Press: South African playwright Brett Bailey to receive France’s top cultural award

On Tuesday 12 February 2019, Ambassador of France to South Africa, H.E. Mr. Christophe Farnaud, will bestow on South African playwright, Mr. Brett Bailey, the award of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters) on behalf of French President Emmanuel Macron at the Granger Bay Hotel School Restaurant, in Mouille Point, Cape Town.

Brett Bailey is a South African playwright, designer, director and installation maker, and the Artistic Director of the performance company Third World Bunfight. He was the curator of South Africa's only public arts festival, Infecting the City, held in Cape Town from 2008 until 2011. His works have played across Europe, Australia, Africa and Latin America and have won several awards including a gold medal for design at the Prague Quadrennial (2007). He has worked extensively in France and was commissioned to create a visual campaign for the Marseilles France 2018 Festival.

Third World Bunfight’s works foreground issues, stories and situations that are all too often overlooked, suppressed or ignored. They unpack and expose the machinations of power that crush so many people or render them voiceless. The main focus areas are the post-colonial situation in Africa, and historical and contemporary relations between Africa and the West.

Third World Bunfight’s newest production Samson will open at Woordfees in Stellenbosch from 8 to 10 March, a lyrical, apocalyptic music-theatre piece created by Brett with choreography by Vincent Mantsoe and music by Shane Cooper.

Said Ambassador Farnaud: “Brett Bailey is a revolutionary director, who’s broken the traditional boundaries by bringing theater to the streets of Cape Town, during the public arts festival Infecting the City. In France, the opera Macbeth, or the performance Sanctuary, dedicated to the migrants, or Exhibit B, in which he addresses the human zoos of the colonial era, were acclaimed in the recent years as masterpieces of the performing arts.”

The Order of Arts and Letters is a French order established in 1957 and awarded by the French ministry of Culture in recognition of significant contributions to the enrichment of the arts and literature in France and abroad. There are three degrees: knight, officer and commander. South African citizens who have been awarded the order are Johnny Clegg (1991), William Kentridge (2013), Gregory Maqoma (2017) and Zanele Muholi (2017).