Nomakhwezi Becker

I am a South African–German interdisciplinary performer, writer, and voice artist working across theatre, poetry, and storytelling. My work explores language, belonging, intimacy across distance, and the intersections between personal and cultural histories.

Rooted in the storytelling tradition of Call & Response, my practice listens for the conversations between body, voice, and place. I create in an English shaped by isiZulu, isiXhosa, and German, allowing these languages to breathe through one another—where words meet, slip, and transform.

My work has been platformed at the Barbican Centre, Southbank Centre, Westminster Abbey, Translationale Berlin, Poetry Africa, and the National Arts Festival (Ovation Award, 2019). I am a Projekt Europa: Projekt Empower 2025 cohort member, continuing to develop work supported by Barbican Young Poets (’24 & ’25), Camden People’s Theatre Starting Blocks 2025, and High Rise New Gens 2024.

Current projects include Holding Ground, a performance work rooted in family archives and homemaking practices drawn from maternal lineages, integrating blaudruck and beadwork research as acts of remembrance and making home. I also lead Call & Response Workshops, participatory spaces for embodied storytelling and creative exchange, and am developing To Live on the Tongue, an interdisciplinary poetic collection exploring intimacy, language, and archival memory.