Portfolio
I took my first steps on stage and have found home ever since.
What People Are Saying
“Poetic and poignant, Khwezi Becker’s words embrace us from the start... Her enormous presence exudes an old soul’s understanding”
— Sarah Roberson“Beautiful, enlivening, generous and thoughtful. I could go on. Urgent, feminist, deeply moving.”
— Emily Orley“I have never seen anyone tell a story quite like her… Children who struggle to remain focused, sat completely enraptured by her”
— School teacherHolding Ground
Written and performed by Nomakhwezi Becker, with movement direction and dramaturgy by Francesca Matthys
Holding Ground is a multilingual live performance weaving story-theatre, song, and poetry to explore home, memory, and connection across distance. Rooted in her South African–German heritage, the work reflects on life between languages, homelands, and generations through the material practices of quilt-making and beadwork.
At its centre is a patchwork of modern-day “love letters”, WhatsApp messages, voice notes, screenshots, and music links, transformed into quilted squares that form a soft archive of care. Drawing on research into German Blaudruck textiles and Southern African beadwork love letters, the performance invites audiences into a shared act of “holding home ground.”
Waiting for lift off
Written by Nomakhwezi Becker; directed by Jade Bowers; performed by Carla Classen and Ziaphora Dakile; music by Yogin Sullaphen
Waiting for Lift-Off is a story-theatre performance about two sisters trying to remain connected across oceans. Blending language, memory, song, and the simple gesture of folding paper planes, the work traces how lives unfold across distance and time.
Moving fluidly between childhood and adulthood, the piece draws on rhythm, folktales, and family traditions to explore the shifting terrain of language, belonging, and care as families stretch across continents. A recurring figure, the man-eating ogre of childhood stories, becomes a metaphor for the fears and uncertainties that haunt memory and relationship. Through letters, storytelling, and imagination, the sisters attempt to transform what divides them and discover whether connection can travel further than distance.
Well wishing
Collaborative work by Nomakhwezi Becker, Carol Lutz, and Sol Santana
Well Wishing began as an exploration of care, exchange, and the invisible social currencies that shape how we give and receive support. Drawing on conversations about care rituals across cultures, the piece turns to folktales and mythology to examine traditions of offering, devotion, and divine intervention.
Water became a central image in the work — inspired by fountains, wishing wells, and the hopeful act of casting a wish into water, trusting that someone, somewhere, is listening. Through mythic figures imagined at the bottom of a well, the performance reflects on the hidden labour of care: the expectations placed on those who nurture, the longing to be cared for in return, and the complex negotiations of asking for help. Well Wishing interrogates the gendered and communal roles embedded in care work, inviting audiences to reflect on who holds the labour of tending to others — and who receives it.
When coasts meet
Written and performed by Nomakhwezi Becker; direction and dramaturgy by Nomcebisi Moyikwa
When Coasts Meet (2019 NAF Ovation winner) is a poetic solo performance weaving spoken word, music, and movement to explore identity across languages, cultures, and continents. Moving between German, isiZulu, and English, the work traces the layered inheritances of a South African–German lineage and asks what it means to belong between places.
On an almost bare stage, Becker gradually maps fragments of home through chalk drawings, sound, and storytelling — sketching doors, pathways, and landscapes that shift between memory and imagination. Guided by ancestral echoes and imagined companions, the performance unfolds as a living map of displacement, lineage, and return. Tender yet defiant, When Coasts Meet reflects on mixed heritage, the search for belonging, and the ongoing act of making home in the in-between.
Poetry performance for Mushaira 2.0
Emzansi in Orania film trailer
Poetry performance at Barbican Conservatory
Interview with Newsroom Africa
Southbank Centre poetry performance trailer
Voice over for iSimangaliso Wetland Park