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South African performance and archives of memory

Author : Yvette Hutchison

Publisher : Manchester University Press

Page : 332 pages

File Size : 23,40 MB

Release : 2015-11-01

Category : Performing Arts

ISBN : 1526103249

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Book Description

This book explores how South Africa is negotiating its past in and through various modes of performance in contemporary theatre, public events and memorial spaces. It analyses the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a live event, as an archive, and in various theatrical engagements with it, asking throughout how the TRC has affected the definition of identity and memory in contemporary South Africa, including disavowed memories. Hutchison then considers how the SA-Mali Timbuktu Manuscript Project and the 2010 South African World Cup opening ceremony attempted to restage the nation in their own ways. She investigates how the Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park embody issues related to memory in contemporary South Africa. She also analyses current renegotiations of popular repertoires, particularly songs and dances related to the Struggle, revivals of classic European and South African protest plays, new history plays and specific racial and ethnic histories and identities.



Forays into Contemporary South African Theatre

Author :

Publisher : BRILL

Page : 362 pages

File Size : 14,56 MB

Release : 2019-11-11

Category : Literary Criticism

ISBN : 9004414460

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Book Description

In the years that followed the end of apartheid, South African theatre was characterized by a remarkable productivity, which resulted in a process of constant aesthetic reinvention. After 1994, the “protest” theatre template of the apartheid years morphed into a wealth of diverse forms of stage idioms, detectable in the works of Greg Homann, Mike van Graan, Craig Higginson, Lara Foot, Omphile Molusi, Nadia Davids, Magnet Theatre, Rehane Abrahams, Amy Jephta, and Reza de Wet, to cite only a few prominent examples. Marc and Jessica Maufort’s multivocal edited volume documents some of the various ways in which the “rainbow” nation has forged these innovative stage idioms. This book’s underlying assumption is that creolization reflects the processes of identity renegotiation in contemporary South Africa and their multi-faceted theatrical representations. Contributors: Veronica Baxter, Marcia Blumberg, Vicki Briault Manus, Petrus du Preez, Paula Fourie, Craig Higginson, Greg Homann, Jessica Maufort, Marc Maufort, Omphile Molusi, Jessica Murray, Jill Planche, Ksenia Robbe, Mathilde Rogez, Chris Thurman, Mike van Graan, and Ralph Yarrow.



Improvising Reconciliation

Author : Ed Charlton

Publisher : Liverpool University Press

Page : 219 pages

File Size : 27,77 MB

Release : 2021-06-01

Category : History

ISBN : 1800344805

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Book Description

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. Improvising Reconciliation is prompted by South Africa’s enduring state of injustice. It is both a lament for the promise, since lost, with which non-racial democracy was inaugurated and, more substantially, a space within which to consider its possible renewal. As such, this study lobbies for an expanded approach to the country’s formal transition from apartheid in order to grapple with reconciliation’s ongoing potential within the contemporary imaginary. It does not, however, presume to correct the contradictions that have done so much to corrupt the concept in recent decades. Instead, it upholds the language of reconciliation for strategic, rather than essential, reasons. And while this study surveys some of the many serious critiques levelled at the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1996-2001), these misgivings help situate the plural, improvised approach to reconciliation that has arguably emerged from the margins of the cultural sphere in the years since. Improvisation serves here as a separate way of both thinking and doing reconciliation. It recalibrates the concept according to a series of deliberative, agonistic and iterative, rather than monumental, interventions, rendering reconciliation in terms that make failure a necessary condition for its future realisation.



Performing European Memories

Author : Milija Gluhovic

Publisher : Springer

Page : 285 pages

File Size : 10,28 MB

Release : 2013-04-23

Category : Performing Arts

ISBN : 1137338520

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Book Description

Asking whether a genuinely shared European memory is possible while addressing the dangers of a single, homogenized European memory, Gluhovic examines the contradictions, specificities, continuities and discontinuities in the European shared and unshared pasts as represented in the works of Pinter, Tadeusz Kantor, Heiner Muller and Artur Zmijewski.



Ngũgĩ Wa Thiongʼo & Wole Soyinka

Author : Martin Banham

Publisher : Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Page : 146 pages

File Size : 31,55 MB

Release : 2014

Category : Art

ISBN : 1847010989

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Book Description

Directors and collaborators assess and comment on the production of plays by West Africa's Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka and East Africa's most influential author Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Wole Soyinka and Ngugi wa Thiong'o are the pre-eminent playwrights of West and East Africa respectively and their work has been hugely influential across the continent. This volume features directors' experiences of recent productions of their plays, the voices of actors and collaborators who have worked with the playwrights, and also provides a digest of their theatrical output. Contributors provide new readings of Ngugi and Soyinka's classic texts, and astimulating new approach for students of English, Theatre and African studies. The playscript for this volume is a previously unpublished radio play by Wole Soyinka entitled A Rain of Stones, first broadcast onBBC Radio 4 in 2002. Volume Editors: MARTIN BANHAM & FEMI OSOFISAN Guest Editor: KIMANI NJOGU Series Editors: Martin Banham, Emeritus Professor of Drama & Theatre Studies, University of Leeds; James Gibbs, Senior Visiting Research Fellow, University of the West of England; Femi Osofisan, Professor of Drama at the University of Ibadan; Jane Plastow, Professor of African Theatre, University of Leeds; Yvette Hutchison, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre & Performance Studies, University of Warwick



