18/07/2026
The line up keeps getting fired up 🔥
Napo Masheane is a multi-award-winning playwright, producer, poet, performer, director, cultural activist, translator, curator, and Founder & Artistic Director of the HerStory International Theatre Festival. Acclaimed on both national and international stages, she was born in Soweto and raised in QwaQwa in South Africa’s Free State Province, continually crossing geographical, academic, and artistic borders. She holds qualifications in Marketing Management, Speech & Drama, and a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing. 🥳
A founding member of the pioneering Feela Sistah! Spoken Word Collective, Napo went on to establish herself as one of South Africa’s leading Black theatre matriarchs through her provocative and groundbreaking works, including My Bum Is Genetic, Deal With It, The Fat Black Women Sing, KHWEZI… Say My Name, and My Va**na Was Not Buried With Him. She also made history as the first Black woman to write, direct, and produce a production—A New Song—on the Market Theatre’s prestigious John Kani Mainstage. ✨️
Between 2017 and 2018, Napo served as Deputy Artistic Director of the South African State Theatre, the largest theatre complex on the African continent. She later spent three years as an Advisory Board Member for Performing Arts at the Stockholm University of the Arts in Sweden. 🌍
In 2022, she founded and curated the groundbreaking HerStory International Theatre Festival, a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary platform dedicated to amplifying women’s voices, celebrating African storytelling traditions, and fostering cultural exchange between local and international artists. As Founder and Artistic Director, she has positioned the festival as a dynamic space for theatre, literature, music, dialogue, mentorship, and creative activism, championing women’s narratives while nurturing emerging generations of artists and cultural leaders. 😎
From 2022 to 2025, Napo served as Artistic Director
