Black Kitchen

Philisiwe Twijnstra received a grant for the development a new theatre performance. Black Kitchen follows the eldest of four estranged sisters, who must reunite with her siblings in their late mother’s kitchen before the burial can take place. The kitchen becomes a site of reckoning, a space where long-suppressed truths, sisterhood, grief, and inherited memory surface.  This black kitchen is explored as a witness to Black lives.

Philisiwe is an award-winning South African actor, playwright, and theatremaker based in Rotterdam. Her work centres Black narratives and inclusive representation, and has been presented across Europe, Africa, and Canada. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Rhodes University. She received the AMARTE Grant (2025) for her new play The Dutch Dream and won the CASA Playwright Award in 2018. In 2022, she was a Playwright Fellow with AWPN–Ghana and was named in the 2023 Mail & Guardian Top 200 Young South Africans (Film & Media). Her work is currently touring Sweden with Darling Desperados. She is part of the Almasi Playwright Cohort (2025–26), selected for the International Women’s Playwrights Conference (Philippines, 2026). She serves as Creative Coach at Zuidplein Theatre and Writer-in-Residence at Het Veerhuis.