Maipelo Gabang is a Botswana-born and South African-trained artist-researcher, educator and embodied practitioner. She currently serves as a doktorand (2021-2026) in performative and media-based practices at Stockholm University of the Arts. Her current work and practice centre the lived experiences and embodied knowings of Black women within the southern African diaspora situated in Scandinavia.

Linda’s written foreword situating the show starts by stating “Things come; things go”
And so, they did.

They entered through a doorframe.
The performers assemble short and sharp vignettes in the style of the 90’s studio family
portraits.

I’m sitting in the dark, a few rows up. Experiencing the show in my mind’s background or rather
playgroundwhere an endless reel of 90’s sitcom and cartoon intro theme songs accompany me
all through the delightfully awkward and wayward humour crafted by Wardal and executed by
the performers.

A mash-up of the Rugrats and Ed, Edd n Eddy started echoing in the back of my mind.










How funny, how odd- I thought to myself.
What was it about the registers, tones and logics of this choreographic piece that managed to
in-real-time to rummage through the storage boxes of my childhood watching habits? A simple
internal giggle and that moment was gone.

Thereafter, I seemed to find the performers and myself in a nightmare sequence. Did the
nightmares come to sit with them at the table? Were the portraits a front for a dysfunctional
family?
I scanned the room to see how the other audience members were responding to this acute
turmoil. Were we even invited or were we crashing a family meal of bread, butter and large
sides of passive aggressivity and cringe?

It was satisfying, I was full. Even though I wasn’t entirely sure if I had really been a wanted guest
in their transforming enclosure punctuated by dreamscape audio.

They left through a doorframe.

'Ting tIng ting tIng TING ting!
Ed, Edd n Eddy’
TING ting tInG ting tING!

Phwwwwwhht,Phwwwwwhht!
Phwwwwwhht Phwwwwwhht PhwwwWWHH!

LINDA WARDAL / ORCA

BY MAIPELO GABANG

Phwwwwwhht...