In this event, the co-founder and award-winning director of Nordic Black Theatre in Oslo, Cliff Moustache, talks to Kagiso Lesego Molope about 33 years of directing, his commitment to social justice, and what he has learned in his years of bringing important stories of Black history to the stage.
About Participants
Cliff Moustache is the founder of, together with Jarl Solberg, Nordic Black Theatre. He has both written and directed over 100 plays both in Norway and outside of Norway.
Awards:
1997- Artist of Oslo by the Norwegian Municipality and Major Of Oslo.
2010- OXLO Prize by the Municipality and Major of Oslo for contributing multicultural theatre in Norway and creating a theatre school for youths with multicultural background.
2010- Top Ten Leadership award prize by Leadership Foundation In Norway (Ten persons with national and international work reputation are awarded with a Top Ten leadership award for their contribution as role models in their respective work field every year).
2011- Nominated for Directing Romeo & Julie (Shakespeare in Rap) with Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra in the Yeah Festival in Düsseldorf/Germany November 2011 for bringing classic music to youths.
2018- Won Oslo Artist. Main prize from Oslo Municipality board of Oslo Town Hall.
2020- Won Norway Honorary Award from Norway Art Council.
2023- Won Honorary Award from The Academy in Norway.
Won different short film awards in England, France, Portugal, Spain and USA.
Kagiso Lesego Molope is an Indigenous South African, an award-winning novelist, and playwright. She writes post-apartheid, feminist, and resistance literature. Her work centers the history and experiences of indigenous South Africans and tackles issues of race, class, sexuality, and identity, and her books are read in schools across Southern Africa as well as in parts of Europe. Her published novels are Dancing in the Dust, The Mending Season, This Book Betrays My Brother and Such a Lonely, Lovely Road. Her play, Maya Angelou: Black Woman Rising has been produced and staged at Oslo’s Nordic Black Theatre. She became the first indigenous South African writer to be on the IBBY List in 2006 and to win the Patrick Fitzpatrick Award for Young Adult Literature. In 2019 she won both the Ottawa Book Award and the Inaugural Pius Adesanmi Memorial award, for her third and fourth books respectively. She has been living in Canada for the past two decades.
About Freedom Talks
The Freedom Talks series is focused on issues regarding threats towards artistic freedom, free press, and intangible heritage. It is closely connected to the annual global Safe Havens conference. Guests in the Freedom Talks series are highly knowledgeable and prolific actors in the global Arts Rights Justice sector—fighting for artistic freedom. The Freedom Talks aim to share space and broaden the narrative of who can take center stage by lending the brand to different organizations within the sector. The talks are presented in—or translated to—English. The talks were funded by the Swedish Institute (SI) in 2021 and 2022. The recordings can be watched through our website and our partner HowlRound, where also previous events are archived.
The 2023 conference was organized by the Safe Havens Freedom Talks (SH|FT) in partnership with the UNESCO-Aschberg program and supported by the Swedish Arts Council/SIDA Artistic Freedom Program, and Landscapes of Hope through Action for Hope.
