Context
The Xhosa poet Anele Kose from Cape Town wrote a series of poems about love as food to be cooked. The poems were to be performed in Xhosa, one of the main language of South Africa along English and Africaan. The Masambe Theater is a performance space under the Baxter Theater that was going to be re-open with this pre-inaugural performance. The young female director Nwabisa Plaatjie is in charge on the space and its programmation. It is together that we planned the Eat Art performance with the poetic declamations.
Description
The poet welcomed the guest outside the theater with a first poem. As the guest walked down the alley to the entrance door, they followed a row of origami baskets with fragments of a coming poem. They chose one basket and detached from the line. As they enter the theater, the artist greeted them at a table and offered them a conjugal dish, Mphokoqo, an intimate porridge normally served between husband and wife in the Xhosa culture. Various toppings accompany it.
The spectators followed a row of fresh flowers until the entrance of the performance room while eating or avoiding the Mphokoqo porridge. The poet Anele Kose performed his poems before a bemused audience. The audience is then invited for a blind tasting of exotic fruits and to describe them to the rest of the audience. The people who were present that day were really touched by both performances.
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