YOUR GRANDFATHER LIED
UNIVERSITY OF VENDA
Theatre / City Hall

Your Grandfather Lied is a powerful, movement-driven stage drama that interrogates how inherited lies fracture communities and turn kin into enemies. Set against a backdrop of ritual, dance, and oral tradition, the production traces the devastating fallout when elders manipulate tribal identity to manufacture division. 

 

Some lies are spoken once and buried with the dead. Others are passed down, dressed as wisdom, until they splinter families and fracture nations.

 

Your Grandfather Lied begins with that rupture. What follows is a vision of reconciliation. The tribes face the weight of their inherited narratives and choose to redefine their future together. In the final act, old boundaries dissolve. Each tribe crowns its own king, yet all stand united, bound by shared purpose, mutual respect, and a renewed covenant with the land and with one another.

 

Through physical theatre and choral storytelling, silence is given body and hidden truths find voice. Dancers carry the burden of memory. Voices weave myth with testimony, exposing how leadership can corrupt legacy and how loyalty to the past can become complicity in its crimes.

 

Blending political allegory with cultural memory, Your Grandfather Lied asks urgent questions: Who has the right to redraw the maps we inherit? What happens when loyalty demands silence? And when the next generation stands at the crossroads, will they carry the lie forward, or find the courage to bury it with the dead?

 

Haunting, visceral, and unflinching, this is theatre as testimony: a call to remember, to question, and to choose truth over the comfort of inherited lies.

Production Credits

Mr Ngobeni Musa  

Mr Musiye Lugisani 

Ms Nevhusenga Rotshidzwa 

Mr Manganye Ondwela 

Mr Munyai Mangalani 

Ramunasi Vhahangwele 

About the Artists

Mr Ngobeni Musa  (Chairperson)

Mr Musiye Lugisani (Vice-Chairperson)

Ms Nevhusenga Rotshidzwa (Director)

Mr Manganye Ondwela (SG)

Mr Munyai Mangalani (DC)

Ramunasi Vhahangwele (Choreographer)

  • Venue: City Hall
  • Location: Grahamstown City Hall
  • Ticket price: ZAR 50.00
  • Programme type: The Fringe
  • Genre: Theatre
  • Duration: 45 minutes
  • Ages: 16+
    • Adult Themes
City Hall
July 02, 2026 10:00 - 10:45
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July 03, 2026 18:00 - 18:45
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July 04, 2026 16:00 - 16:45