The Brooklyn Rail

Theater can hold many ingredients, and nora chipaumire understands they needn’t be plot or dialogue: her latest show, Dambudzo, is two hours of vibes.

That feels right for a work set in overlapping bars, or, in chipaumire’s native Zimbabwe, shabini: makeshift (and often illicit) bars set up in people’s homes for brewing beer and community. In that way, Dambudzo was a natural extension of its venue: FringeArts’s teeming patio flowed into a high-ceilinged bar (with scattered board games for the grabbing), which led to the performance space in the back. If you were already sipping a Pilsner before the show, keep the buzz going—free cans waited on ice on your way into the theater.

Or rather, onto the stage, where audiences gathered for chipaumire’s immersive Philly Fringe installation.

Tarps the size of movie theater screens, painted in abstract blue, yellow, and green, flew in and pivoted to create partitions and guide the audience—not that there were limitations on where you could go: Dambudzo was as welcoming and dynamic as a block party.

As the DJ bopped and a guitarist responded to his changing tracks, those partitions suggested gentle borders for varied leisure activities, all the stuff of life. Born in Rhodesia, what is now Zimbabwe, chipaumire and her work theatricalize the quotidian vibrancy of her homeland’s shabinis, embodied by ten performers (including the creator) and, most importantly, you.

Dancing to infectious Sungura music, a performer flapped his knees at hummingbird speed. Beckoning arms invited the audience to join in. Around the tricolor tarp, a soccer scrimmage began. The casually dressed performers passed and headbutted the ball, occasionally pointing high above the audiences’ heads to loft the ball against the theater wall. Though indoors, the stage transformed into a field for intergenerational recess. A Gen Z-er with dyed hair dribbled alongside an older woman sporting an “I Didn’t Vote For Him” pin.

By this point, a spell had been cast: maybe some weren’t so comfy swiveling their hips, but when a soccer ball comes your way, everyone knows what to do with it.

Crew members also beamed: a pair of technicians chased the performers and ball with handheld floodlights, their smiles carrying just as much wattage.

Around me, people found new acts to follow: some performers danced solo, one put on boxing gloves and began jabbing a wall, and, later on, the performers splayed on the ground to catch their breath. Black artists were not just at rest but were showing us their rest.

Off in the corner, others threw blobs of clay at a board. This led to a commotion, and some tussling. I didn’t catch the full arc, but some of the men were now grabbing at each other, and then I saw they were all after one. He weakened. Lights around him blinked like hazards. Gravity did its job, but just before hitting the ground the man jerked upward, like a revived marionette, while his attackers got on all fours and dashed off howling.

“Hallelujah!” rang a woman, behind me, as she led a procession. She held a large sign that read “SAVED.”

Was this a funeral or a celebration?

Maybe those events aren’t disparate; in chipaumire’s design, the upbeat music is always rollicking. With performers zigzagging through expansive space and theatrical possibility, chipaumire created a mosaic of heightened moments that highlight how active downtime can be.

Vigorous performers whirred around me, holding more signs. One said “OPEN LATE,” another “YES YES YES,” and the last: “CHIBUKU,” the name of a beer popular in Zimbabwe—and a soccer cup.

A man was drenched while playing the alto sax. I was close enough to see his sweat pool, became heavy, and then plop on the floor. The stage became a perspiration constellation. I checked the time; we were only twenty-seven minutes into the show.

It was also at this point that I felt my mind go somewhere else. So far, Dambudzo was an exercise of festive community. I wondered when it might turn.

I wanted to interrogate that. Maybe European dramatic structure has taught me to expect conflict after moments of levity. Maybe “dambudzo”—the Shona word for trouble—doesn’t actually translate to danger. But, more insidious, I also realized how rare it is to witness theater where Black performers only exhibit joy.

In the United States, major playwriting prizes and grant funding are largely awarded to works that respond to timely themes or societal injustices. These works—often rigorous and impactful—are dialogue-forward and intended for proscenium theaters, where capital can be found, but inter-audience contact, movement, and delight is, by design, scarcer.

Creating subversive content, then, demands subversive forms.

Nominally, Dambudzo is not a “play”: the marketing blurb calls it an “anti-genre performance.” This is also political.

“I’m not really interested in the notion of the fourth wall and the space of Western theater, which protects a colonial, vertical, classist vision,” chipaumire said in the program’s interview about her piece. “We don’t need to use the master’s tools to destroy the master’s house.”

At a time when colonial, vertical, classist visions are doubted—one month before the New York City mayoral election, a candidate against those values leads the polls—audiences may be craving theater that is similarly hierarchy-free. In the Rail I have covered, over the past few months, free shows in Times Square and Domino Park that, like Dambudzo, were experimental-leaning and fourth wall-agnostic. Audiences flocked to both.

chipaumire is neither newcomer nor anomaly, and yet works like hers, even to the adventurous, have proven more elusive in the United States. In theater, predominantly white institutions and government funding seldom support Black joy, or experiential works by artists of any race, or works that go against perceived rules of how a venue should be activated. This has limited my approach to theater.

Dambudzo—touring the US and Europe this year, and coming to Brooklyn Academy of Music October 8 and 9—arrives at a time of increased hunger for experiences that gather humans in unique ways when streaming services’ unlimited options have increased isolation. Screens can dampen imagination—a computer is at your fingertips—but chipaumire’s work champions curiosity.

When seated in a proscenium house, I have a predetermined sense of theatricality, which operates like a scientific experiment. The grid, wings, and structural elements are a theater’s constants, and the variables are the artists who bewitch them. Magic comes out of a box. But in untraditional venues, constants are less detectable, suggesting there are only variables. In these spaces, my mind and body work differently, collaborating as they explore a new planet.

What’s happening over there? Mid-performance, a disco ball spun and shone. I gravitated toward it and found dancers creating a line to groove together in a way that must have been but never felt planned.

Through ceaseless dance, Dambudzo offered a continuous soundscape. Sometimes, focus on music was clear—toward the end of the two hours, chipaumire gathered everyone around for a more concentrated concert. She introduced the team and their backgrounds—artists from Brooklyn and Ghana, Minneapolis and Jamaica.

Another performer? “From Rhode Island!” chipaumire exclaimed.

People sat, stood, and squatted in a circle as the music, filled with twinkly mbira and soothing hosho, now calmed. Men sang a bedding of warm, open octaves as the women’s melody, lullaby-like, soared above it.

Other times, the sounds were more textured. Earlier in the show, I wandered in search of a jackhammer or animal call I thought I heard. A fun hang, Dambudzo was not without its exploration of issues.

As dancers jived and audiences milled, sounds of construction approached from the background. Colonization is never distant. With it, in Zimbabwe, came a new breed of dogs: the Rhodesian Ridgeback. Interbred by colonists in southern Africa, these mighty canines were used for hunting but also to keep natives in a state of fear.

In a final gesture, the performers held flashlights behind one of the tarps, projecting a pack of dogs out of shadow puppets. The performers barked and howled. Then, one by one their lights went out.

The animals went silent, meaning the performers did, too. But not far off, music kept playing.