ACTOR

Awarded Best Actress at the 2025 Toyota Stellenbosch Woordfees, Buhle Ngaba is a multi-award-winning actor whose work centres on performance, embodiment, and storytelling. Early in her career, she starred in the world premiere of John Kanis’ Missing, touring internationally and earning Best Supporting Actress nominations at both the Fleur du Cap and Naledi Theatre Awards. She wrote her first play Swan Song during her time at the Royal Shakespeare Company(Stratford) and since its premiere ; Ngaba has won two South Kanna Theatre Awards including Best Upcoming Artist. Later, the production was adapted into a screenplay streamed globally during the course of the National Arts Festival 2020 and the production also boasts sold out seasons at Suidooster Kunstefees (2021), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna, 2022) and Basel Theater Festival (Switzerland, 2022). Ngaba continues to garner acclaim for performances in works such as Nadia Davids’ What Remains and Bridling. In 2024, she was awarded the Market Theatre Barney Simon Residency, where she developed her latest production, BLING! which premiered to critical praise at the 2024 Vienna Festival and toured to Afrovibes Festival (Amsterdam) in 2025. BLING! Returns home to South Africa in 2026.
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 “Touching, gripping and contemporary” “Theatre-maker Buhle Ngaba from South Africa enchants with her solo performance “Swan Song” she knows exactly how to tell a story”

Die Presse Newspaper, Vienna, 2022

“Swan Song mixes the hope of love with the curse of being different in societies conditioned to conform. The young woman catches herself, but the surgical scars stand for losses: wings gone. Ngaba made a touching play out of this pain”

Weiner Zeitung Newspaper, Vienna, 2022

BLING! goes beyond the story of the Cullinan diamond, it encapsulates the broader narrative of a journey towards democracy, intertwining history, culture and the pursuit of justice”.