On 1 March 2025, The Market Theatre Laboratory will present its first Theatre Think Tank instalment for 2025, titled Satire, Subversion & Sacrilege: We Laugh So That We Do Not Scream. This Theatre Think Tank, which aims to poke holes in what we think we know about making satirical theatre, will be curated by Theatre-Maker and Director, Kyla Davis, who is also the founding Artistic Director of Well Worn Theatre Company as well as Co-director of The Johannesburg School of Mask and Movement Theatre (JMAM).
“South Africa and the wider world present us daily with rich pickings for mockery and ridicule. Big issues such as Inequality, Patriarchy, AI, Climate Change (to name a cheery few) and an ever more absurd and untenable political landscape, offer ample fuel for theatre-makers, artists and creatives on the hunt for new material,” she says.
Davis adds that the role of satire is to guide humanity through difficult times, making us laugh so that we don’t scream. “Some argue that it is the duty of The Artist to reflect humankind back upon itself, pointing out, with humour and grace, those nasty parts of ourselves that we shouldn’t ignore. Further, we could say that it is not only our duty, as artists, to roll up our sleeves and sift through the muck of our collective psyches, but that our very existence as a species depends on it. If this were true, then satire is a tool not only for entertainment, but for survival as well.”