
- Theatre
- Music
- NL premiere
Wasted Land
Accessibility
This performance has audio description.
In the opening performance of SPRING 2025, Ntando Cele returns, following the success of SPAfrica with Julian Hetzel, with a bold and unconventional performance, full of music, energy and irony. She explores the pitfalls of sustainability and the greenwashing of the Global North. What does a future look like where black people aren’t continuously excluded from the human narrative? What if we fully embrace societal transformation and confront injustice head-on? Performers from different parts of the Global South give voice to this urgent issue.

In her work, Ntando Cele has used theatrical tools – through play, humor, music, or simple situations – to expose how racism operates in society today. As a South African artist living and working in a Western context, she has until now resisted making work about the ecological crisis. The conflict between collective and personal responsibility seemed insurmountable to her.
However, Cele couldn’t ignore how few non-Western voices are being heard on this issue in Western Europe. Climate change and ecology are being led by white institutions and figures like Greta Thunberg. Too often, the commitments made are trapped in theoretical debates without tangible solutions.
If the Earth truly belongs to all of its inhabitants, then all people should have a voice in how we contribute, whether consciously or unconsciously, to “Gaia.” Wasted Land gives Cele the opportunity to unpack her own perception of the climate crisis and what it provokes in her, as a colonized body living with the generational consequences of inequality.
If asked for her opinion, Cele would say: what does a future without black and brown people – continually excluded from the discourse on humanity – look like? What if societies recognized and accepted a genuine social transformation, where all forms of injustice were immediately corrected? Along the way, she sarcastically injects a little humor into the despair and extinction rhetoric that often surrounds ecological discourse.
In Wasted Land, Cele explores fast fashion as a manifestation of contemporary colonialism. This fast fashion connects Western consumerism with developing countries, where low-cost production results in a waste mountain of discarded clothing sent back.
Wasted Land is a melodic landscape between theatrical performance, video projection, and a poetic concert. A post-apocalyptic satire inspired by decolonial protest songs, which Cele reinterprets together with Egyptian musician and composer Wael Sami Elkholy and three vocalists.

This performance has audio description.
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Ntando Cele
Credits
Concept and direction Ntando Cele
With Ntando Cele, Brandy Butler, Françoise Gautier, Steffi Lobréau
Composition and musical direction Wael Sami Elkholy
Beats by Soukey
Costume Rudolf Jost
Artistic and technical collaboration Sandro Griesser
Collaboration in dramaturgy Raphael Urweider, Davide-Christelle Sanvee
Assistant director Joëlle Antonie Gbeassor
Sound Janyves Coïc
Lighting Demian Jakob
Video Janosch Abel, Nicolas Gerlier
Set building, props and costume workshop Ateliers du Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne
Stage management Nelly Chauvet
Lighting management Cassandre Colliard
Video management Victor Hunziker
Production Judith Martin, Marion Caillaud
Booking Elizabeth Gay
Production Manaka Empowerment Prod. Nina Sautter
Production Manaka Empowerment Prod., Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne
Coproduction DE SINGEL, Bonlieu, scène nationale Annecy, Maison Saint-Gervais – Genève, LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura, Festival NEXT, Dampfzentrale Bern
With the support of Expédition Suisse, Kultur Stadt Bern, Swisslos – Kultur Kanton Bern, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Pro Helvetia, Corodis, Loterie romande, Burgergemeinde Bern, Fonds de dotation Porosus, Migros-Kulturprozen, Landis & Gyr Stiftung Stiftung, Schweizerische Interpretenstiftung
In collaboration with Residenz Schauspiel Leipzig
Many thanks to Isabel Gygax, Ueli Kempter, Patricia Kafwamba Oguey, Payal Parekh