Manchester-based playwright, poet and performance artist Chanje Kunda is the first artist to be supported by Manchester International Festival’s new fund for artists and creative practitioners to support them to continue to experiment and test new ideas in these difficult times. She will present Toilet Roll Gate Retrospective, a spoof news report responding to the current toilet roll shortage.

Chanje has performed alongside the likes of Benjamin Zephaniah and Linton Kwesi Johnson and produced and toured three full length plays, Superposition, Plant Fetish and Amsterdam. In 2017 she became one of the first Jerwood Fellows, an MIF and Jerwood Arts creative development programme providing access and insight into how we create international Festival work whilst helping artists develop their own practice.

Chanje was set to tour her show Plant Fetish until the lockdown hit. A neuro-diverse artist with post-traumatic stress disorder, she recognises how a lockdown is hard on people living with disability – but also understands that through creativity, she can give something positive to the world. When Chanje realised that the everyday angst she felt when going to the shops to buy toilet paper was now an international crisis, she created Toilet Roll Gate Retrospective – a singular spoof show exploring all things toilet paper.

Find out more about Chanje in this interview ahead of her recent show Plant Fetish at HOME – where we discuss her creative process and top tips for emerging performance artists.

Toilet Roll Gate Retrospective premieres tonight, 15 April, 7:30pm on MIF LIVE along with a live Q&A with her and John McGrath. MIF LIVE shows will be streamed on our Festival YouTube channel, subscribe to get live notifications. Click here to find out more.