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Bold and Provocative Work Spotlights Queer Love

Unheard and often suppressed Queer voices are set for their moment of truth, as Vuyelwa Maluleke presents her bold, visceral poem-in-chorus – ‘The Blue Album’ – at The Market Theatre Kippies Fringe. Written and performed by Vuyelwa Maluleke, the show will run at Kippies for a total of five performances, from 21 – 24 August 2025.

 ‘The Blue Album’ fuses poetry, monologue, movement and choral voice to stage an intimate portrait of Queer life and love in the township of Makaleng. It traces the homecoming of Khumo, a young Lesbian woman, as she confronts the afterlife of a traumatic incident and the piercing silence of her community.

Maluleke navigates the complex terrain of public erasures and private reckonings, offering a story that is as lyrically tender as it is politically defiant, disrupting societal norms of love and who deserves it. The work further reimagines the meaning of love, reclaiming it from the often commercialised romance and relocating it in community.

 

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As this new piece dares to centre Black Queer love and survival in spaces where it is often unwelcome, it arrives at the key question: What is left behind when home becomes the mouth of a man? With profound urgency and agency, the piece navigates  the borders of love and danger, memory and survival. Weaving intimate monologues with the public silences of township life, Maluleke exposes with aching precision the slow violence’s Black Queer Women endure.

“This piece is an attempt to make visible the revolutionary remedies of Black Queer love. I wanted to write something that would not only testify to Khumo’s survival, but sing of its sweetness and cast back the light of all of us. This is a ritual. A return. A resistance,” explains Maluleke.

Maluleke is an actor, lecturer and writer with an MA in Creative Writing (with distinction) from Rhodes University, and a BA in Dramatic Arts from the University of Witwatersrand. A runner-up for the 5th Gerald Kraak Prize, Maluleke was also shortlisted for the Kelsey Street Press QTBIPOC Prize for the manuscript ‘Falling Toward the Centre’ (2021) as well as The Sillerman First Book Prize for ‘The Blue Album’ manuscript (2021).

Again, she was a semi-finalist in the Boston Annual Poetry Contest (2020), and has worked with directors such as Sylvaine Strike, James Ngcobo and Jo Bonney. Her most notable performances are from the television production of ‘Shreds and Dreams 2’ and national touring theatre productions of ‘Tartuffe’ and ‘Emotional Creature: it’s a girl thing’.

ENDS.

Kippies Fringe is an initiative of The Market Theatre, curated by Art Cave.

The Market Theatre is a Division of The Market Theatre Foundation, an agency of the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture.

For media enquiries, please contact Bongiwe Potelwa (Publicist at The Market Theatre Foundation) at bongiwep@markettheatre.co.za or (011) 832 1641.

For reduced price block bookings of 10 or more and school groups, contact Anthony Ezeoke (Audience Development Specialist at The Market Theatre Foundation) at anthonye@markettheatre.co.za or 083 246 4950.

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