The year in review

2025 has been another busy and productive year for the Tsikinya-Chaka Centre and its affiliates. We thought we’d dedicate this December post to a round-up of activities, initiatives, projects, publications and events!

Conferences and symposia

To begin at the end . . . 2025 was brought to a rousing conclusion by the wonderful “New Encounters” Medieval and Early Modern Orients (MEMOs) conference. The TCC was proud to be one of the co-sponsors of this hybrid event, which stretched over four days from 11-14 December, combining in-person sessions at multiple venues across Cape Town with virtual participation from dozens of delegates joining online. TCC affiliate Hassana Moosa of the University of Cape Town convened the conference along with her MEMOs colleagues Lubaaba Al-Azami, Samera Hassan and other members of the organising committee. There were keynote presentations by Su Fang Ng, Ambereen Dadabhoy and TCC affiliate Jyotsna Singh, and forty delegates delivered papers in fifteen panels. In addition, the programme included a poetry reading by Gabeba Baderoon, a performance of the production Shakespeare to Gaza, a “Breakfast and Brainstorm” workshop for schoolteachers and a public event at Islamia College on the topic of “Muslims in Shakespeare’s Wor(l)ds”.

In November, TCC affiliate Clayton Stromberger coordinated the James N. Loehlin Symposium, a gathering hosted by the English Department at the University of Texas at Austin to celebrate the life and legacy of a remarkable scholar, teacher and theatre maker. James Loehlin was Shakespeare at Winedale Regents Professor of English and Director of the Shakespeare at Winedale programme for over two decades. His death in September 2023 was a devastating loss to the wider UT Austin community and especially to generations of Winedale alumni. Over the past two years, however, a number of projects and initiatives led by colleagues, friends and former students have paid testament to Loehlin’s enduring impact in the classroom, in the theatre and in academic fields ranging from Shakespeare to Chekhov and the work of Tom Stoppard.

Students at Wits University, too, benefited from Loehlin’s generosity and insight in teaching collaborations between Wits and UT in 2021 and 2022. He was also a great supporter and friend of the TCC.

A recording of the symposium can be viewed on the Shakespeare at Winedale YouTube channel.

The TCC was also well represented at the Globe4Globe virtual symposium on “Shakespeare and Environmental Justice”. The EarthShakes Alliance launched Globe4Globe four years ago and the symposium returned in September as a live online event taking place over 24 hours. Read all about it here and watch the presentations here.

Another conferencing highlight was a panel at the British Shakespeare Association (BSA) conference held in York at the end of June. Representatives of the Decentred Shakespeares Network (DSN) from India, Ghana, Scotland and South Africa participated in a hybrid session evocatively titled, “‘Hark, do you hear the sea?’: The littoral in Shakespeare as a site for linguistic and cultural resistances and decentred practice”. While members of the panel who had participated in the DSN’s 2022 project Pericles on the Seas reflected on digitally-connected, site-based practice in their respective coastal locations in Mumbai, Jamestown and Ayr, TCC director Chris Thurman considered the ways in which the work of the DSN might spur new forms of Shakespearean political-ecological activism in South Africa by scholars and artists exploring the potential of historically significant maritime or littoral sites.

Publications

In 2025 we highlighted, among a number of exciting new books in the field of Shakespeare studies, two collected volumes: African Shakespeare: Subversions, Appropriations, Negotiations, co-edited by TCC affiliates Ifeoluwa Aboluwade and Serena Talento along with Pepetual Mforbe Chiangong and Oliver Nyambi; and Shakespeare in the ‘Post’Colonies: Legacies, Cultures and Social Justice, co-edited by TCC affiliates Amrita Dhar and Amrita Sen.

You can also read more about journal articles that came out this year on our Publications page.

Public outreach and creative projects

In addition to ongoing work in partnership with the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa to support teachers and learners at South African schools engaging with Shakespeare - both in the classroom and beyond the curriculum - in 2025 the TCC continued to pursue its “public education” mandate through new episodes of the podcast Shake the Sword!

Season 2 included a pair of instalments on Shakespeare in isiZulu (taking listeners through various examples of Zulu Shakespeares on the country’s stages, screens and airwaves) and an interview with acclaimed Shakespearean performer, teacher and researcher Fiona Ramsay, who is also a TCC affiliate. This trio was rounded out into a quartet of podcast episodes on South African Shakespeares when Elizabeth Howard interviewed TCC Director Chris Thurman for The Short Fuse Podcast.

Over the past five years, a handful of South African performing artists who have collaborated with the TCC on creative projects - including Anelisa Phewa, Michael Mazibuko and Mfundo Innocent Mavimbela - have taken on the challenge of translating Shakespeare’s sonnets into African languages such as isiZulu and Siswati.

In 2025, this expanded in a new (linguistic and musical) direction as singer-songwriter Tholwana Dyosopu teamed up with poet Siphokazi Jonas and language expert Sanele kaNtshingana to present a selection of sonnets. Unfortunately a live performance planned for May had to be cancelled, but Dyosopu was subsequently able to record a handful of tracks at Wits University’s Chris Seabrooke Music Hall.

Watch this space for their release in 2026!

Shakespearean MEMOs: New Encounters