Nokuthula Magubane

Nokuthula Magubane is a Wits honors graduate who majored in classical vocal performance as a soprano and has a passion for classical music and the arts. Throughout her studies, she worked with vocal tutor Eugenie Chopin, under whom she presented her final year recital in November 2019. Magubane is and has been part of William Kentridge’s The Head & the Load. With that production, she has performed in New York (Park Avenue Armory), London (Tate’s Turbine Hall), Germany (Ruhrtriennale), Amsterdam (Holland Festival), and recently at the Joburg Theatre for the 2024 South African installment of the production. Magubane was also part of the Musorelief project, headed by Phillip Miller, which aimed to support performing artists during the COVID pandemic. The project has also released an album, Reuben T. Caluza the B-Side, which is a collection of works by the South African choral composer Ruben Tholakele Caluza. In 2022, Magubane joined Vuyani Dance Theatre’s production of Broken Chord and she remains part of that project. With Broken Chord, she has performed at Stanford University, in London, and at New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music. Magubane made her opera debut as Zerlina in the Joburg Theatre’s 2022 production of Don Giovanni and she is looking forward to taking on more operatic roles in the future. In 2023, she performed one of the leading roles in Phillip Miller’s Nkoli: The Vogue Opera, an opera documenting the life and time of Wits gay rights activist Simon Nkoli. In that production, which was showcased at the John Kani Theatre in Johannesburg’s Market Theatre, she played the role of Bev Ditsie, best friend to Simon Nkoli and a lesbian rights activist. Magubane continues to grow from strength to strength and looks forward to a bright and fruitful career.