Eva-Maria Bertschy is a dramaturge, director and playwright. Since 2012 she has conceived and realized international theatre and documentary film projects together with the Swiss director Milo Rau and the International Institute of Political Murder. At the same time, she regularly collaborated with the Berlin-based director Ersan Mondtag. In 2021 she founded GROUP50:50 together with the Swiss musician Elia Rediger, the Congolese choreographer Dorine Mokha and the curator Patrick Mudekereza. With the Congolese-Swiss group she developed a two-year, multi-part political project that included the two music theatre pieces THE GHOSTS ARE RETURNING (invited to the Swiss Theatre Encounter 2023 and nominated for the FAUST) and ECOSYSTEM (residency Leipzig and Kaserne Basel 2023). At the same time, together with the Italian political author, activist and cultural organizer Lorenzo Marsili she founded the Fondazione Studio Rizoma, a production structure for transnational political and artistic projects based in Palermo, and co-curated three editions of the BETWEEN LAND AND SEA Festival with the Rizoma team. In 2024 she created her first own piece FREMDE SEELEN (Belluard Bollwerk International, Theater Neumarkt Zürich, Vorarlberger Landestheater and euro-scene Leipzig), with which she returned to Switzerland. In 2025 / 2026 she staged her second piece CAMPOBELLO at the Teatro Garibaldi in Palermo and at the Theater Winkelwiese in Zurich.

Kojack Kossakamvwe is a guitarist and composer who lives in Kinshasa and has been touring Europe and the rest of the world for many years. He has played in many bands and projects with stars of the Congolese music scene, including Kwata Vibra (1998), Wenge Musica Mère (2000–2003), and as musical director with Papa Wemba for LA PASSION DU MAÎTRE (2015). From 2018 he toured worldwide with REQUIEM POUR L. – under the direction of Fabrizio Cassol and Alain Platel – together with musicians from five continents. In 2019 he was part of the ensemble of HERKULES VON LUBUMBASHI – EIN MINENORATORIUM. Since 2021 he has been musical co-director of GROUP50:50 and composed the music for THE GHOSTS ARE RETURNING and ECOSYSTEM. In 2024 he appeared on stage as a guitarist in the opera production JUSTICE by the Swiss director Milo Rau at the Grand Théâtre de Genève and in St. Pölten. At the same time he worked as musical director with Eva-Maria Bertschy on her productions FREMDE SEELEN and CAMPOBELLO. As musical director he also realized an adaptation of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with an ensemble of Congolese musicians at the Institut Français in Lubumbashi (2018), and REQUIEM 242, an adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem in Brazzaville.

Edwige Dro Edwige Dro is a writer, literary translator (English and French), and literary curator from Côte d’Ivoire whose work spans fiction, creative nonfiction, and feminist literary advocacy. She works at the intersections of literature, feminist thoughts, and the arts, and her writing and translations have appeared across Africa, the UK, and North America. She has served on juries for the Caine Prize for African Writing and the PEN International Short Story Prize, and she is on advisory boards such as the PEN/HEIM Translation Fund, Culturescapes, and the African Book Festival. A 2014 Africa39 laureate, she is also a 2019 Miles Morland Fellow and a 2021 International Writing Program Fellow at the University of Iowa. In 2020, she founded 1949: THE LIBRARY OF WOMEN‘S WRITINGS FROM AFRICA AND THE BLACKK WORLD, a feminist space for decolonial practices, knowledge production and its democratization in Abidjan.

Percy Nii Nortey is a multidisciplinary artist from Kumasi. In his practice he explores themes such as identity, materiality, decolonization, memory and labor. In doing so he blurs the boundaries between installation, performative objects and mobile sculptures. Deeply rooted in his personal history and in the socio-economic conditions of Ghana, Nortey’s work aims to empower Black communities and reclaim control over their own narratives. Community engagement is at the center of his artistic approach. He actively collaborates with local communities of workers by distributing used fabrics, retrieving them after use and transforming them into large-scale artworks. These fabrics, marked by traces of dirt, coal, grease and oil from everyday labor, become archives of resilience and emphasize the importance of these fields of work for society. Nortey’s works have been shown in numerous art spaces and festivals at home and abroad, including the Dekoloniale Festival (Berlin), the Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Orderly Disorderly (Museum of Science and Technology, Accra) and the Chale Wote Street Art Festival (Accra).

Austin Nortey is a multidisciplinary Ghanaian artist and fashion designer from Kumasi. His work engages with themes such as materiality, identity, labor, memory and the evolving relationship between people and the objects they interact with. He is interested in sustainable practices and often uses second-hand and traditional fabrics in his creations. Nortey holds a Bachelor’s degree in Fashion Design from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). His work has been exhibited across Africa and internationally and reflects his commitment to artistic exchange and collaboration. His work has been presented at many international festivals and art spaces, including the Sipab Conference (Hamburg) and the Afrotopia Festival (Berlin), the Contemporary Art and Literary Exhibition (Paris), the Glam Fashion Africa Exhibition (Lagos), the Lou Gallery and the Bone Performance Art Festival (Bern). In 2024 he was awarded second place in the prestigious Vlisco Fashion Fund and was invited to the Perforcraze International Artist Residency (PIAR) in Kumasi and to the residency “Chatting New Routes of Rebellion” (Tamale).

Jahelle Bonee is a singer, musician, writer and composer from Abidjan. Her music is a fusion of jazz, soul, blues, hip hop and traditional sounds. She began singing in her community choir at the age of eight and taught herself to play several traditional instruments such as the ahoco and the djembé. In 2014 she began her professional music career and made a name for herself through showcases, concerts and appearances at prestigious events. Her first album BÉFLÈHMI was released in 2018, the second in 2023 under the title MEET MY SOUL. Since then she has toured with her music throughout West Africa as well as in Europe and Canada. In 2025 Jahelle Bonee will be a prizewinner of the Marché des Arts et du Spectacle d‘Abidjan.

