THEY WILL TAKE you and bind your hands. You will hear a child crying. You will be afraid. The whip-wielding ringmaster laughs a certain amount of syllables of laughter and then their face turns stony and the laugh stops. Welcome to the Black Circus of the Republic of Bantu, where the truths of the colonised are retold with resounding freshness. The work is performed by Albert Silindokuhle Ibokwe Khoza at the Mannie Manim theatre in the Market Theatre, until 29 June. And it should be mandatory.

But this show is not about cheerful entertainment or pretty words strung together like thoughtful pearls. It’s not even about the idea of a bright and bold spectacle to make you look. Replete with burning incense and song that will reach into the very chambers of your heart, as well as the use of cruelty and nakedness, this piece, in which you may find yourself bound and sitting on the floor, is more of a ritual than a spectacle. You emerge from the experience with a seismic sense in your gut. Something has happened.

The horrendous back story of the Victorian circus is not a brand new story. The way in which social culture has relooked at it, and reviled it, is also not hot off the press. Sarah Baartman, a 19th-century Khoi woman who was put on European display mercilessly until her death at the age of 26, in 1815, simply because the appearance of her naked body represented a novelty to European culture, is one of these horror stories. It has been told many times. In Ibokwe’s focus, there is something more. Something personal. The narrative is fresh and the scars still bloody.

The Black Circus reaches deep into the belly of what performance has been for African culture for centuries. Video material on the work’s backdrop interweaves Ibokwe at play and in performance, with footage of sacred dance rituals clean of colonialist input, such as the Senegalese Kumpo performance. Ibokwe takes the idea of a pre-colonial African mask and with brilliance and a wealthy understanding of humiliation, reinvents it. It is terrifying and beautiful. It is sacred and rich with values that are internal.

Ibokwe, who in 2023 was acknowledged with New York City’s prestigious Bessie Award, effectively reaches, in his work, which is far more known and celebrated out of this continent than within it, the very roots of what performance always has been. It’s about being able to wear a ship-shaped hat, or a plane-shaped one, and dance like a god. This is a show that will touch your inner sense of humanity in a way far deeper than any conventional stage production. It is not just a series of accusations about twisted values and how the west has looted Africa for centuries and then deemed it inferior; it is mysterious and brutal, magical and seductive. It will prickle your skin and terrify you, but in a way that makes you not able to look away.

It resonates with the performance work by artists of the ilk of Brett Bailey and Steven Cohen, and in doing so, Ibokwe takes an historical narrative and makes it their own. There is a moment of really scary audience participation which blends hilarity with horror in the same way that one of Cabaret’s most taboo songs did, and leaves the rest of the audience without words and with a dry throat.

It is easier to write with earnest and solemn academic words in describing how Ibokwe rips into the fabric of complacency, with laughter and wit, with fierceness and brutality. You must experience it for yourself. Black Circus is not an easy work, but a profoundly important one.

• The Black Circus of the Republic of Bantu is directed by Princess Zinzi Mhlongo and is written and performed by Albert Silindokuhle Ibokwe Khoza. It performs at the Mannie Manim Theatre, Market Theatre complex in Newtown, Johannesburg, until 29 June 2025.