With a name that means “future” in Setswana, this troupe of talented young people from South Africa puts on a truly stirring performance. Featuring traditional and modern material that includes festival dances and songs of struggle and hope, Bokamoso captures the powerful feelings of youth and joy in a show that won’t soon be forgotten.

In Partnership with the National Museum of African Art.

A Closer Look - About the Performers:

The Bokamoso Youth Theater was created to empower youth to speak with courage and clarity through art in their desperately poor township named Winterveldt, 40 kilometers north of Pretoria, South Africa. The Bokamoso Center (Bokamoso means “Future” in Tswana) was created to counter the crime and despair destroying their community. It is a part of the Pretoria Anglican Diocese’s Tumelong outreach program.

The hundreds of youth that have entered the Bokamoso program receive empowering counseling, job training, educational tutoring, art and recreation opportunities, family intervention, AIDS Education, and free health care.   They attend workshops such as those on Ubuntu, the African renaissance, recalling days when Africans lived in unity and whole villages helped raise the children and youth saw every older person as a parent. After they graduate from three months of intensive work, the youth either return to school, or move into child advocacy or job internship programs. They re-enter their community ready to make powerful, positive contributions, having been mentored by strong adult leaders. The Centre called upon the power of music and tradition to make a community from the young people who came. Moses Makeeba, a youth facilitator at the Bokamoso Life Centre in Winterveld, South Africa, was quoted as saying: "We love to sing, and we begin each day at Bokamoso with about thirty minutes of singing. This makes us feel good!" Then the workshops begin on a variety of subjects. The Bokamoso Youth Theater, which performs traditional songs and dances from their region, began with those songs and dances.

In 2001the youth at the Centre created a musical play Won’t Happen to Me with American peace activist Roy Barber.  The play was an outcry of warning, hope, and compassion from the youth at the epicenter of the African AIDS crisis. The young people began performing it around their GautengProvince, and in January of 2003 brought it to Washington, where they were in residence at St. Andrews Episcopal School in Potomac, working with the Race and Culture class there.

On that they also worked successfully with students at Anacostia High School, Wilson High School, Georgetown University, Howard University, George Washington University and the youth at the Children of Mine Center in Anacostia, as well as with a variety of church youth groups  at St. Columba's, Christ Episcopal, St. Albans, and Second Genesis  Recovery Treatment Center. Their talent and passion for their traditions and future lives carried strong messages with all whom they encountered.
 
During the summer of 2003,Leslie Jacobson, Horizons Theater Director and Chair of the Department of Theater and Dance at George Washington University, joined Roy Barber and the Bokamoso Youth to create  FAMILY PORTRAITS: THE DOOR IS OPEN, to describe the healing of broken families from domestic violence as the youth begin to create their new South Africa. And in 2005 the same team created a musical play called A TREE MUST LEARN TO BEND, which addresses changing gender roles in a rapidly transforming country.  

The Smithsonian welcomes the youth of South Africa’s Bokamoso, or Future, as they share their tribal songs, dances and culture with us on their third US tour.

See more about the Tumelong Centre and its work at http://www.tumelong.org.za/centres.htm