Mbongeni Ngema

Mbongeni Ngema is an internationally-renowned playwright, screenwriter, and librettist. His award-winning musical Sarafina!, which was nominated for 5 Tony Awards, has been performed all over the world. The musical won 11 NAACP Image Awards and ran for two years on Broadway before being adapted into a feature film. Mbongeni’s other works include Woza Albert, Township Fever (Market, Brooklyn Academy of Music), Mama, Asinamali, Maria Maria, 1906 Bhambatha: The Freedom Fighter, The House of Shaka, and The Lion of the East. Mbongeni has composed several music albums, including Stimela Sase Zola. He has also written and arranged numerous songs, as well as arranged music for artists such as Michael Bolton. He was one of the vocal arrangers for The Lion King. Recently, Mbongeni has tapped into his own richly-nurtured background of traditional story-telling to create his spell-binding one-man show, The Zulu.