Brett Bailey Starts Work on THE RAFT and Announces International Tours of MACBETH and EXHIBIT B

Brett Bailey, the artistic director of Cape Town-based performance company Third World Bunfight, is back in South Africa for a short while and has begun working on his next project, THE RAFT, that will deal with the migrant crisis on the Mediterranean Sea.

"As they sit cramped in their vessels these migrants are caught in a moment of terrifying limbo, between the desperate situations that they have fled, and their fragile hopes in the face of an uncertain future," Bailey says of the inspiration for his new work.

Bailey has to squeeze researching and writing into his busy touring schedule. Over the past two years, his works have appeared in 22 cities in Europe, Latin America, South Africa and New Zealand, including Moscow, London, Lisbon, Paris and Santiago.

This year, Bailey's adaptation of the Giuseppe Verdi's operatic treatment of MACBETH, which pares down and breathes new life into librettists Francesco Maria Piave and Andrea Maffei's adaptation of the William Shakespeare classic,is heading for Gwangju in South Korea (10-11 September as part of the opening festival of the Asian Culture Complex Arts Theatre), Brisbane in Australia (15-16 and 18-19 September at the Brisbane Festival), Hamburg in Germany (24-26 September at the Kampnagel Internationale Kulturfabrik), Buenos Aires in Argentina (4-5 October at FIBA) and Santiago in Chile (9-10 October).

Bailey's controversial EXHIBIT B will play in Gwangju, South Korea. Last year, Bailey had to cope with the huge controversy that broke out around EXHIBIT B in London and Paris, the performers of which also spoke out against protests aimed at the performance art work. The protest action resulted in the closure of the work at the Barbican in London. The Paris venues of the show were surrounded by 300 riot police for 2 weeks.

This week Third World Bunfight launched a new website, packed with articles, interviews, photographs, videos and play texts. "Students and academics around the world study our works," says Bailey, "I want the website to be a dynamic archive that captures the visual aesthetic of our performances." In 2014, Bailey wrote and delivered the UNESCO World Theatre Day Speech, following in the footsteps of theatre luminaries such as Dame Judi Dench, Dario Fo and John Malkovich. He also sits on the international jury of the World Music Theatre Awards.