b'PHALA OOKEDITSE PHALA is Botswana-born, Johannesburg-based theatre-maker, director, writer, and dramaturg, and is the Animateur for The Centre for the Less Good Idea. His interests in theatre-making are concerned with methodologies of making and creating work in ways that collapse and disrupt conventional norms and his work has won awards in South Africa, USA, Czech Republic and Australia.Athena Mazarakis Season 9 Co-Curator with Indalo Stofile and Kamogelo Molobye. Image: Zivanai MatangiThe provocation of Translation brings forthStill from Season 5 co-curated the notion that stories are not always toldby Phala Ookeditse PhalaImage: TCFLGIor read; at times stories are sung, expressed, danced, and gestured and that is the translation of stories in itself. Therefore, the provocation forces us to explore, amongst others, how the embodied knowledge, that is often silenced in preference to the written, can be translated in performance. It is a search for ways of per(forming) the lived experience in the body; in the tacit memory; the inhaled story; the interoceptive; the proprioceptive; the trance evoked twitch; the loud silence; the soundless scream, housed in the simple idea that the body carries experiences; some of which can never be translated into words.Words are simply unavailable or inefficient in such translations. Our languages provide complexities for translation, which often land in multiple meanings. The sense of a single meaning and its hierarchical priority, quickly recedes; the performance becomes an invitation not to translate but to interpret. The polysemous nature of performance calls for more fromas a knowledge locus of cultural capital andchallenges of present realities, conjure lost the translator; it is not just the spokenas the foundation of cultural consumption,histories, present proximate metaphors and that needs translation but the dramaticinnovation, inquiry, and heritage. It iscommunicate across time and space. Often conversation of texts generated by thea vessel to rethink and repurpose thethese works have been exquisitely crafted performance. traditional codes of creation, performance,with writing that is deft, nimble, movement display and interpretation. We drive forthat inhabits eye-opening contradictions, curation that explores components of whatsinging that is visceral, unforgettable, andCURATION THAT produces emotion in an audience, be itat times cuts right through you, deep.INTEGRATESquestioning, provoking, evoking, laying bareOur process of making work engages in a and so on.deliberate searching and making that attends Curating work at The Centre is premisedOver the six years of our existence,to a fearless inventory of the other revealing on collapsing the walls between the gallerywe have welcomed about 700 artists whothe complexities of thinking through making and theatre spaces. We understand curatinghave created new works that speak toin the world of play.SQUARE25'