
Roll up! Roll up! It’s time for Pitso Ya Kalaneng: A Call to Theatre, the Wits University’s annual  Orientation Week programme is now happening over a month. It’s an arts festival with a difference – aiming to show the city what Wits theatre is made of. This year’s pickings have the energy and vibrancy of a long-standing arts festival that will set the tone for your year – whether you are a student (at Wits or anywhere else), an academic or a member of the interested public.
Pitso Ya Kalaneng’s 2025 programme is packed to the rafters with exciting productions, from jamming sessions to drama, physical theatre and dance pieces to a book launch, a choir performance and an immersive sound installation.
Using all four of Wits Theatre’s venues, as well as the space outside the Wits Theatre Complex, the foyer of the Main Theatre and the space outside the Great Hall, the festival, established at Wits’s 40th anniversary celebrations last year, is now in its second year. It promises to keep the university’s East Campus throbbing with life and setting the tone for a challenging, fascinating and interesting year.
Ticket prices are set low enough for you to explore the thus far unknown work of very young theatre makers and to investigate and experience work by international theatre and literature giants like Yael Farber and Franz Kafka. It’s a new generation of theatre, which sees seasoned performers like Kamogelo Molobye choreographing and Jacques de Silva mentoring works.
The House of Shunem Coffee Station will be operating the bar at the front of house in the theatre. With a programme curated by the team at Wits’s Theatre and Performance division, veteran theatre-maker Malcolm Purkey, who since August of 2024 has stepped in as consultant for the Wits theatre, says: “I’m delighted that this year’s festival is almost a month, rather than a week in length.”
Divided into a theatre festival which runs from 10 to 14 February and a dance festival which runs from 19 to 22 February and 27 February to 1 March, Pitso Ya Kalaneng in 2025 offers something for everyone.
Parking is in the Station Street parking area around the theatre and also in the Solomon Mahlangu Building (entrance is on Jorissen Street).
Tickets are available at the door, or through Webtickets: https://www.webtickets.co.za
Tickets are R100, all students tickets are R50 on presentation of a student card for students from Wits and other colleges, schools and universities.
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