SS Mendi Dancing The Death Drill

★★★★★ And the final death drill — a stamping, ferocious dance, the performers armed with spades and pickaxes, eyes blazing — has a potency that knocks the breath from your body.

The Times

★★★★★ South African theatre company Isango Ensemble transfigure the idea of lament, turning grief into something poignantly beautiful, darkly funny and, at times, sharply angry.

The Guardian

★★★★★ a feast of powerful theatre, music and song.

Broadway World

★★★★ An otherworldly requiem that makes a fitting tribute to the contribution of black South Africans to the First World War

The Stage

The world premiere of SS Mendi Dancing the Death Drill was presented at Nuffield Southampton Theatres in Southampton from the 29 June – 14 July 2018, receiving critical acclaim.

In early 1917, the SS Mendi set sail from Cape Town, taking hundreds of black South African volunteers to support the Allied forces fighting in France. But early in the morning of 21 February 1917, the Mendi collided with a cargo ship amid thick fog in the English Channel south of the Isle of Wight and sank, killing 616 South Africans and 30 of the Mendi‘s crew.

SS Mendi Dancing the Death Drill, set in Paris 40 years after the war, focused on one of the ship’s passengers: Pitso Motaung, who sailed aboard the Mendi and lived to tell the tale. Based on Fred Khumalo’s historical novel and performed by South Africa’s award-winning Isango Ensemble, SS Mendi Dancing the Death Drill told a startling story of how this maritime disaster gave rise to a life of hope, courage and resilience.