Araba Dansowaa is an actress from Accra, Ghana. She studied acting at University of Ghana, Legon, and works with Fiifi Coleman Productions, and also part-times at Bambu Heritage Productions as a Performer and a Drama Instructor at Vivies Dance and Theatre Academy. She has appeared in various theater productions by Ghanaian director Fiifi Coleman‘s WOMEN AT WORK (2025), in a world touring total theatre productions by Chief Moomen titled MANSA MUSA AND THE TRAIL OF LOST GOLD since 2022 till date, and in director Naa Ashorkor and author George Quaye‘s BEYOND WALLS (2025). She regularly performs with the group LODODO ARTS, led by a Ghanaian lecturer, folk-researcher, playwright and director Dr. Sarah Dorgbazi, keeping alive the myths and forms of traditional storytelling and concert party theatre every December and mid-year since 2020 in Ghana.

Martina “Momo” Kunz (Switzerland) is a performer, director, writer and musician working across theatre, film, literature and music. In her artistic practice she explores storytelling at the intersections of body, language, sound and visual forms, often using personal and collective memories as a starting point for interdisciplinary works. Momo completed training as a physical actress in 2006 and in 2014 received a BA in Literary Writing from the Bern University of the Arts. In 2016 she founded the theatre company LES MÉMOIRES D‘HÉLÈNE. As artistic director, author and performer she has created six productions with the company, supported by the city and canton of Zurich and by Pro Helvetia. The company received the second prize at PREMIO and has since developed into a collectively organized structure with multi-year funding. In addition to her work with the collective, Momo is one half of the rap duo I NEVER TOOK MY RITALIN with which she performs as a rapper and singer at festivals in Switzerland and internationally. In 2025 she completed the Master program Dirección de Ficción at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (EICTV) in Cuba.

Jonathan Thimbombo Mbayi is a drummer and percussionist living in Kinshasa. For more than ten years he has worked with Kojack Kossakamvwe and toured extensively with him throughout West and Central Africa. He has been on stage in many of his projects – including an adaptation of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with an ensemble of Congolese musicians at the Institut Français in Lubumbashi and in REQUIEM 242, an adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem in Brazzaville.

Luca Maier is a freelance dramaturge, producer and translator from Berlin. She studied communication design at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle. In 2020 she founded the queer theatre collective Copines together with the author Julie Guigonis. Together they realized the productions FEMALE* VIOLENT FANTASIES, WARUM LIEGT MEIN HERZ SO SCHWER BEI EUCH and the live radio play GHOSTBIKE based on the play of the same name by Julie Guigonis (nominated for the Authors’ Prize of the Heidelberger Stückemarkt 2024). Since 2022 Luca Maier has been working as assistant to the artistic direction, dramaturge and translator for GROUP50:50 and Eva-Maria Bertschy. With THE GHOSTS ARE RETURNING, ECOSYSTEM, THE TIME FOR DENIAL IS OVER and CAMPOBELLO she has accompanied numerous guest performances and tours in Germany, Switzerland, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Austria, Italy and South Africa.

Camille Jamet (1988) is a cultural producer living between Zurich and London. She holds a Master’s degree in Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2021 she founded HERproductions, a network for cultural production that brings together artists and creatives from different disciplines. As a women-led network, HERproductions aims to redefine artistic boundaries. Camille Jamet is co-founder of the interdisciplinary curatorial collective FRICTION. From 2012 to 2015 she curated the off-space Perla-Mode in Zurich and in 2016 directed the art space Nordflügel of the Theaterhaus Gessnerallee. Camille Jamet has curated and produced various art exhibitions, including the performance series AGGREGATES at the Raven Row in London in 2019 and at the Kunstraum Klingental in 2021. In 2023 she co-curated and produced the exhibition VISCERAL DEPTH in Los Angeles. In 2024 she curated and produced the exhibition RREFLECTIONS IN TIME at Casa Versalles in Mexico City. With HERproductions Camille works among others for the artists and groups GROUP50:50, Magda Drozd, Natascha Moschini and Eva-Maria Bertschy.

Direction: Eva-Maria Bertschy
Musical direction and composition: Kojack Kossakamvwe
Text: Eva-Maria Bertschy and Edwige Dro

Stage design: Percy Nii Nortey
Costumes: Austin Nortey
Performers: Araba Dansowaa Agyare, Jahelle Bonee, Martina Momo Kunz, Kojack Kossakamvwe, and Jonathan Tshimbombo
In the videos: Albertine Elanga, Lois Gyebuah Nyamekye Addo
Dramaturgy: Luca Maier
Video and photos: Henry Nelson Dezousa, Kofi Amankwah Olga Gubina and Paul Shemisi 
Lighting design and stage collaboration: Sylvain Faye
Assistant director: Olga Gubina

Production manager: Camille Florence Jamet
Tour manager: Luca Maier
Stage and costume production: Workshops of the Vorarlberger Landestheater

WAX TRADERS is a production by GROUP50:50. In co-production with the Vorarlberger Landestheater and Kaserne Basel.

Funded by: Fachausschuss Tanz & Theater Basel-Stadt / Basel-Landschaft, Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council, Ernst Göhner Foundation, Landis & Gyr Foundation, and Anne-Marie Schindler Foundation, Südkulturfonds

With the support of: Oskar Hämmerle GmbH and HOH Hoferhecht Stickereien in Lustenau. 
 

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