I create theater because it challenges me every single day.
It challenges my thoughts, my mind, and my perception of the world.
It pushes me to look beyond the black and white narrative and find the grey areas of life itself.
It challenges me to dive deeper and deeper into the world of Princess the Individual, Princess the Artist, Princess The African, and Princess the Woman.

Every time I dive into one of those worlds, I find a new story, and that story usually takes me on a journey of discovery, and the things that I find will lead me to create theater pieces that will eventually help me better understand my world and the world around me.

Princess Isatu Hassan Bangura (1996) is an interdisciplinary artist, drawing on the forms and techniques of many different art forms and expressing herself across a huge array of different mediums i.e performance, music, and cinema. Most of her works are created in the English language, mainly because her native tongue is a mixture of English and Krio.

Her Performances are often described as colorful and grounded. Working from memories, she blends her deep West African roots with her experiences in the western world. Inspired by religion and spirituality, she focuses on fictional characters and figures with the idea of a higher power and because of her love of storytelling, she tends to take on the role of a storyteller on stage. Her physical presence during a performance tends to be from a primal and earthly essence and her creations are mostly fragmental with the idea of showing the audience snippets of a larger story.

She is a mixture of… language, movements, and sound.

Werkt aan

Great Apes Of The West Coast: ‘In Afrika wist ik wat de kleur van mijn huid was, maar nooit wist ik wat het betekende, tot ik naar Nederland kwam.’

In een poging om ‘een liefdesbrief aan haar volk’ te schrijven en haar West-Afrikaanse roots te herontdekken, wordt Great Apes of the West Coasteen visuele, muzikale en lyrische solovoorstelling die het verhaal van de West-Afrikaanse cultuur vertelt door de stem van een West-Afrikaanse vrouw. Het is een verhaal van herbeginnen, herontdekken en herinneren. Het publiek wordt van harte uitgenodigd om zichaan te sluiten bij en getuige te zijn van Princess’ reis naar een nieuw bewustzijn,dat groeide op de voor haar meest heilige plek: het podium. De podiumtaal van Princess werd dag na dag gekneed door de ontdekking van zowel de westerse als de West-Afrikaanse kunstvormen, door hun verschillen, gelijkenissen en unieke combinaties. Met het creëren van een eigen artistieke taal ontdekte ze de wereld waarin zij leeft.

Heeft gewerkt aan

Mambo: A performance that aims to transcend common logic and re-take control of an ancestral religion that was once diminished by the fear and ignorance of colonial masters.

The performance ‘Mambo’ is a re-imagination of one of Africa’s oldest religions called Vodun a.k.a Voodoo. While often associated with countries like Haiti, ‘Vodun’, is very much a West African religion, that ended up in the Caribbean in the era of colonialism and slave trade. This religion is worldly misunderstood and has suffered from bad press internationally, through associations of the occult, black magic, human sacrifice, witchcraft, and satanism. Even today, it is seen as something that is to be feared and inhumane, but there is so much more to this religion than meets the eye. Vodun is an unearthly interaction between the natural and the supernatural, it is an experience that goes beyond rational thinking and “Mambo” will be the execution of the many faces of Vodun.

Fotografie en video door Milan van Dril

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