From August 6 to 16 the HEAT Winter Arts Festival brings the magic of live performance to the Wave Theatre and the Alliance Francaise in Cape Town’s city centre with a daring theatre programme that speaks to memory, transformation and speculative futures.
From revivals of suppressed classics to intimate one-woman plays, and from thought-provoking rom-coms to psychedelic fungal VR/Theatre works, HEAT 2025 is not afraid to take risks.
Curated by Fleur du Cap judge Nkgopoleng Moloi, the 2025 theatre programme showcases South African works that embody the spirit of Other Worlding – the theme that runs through the entire festival, which includes an extensive art and music programme.
Curator Nkgopoleng Moloi
Women’s Day (9 August) presents two performances:
- Don’t Believe a Word I Say, a biographical solo play by Tankiso Mamabolo that playfully interrogates the unreliability of memory, and
- Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons, Sam Steiner’s acclaimed play on love and language in a world where words are rationed. Both productions centre strong performers and minimalist staging, creating space for the audience to be fully immersed in the actors’ craft.
HEAT will host the African premiere of Symbiosis/Dysbiosis, a genre-defying live installation–performance powered by fungal biodata and EEG signals. With a live performance streamed between Cape Town, Canada and Germany into Alliance Française du Cap, this VR theatre experience invites audiences into a mycelial forest to experience co-sentience with the more-than-human world. Blurring the lines between science fiction, ecological ritual, and digital intimacy, this work introduces a new vocabulary of performance that fuses liveness with remote presence and interspecies awareness.
From 14 August, Confused Mhlaba, Khayalethu Mqayisa’s landmark play banned during apartheid, is reimagined by Kitso Seti in a powerful production that speaks directly to the complex identities of post-apartheid South Africa. The season closes with Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story, a masterclass in tension and isolation, directed by veteran theatre-maker Chris Weare.
The Comedy in Commons programme, a two-part series curated by comedians Nathan Pather and SQ Mangcu. Held at the Alliance Française on August 7 and 13, it brings together some of Cape Town’s funniest voices including Robby Collins, Yaaseen Barnes, Simmi Areff, Céline Tshika, and more. These intimate comedy nights capture another facet of Other Worlding: the ability to resist, reflect and remake the world through humour.
In a time of fractured attention and social chaos, HEAT Festival offers something else entirely: the chance to sit still, to immerse oneself in stories that surprise, challenge and provoke.
From young performers making their debut to seasoned directors and international collaborators, the programme is deeply invested in supporting emerging voices and experimental practices – and giving Cape Town audiences access to performance experiences they won’t find anywhere else. Explore the FULL programme HERE
WHAT: HEAT Winter Arts Festival – Theatre Line-Up
WHERE: Wave Theatre 44 Long St Cape Town | Alliance Française 155 Loop St, Cape Town
WHEN: 6 August – 16 September 2025
BOOKING: Quicket
INFO: Explore the FULL programme HERE | E hello@heatfestival.org | See also HEAT Winter Arts Festival Program has been announced – Diarise August 6 to 16
