Great Apes of the West Coast

“Great Apes of the West Coast is the story I have always avoided to tell. But lately, I am realizing that this story is unavoidable”, says Princess Isatu Hassan Bangura.

Princess Isatu Hassan Bangura (25) recently graduated as a performance artist at Toneelacademie Maastricht. In season2021-2022, she made her debut on the big stage of NTGent as part of the cast of Grief & Beauty, a play by artistic director Milo Rau. Now Princess feels ready to share her most personal story, in an attempt to envision a possible future. And to do so, she will have to dive into her West-African culture and re-discover her ancestral roots.

Great Apes of the West Coast will be a visual, musical and lyrical solo performance that tells a story of new beginnings, re-discoveries, and past memories. Using theatre as a tool to resurrect and celebrate the light of the West-African culture, Bangura wants to reclaim the narrative of the Great Apes and overturn any negative connotation with the animal Queendom.

“I knew what the color of my skin was in Africa, but I never knew what it meant until I came to the Netherlands.”

The stage language that Princess has created for Great Apes of the West Coast has been molded day after day, by merging together the West-African and the West-European art forms and so being confronted by their differences, their similarities, and their unique combinations.

English spoken, Dutch surtitled