Moderator: Jefferson Tshabalala 

Panellists: Albert Ibokwe Khoza & Kgomotso ‘MoMo’ Matsunyane

Albert Ibokwe Khoza is an internationally acclaimed, multi-award-winning South African performance artist, actor, choreographer, director, musician, and traditional healer. Working across theatre, dance, ritual, visual art, and performance installation, Khoza has established himself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary African performance. His work interrogates identity, spirituality, sexuality, colonial histories, and the politics of the Black body, often drawing on ancestral knowledge and embodied ritual practices.

A recipient of the prestigious 2023 New York Bessie Award, Khoza received international recognition for his performance in And So You See… Our Honourable Blue Sky and Ever Enduring Sun… Can Only Be Consumed Slice by Slice…, a collaboration with renowned choreographer Robyn Orlin.

His acclaimed body of work includes The Black Circus of the Republic of Bantu, Dear Museum!, The Red Femicycle, and Influence of a Closet Chant. These works have toured extensively across Africa, Europe, North and South America, appearing at major festivals and institutions in cities including New York, Amsterdam, Liverpool, Berlin, Barcelona, Maputo, Portland, and São Paulo. In 2026, The Black Circus of the Republic of Bantu received Naledi Theatre Award nominations for Best Cutting Edge Production and Best Solo Performance, further affirming its impact on the contemporary theatre landscape.

As both artist and healer, Khoza's practice seeks to confront historical trauma while creating spaces for collective reflection, healing, and transformation. Through a unique fusion of performance, ceremony, and social critique, he continues to challenge audiences and expand the possibilities of contemporary performance on the global stage.

Kgomotso ‘MoMo’ Matsunyane (b. 1988) is an actor, playwright and director. She was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Theatre 2023/2024. She has performed in numerous plays, films and television shows and has subsequently been nominated for and won several awards including: Ka Lebitso La Moya which MoMo wrote and directed and it won 5 awards out of 12 nominations for Best Director of a Play, Best Production, Best Original Score, Best Supporting Actress and Best Male Lead at the Naledi Awards in 2025. She also directed The Cry Of Winnie Mandela at The Market Theatre. The play sold out during its entire run and was extended twice in the same season. It went on to enjoy a successful run at The Baxter Theatre as well a short perf at The Durban Playhouse Theatre. She has also won for her performance in Hlakanyana The Musical, which won a whopping 8 out of the 14 awards they were nominated for at the 2023 Naledi’s. Matsunyane won for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical for her role as Mawethu along with Best Ensemble and Best Production of a Musical; nominated for Best Actress in A Leading Role (Have You Seen Zandile? ;Naledi Theatre Awards 2014), winner of Best Supporting Actress (Ankobia ;SA Theatre Magazine Awards 2017), winner of Best Ensemble (Animal Farm; Naledi Theatre Awards2015), nominee for Best Supporting Role (Tsotsi The Musical; Fleur Du Cap Awards 2018) amongst many others. 

Most recently she debuted her theatrical stand-up comedy show called I’m MoMo And I Have Issues at POPArt Centre and will be touring the show in Cape Town at the Theatre Arts Admin Collective in July 2026.

She directed a show in Austria, Graz called Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry at Schauspielhaus which premiered in September 2025 and has been invited again to direct another show called Otherland in 2026. She also starred in a new television series called Levels in the same month on Mzansi Magic as a supporting lead. Upon invitation from impresario for the Centre for The Less Good Idea, Neo Muyanga, Matsunyane wrote for and performed in SEASON 11 at The Centre for The Less Good.  

In 2023 Matsunyane acted in a new sketch comedy show called ROSA directed by Kagiso Lediga which is currently still streaming on Netflix. In the same year Matsunyane was festival director for the acclaimed Zwakala Festival and mentored the winning group when the show took to the stage in October 2023.

MoMo has been a professional actor since 2004. She obtained an Honours Degree in Dramatic Arts from Wits University in 2012, majoring in Performance as well as Film and Television. In 2022 she performed in If A Tree Falls which was also directed by acclaimed director Janice Honeyman. In 2020, she performed in Switzerland in Converting Eviction. In 2021, MoMo was the Head Writer of a new musical produced by Madevu Entertainment and UJ Arts Centre called Hlakanyana directed by Janice Honeyman. She was also cast in Standard Bank Young Artist Award Winner for Dance, Lulu Mlangeni’s NAF production Kganya which made its live debut at the internationally acclaimed festival Afrovibes in 2022 and it will also be playing at The State Theatre in July 2023.  

In 2019 Matsunyane was nominated for two Naledi Theatre Awards for Best Production: Independent Fringe for Unlearn (written and performed) and Dick Or Date? (co-written and performed). The two shows were also produced under her company MoMo Matsunyane Productions.

She has directed numerous plays over her 21 year-long career, including Their Silence Left Us Nothing But Tokens (2023), co-directed with Leyla Rabih. The play opened in June at the Plateau Lerrant in ENSATT, France. TAU, 2016/7 a multi-award Naledi winning play which enjoyed a highly successful run at The Market Theatre, Julia Caezar, Ruined, 4:59, Lysistrata, Penny and Text Me When You Arrive just to name a few.  

MoMo Matsunyane has also acted on television shows like Thetha Msawawa 2, Dreamworld S1 and 2, MamelloS2, numerous Mzansi Magic films and was a resident sketcher on #KarektasS2. Her film work includes a cameo role in Ayanda directed by acclaimed director Sara Blecher and a supporting lead role in The Call, directed by award winning director, Zamo Mkhwanazi. It went on to win the Best International Film at the Rapid Lion International Film Festival in 2018. She is also set to appear in a movie called Mother The Law by Sorele Media.

To add to her list of accomplishments MoMo Matsunyane is now a published playwright and her book Plays by MoMo Vol 1. is a trilogy of her three works PENNY, UNLEARN and Ka Lebitso La Moya. The plays are about the Black Female Body as a site of violence, mental illness and suffering sexual abuse at the hands of a  religious  institutional power. MoMo is deeply passionate about acting, directing and writing and still hopes to tackle even more artistic positions and roles with the professionalism and work ethic she is known for and equally prides herself in.