Who writes history? Who is honoured with a statue, and who is cast as the enemy? Which stories are passed down, and which are lost along the way?
Mthombeni's performances begin with battlefields, barbershops, family histories and personal memories, yet they reach far beyond the individual story. They explore what connects people across generations, borders and histories.
Music, movement, language and imagery intertwine throughout his work, creating spaces where different voices and experiences can exist alongside one another and enter into dialogue.
How do we stay connected when so much around us seeks to pull us apart?
WELCOME TO THE UNIVERSE OF JUNIOR MTHOMBENI.
After the success of Malcolm X, Dear Winnie and Burning City, KVS artist Junior Mthombeni returns this season with three productions: Barber Shop Chronicles, Hannibal and Die Before You Die. Identity, community, masculinity and history once again run like a common thread through his work. These themes not only shape his performances, but are also deeply embedded in the way he creates theatre.
As the co-founder of several artistic collectives, Mthombeni consistently approaches creation as a collaborative process. It is never the "I" that takes centre stage, but the "we". This horizontal way of working is reflected in his performances, where communities, encounters and shared memories continually take centre stage.
Behind these sometimes deeply personal stories lie broader narratives. A conversation in a barbershop becomes a conversation about identity, a family name opens the door to a colonial legacy, and the story of the famous Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca raises questions about who writes history and who is remembered as a hero or an enemy.
What does it mean to search for your place in a world that constantly excludes people? How do we live with the legacies of colonialism, migration, war and racism? And how do we continue to believe in connection when fear and polarisation seem to be on the rise?
Mthombeni approaches these questions not through abstract theories, but through encounter. Music, rhythm and collective energy bring people together around stories that are not meant to be explained, but shared. In doing so, big ideas become tangible human stories.
This search for connection also lies at the heart of the three productions Mthombeni brings to KVS this season: Barber Shop Chronicles, Hannibal and Die Before You Die.
7 > 15/1/'27 @ KVS BOL
In Barber Shop Chronicles, Mthombeni turns the barbershop into a social microcosm. What at first glance seems like an everyday place turns out to be a space where friendships are forged, conflicts are fought out, and vulnerabilities are shared.
In their reworking of Inua Ellams’ award-winning text, Michael De Cock and Junior Mthombeni relocate the story to a French-speaking space that connects cities such as Kinshasa, Dakar, Douala, Ouagadougou, Abidjan, and Brussels. In doing so, they create a network of voices and stories that spans continents and makes the richness of African and diasporic communities visible.
Themes such as parenting, religion, migration, love, and politics constantly collide. Between buzzing clippers and sharp jokes, a multifaceted portrait of Black masculinity unfolds, deliberately stepping away from clichés and stereotypes.
Barber Shop Chronicles shows the power of conversation, where the barbershop becomes a safe space in which doubt, pride, uncertainty, and connection can coexist.
11 > 13/2/'27 @ KVS BOL
With Hannibal, the perspective shifts from the barbershop to the battlefield of history. In this large-scale techno-opera, Junior Mthombeni and Michael De Cock explore how war, propaganda, and image-making have shaped for centuries who is remembered as a hero and who is labeled as an enemy.
Starting from the story of the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca and the myth of Dido and Aeneas, the performance draws surprising connections between the Punic Wars and contemporary geopolitical tensions. Ancient stories still echo in the way Europe views itself and the Other.
Opera, hip-hop, slam poetry, live painting, video art, and dance come together in an explosive performance that advocates nuance and polyphony.
In Hannibal, history is not presented as a collection of facts, but as something that can be manipulated and deployed. The performance exposes how certain voices have been centered for centuries while others were pushed to the margins. In this way, Hannibal’s story also becomes one about colonial legacies, power structures, and the question of who has the right to tell history.
17 > 19/2/'27 @ KVS BOX
With Die Before You Die, Mthombeni returns to a story that lies closer to himself.
After his previous performance Vaderlandloos, in Die Before You Die he continues his search for identity in a personal confrontation with ancestry, family history, and colonial legacies. Central is his family name, a name imposed under colonial rule.
The performance follows Mthombeni’s journey to South Africa, where he tries to reclaim his original family name Moloi, and his journey to Varanasi in India, a city where people go to detach themselves from earthly existence.
Where earlier works often started from collective experiences, here Mthombeni explicitly turns inward. The search for his original name touches on his childhood, his origins, and the questions that have occupied him as a maker for years.
Die Before You Die is about letting go. About saying goodbye to imposed identities. About the question of which stories we carry and which we must leave behind in order to begin again.
Mthombeni turns the stage into a meeting place where history, identity, and community are not fixed, but continuously re-examined. A space where different stories converge around one shared question:
How do we remain human when everything around us tries to pull us apart?