=\"width: 748px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3446\" src=\"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/WhenCoastsMeet.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"748\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/WhenCoastsMeet.jpg 748w, http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/WhenCoastsMeet-300x241.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 748px) 100vw, 748px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3446\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">When Coasts Meet (poster image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Poetic and poignant, Khwezi Becker\u2019s words embrace us from the start.<\/p>\n<p>German is the language we hear. And now isiZulu. Then English too. Khwezi deftly entwines these three languages and playing with the gruff guttrals and clicks and lyricism\u2026 she makes music. Within her, the languages trace her parentage, and it is the enfolding of her identity that <em>When Coasts Meet<\/em> depicts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey ask me where my umbilical cord is buried\u2026\u201d Where are her roots? Are we rooted where we are born? What about one\u2019s family tree \u2013 how deep are those roots within us? Khwezi\u2019s poetry subtly digs at these questions and it unearths emotional connections to what makes a home.<\/p>\n<p>Khwezi uses her voice like an instrument, twisting sounds and manipulating rhythms to give the words weight and life. She is a poet after all. And blending together her style of spoken word, with music and soft movement, Khwezi and director and co-writer Nomcebisi Moyikwa stitch together distilled fragments, \u201cof a life I used to belong to\u201d. Parts of a life felt splintered between. Between cultures, between races, between continents.<\/p>\n<p>Teased for looking like nobody, for not resembling her black mother or white father \u2013 for being mixed-race \u2013 she learnt from young to make herself invisible, \u201cto fit myself into small spaces\u201d. It\u2019s a sad moment yet the vocal boldness with which she shares this story reveals Khwezi\u2019s defiance of this narrative, and a reclaiming of her story, her \u2018self\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Khwezi is a fresh 22 and a slight figure on an almost bare stage. Yet her enormous presence exudes an old soul\u2019s understanding\u2026 of loss, of heartache, of forgiveness, of the pains of feeling displaced \u2013 in spirit and place.<\/p>\n<p>The work is gentle but charged with authentic vulnerability as it ruminates on lineage, heritage, and identity in a closely personal way.<\/p>\n<p>When Coasts Meet<em> has one last performance today, 2 July at 20.30. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalartsfestival.co.za\/events\/when-coasts-meet\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Click here<\/a> for details and bookings.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Written and performed by Khwezi Becker<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Directed and co-written by Nomcebisi Moyikwa<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Poetic and poignant, Khwezi Becker\u2019s words embrace us from the start. German is the language we hear. And now isiZulu. Then English too. Khwezi deftly entwines these three languages and &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=3445\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[421,579,605,655,772,922],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3445"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3813,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3445\/revisions\/3813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}