Literary Legacies of the South African TRC

Author : Francesca Mussi

Publisher : Springer Nature

Page : 266 pages

File Size : 19,4 MB

Release : 2020-05-18

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 3030430553

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Book Description

Since the 1970s, truth and reconciliation commissions have become increasingly popularised as options for addressing historical injustices, especially within the context of dictatorial regimes. Of the many truth commissions to date, the South African TRC has been the one that has captured public attention throughout the world, providing a model for subsequent truth commissions. The South African TRC has also constituted and still constitutes an intriguing source for writing. Literary Legacies of the South African TRC explores the capacities of fiction for providing the TRC and people’s testimonies with a productive afterlife, for challenging definitions of trauma, truth and reconciliation, for inviting readers to keep the dialogue about the past open, and to think actively about the strategies adopted in addressing that past and their implications in the present. It explores these capabilities as evidenced in the work of a wide range of writers, some known to international Anglophone readers, including J.M. Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer, some less well-known, including Afrikaans-language novelist Marlene van Niekerk, and others from a new generation including Marli Roode, Kopano Matlwa, and Thando Mgqolozana. The book aims to contribute to discourses of trauma, truth-telling, and reconciliation from a literary perspective, as well as placing emphasis on the profound interconnection between fiction, history, and trauma in conflict and post-conflict areas such as South Africa.



Theory for Theatre Studies: Memory

Author : Milija Gluhovic

Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing

Page : 184 pages

File Size : 48,62 MB

Release : 2020-11-12

Category : Literary Criticism

ISBN : 1474246648

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Book Description

Why has memory become such an important political tool in response to the challenges of modernity? How can performance be used to probe and recuperate aspects of the past, and what are the ethical and political questions that arise when it does so? And how should the discipline of theatre studies define and deploy the term 'memory' theoretically and in practice? Theory for Theatre Studies: Memory provides a comprehensive introduction to the intersections between contemporary theatre and performance, the field of memory studies and the politics of memory across the globe. Beginning by offering a fresh critical snapshot of the major theoretical foundations for the study of memory today, the author presents vivid theatrical examples drawn from a wide variety of cultural contexts and compellingly illustrates the centrality of memory for the theatre as well as the vital role of theatre in transmitting individual and collective memories. Featuring in-depth case studies of a range of performance works - including Lola Arias's Minefield, Yael Ronen's Common Ground and Robert Lepage's The Seven Streams of the River Ota - it explores how theatre artists have grappled with issues of memory and the tensions between memory and history. A final section examines the problematics of memory in a global context by exploring the subject of migration/immigration. Memory is supported by further online resources including section overviews and discussion questions. Online resources to accompany this book are available at: https://www.bloomsbury.com/theory-for-theatre-studies-memory-9781474246651/



Routledge Handbook of African Theatre and Performance

Author : Kene Igweonu

Publisher : Taylor & Francis

Page : 811 pages

File Size : 25,44 MB

Release : 2024-06-10

Category : Drama

ISBN : 1040019919

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Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of African Theatre and Performance brings together the very latest international research on the performing arts across the continent and the diaspora into one expansive and wide-ranging collection. The book offers readers a compelling journey through the different ideas, people and practices that have shaped African theatre and performance, from pre-colonial and colonial times, right through to the 20th and early 21st centuries. Resolutely Pan-African and inter- national in its coverage, the book draws on the expertise of a wide range of Africanist scholars, and also showcases the voices of performers and theatre practitioners working on the cutting-edge of African theatre and performance practice. Contributors aim to answer some of the big questions about the content (nature, form) and context (processes, practice) of theatre, whilst also painting a pluralistic and complex picture of the diversity of cultural, political and artistic exigencies across the continent. Covering a broad range of themes including postcolonialism, transnationalism, interculturalism, Afropolitanism, development and the diaspora, the handbook concludes by projecting possible future directions for African theatre and performance as we continue to advance into the 21st century and beyond. This ground-breaking new handbook will be essential reading for students and researchers studying theatre and performance practices across Africa and the diaspora. Kene Igweonu is Professor of Creative Education at University of the Arts London, where he is also Pro Vice-Chancellor and Head of London College of Communication. An interdisciplinary researcher, Professor Igweonu has extensive experience of senior academic leadership in immersive and interactive practices and performance practice. His practice research and publication interests are in storytelling, theatre, and performance in Africa and its Diaspora, as well as the Feldenkrais Method in health, wellbeing, and performance training. A champion for arts and creative industries, Professor Igweonu is Chair of DramaHE, Council Member for Creative UK, and until August 2023, President of the African Theatre Association.



The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary South African Theatre

Author : Martin Middeke

Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing

Page : 393 pages

File Size : 25,14 MB

Release : 2015-11-19

Category : Performing Arts

ISBN : 1408176718

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Book Description

South Africa has a uniquely rich and diverse theatre tradition which has responded energetically to the country's remarkable transition, helping to define the challenges and contradictions of this young democracy. This volume considers the variety of theatre forms, and the work of the major playwrights and theatre makers producing work in democratic South Africa. It offers an overview of theatre pioneers and theatre forms in Part One, before concentrating on the work of individual playwrights in Part Two. Through its wide-ranging survey of indigenous drama written predominantly in the English language and the analysis of more than 100 plays, a detailed account is provided of post-apartheid South African theatre and its engagement with the country's recent history. Part One offers six overview chapters on South African theatre pioneers and theatre forms. These include consideration of the work of artists such as Barney Simon, Mbongeni Ngema, Phyllis Klotz; the collaborations of William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company; the work of Magnet Theatre, and of physical and popular community theatre forms. Part Two features chapters on twelve major playwrights, including Athol Fugard, Reza de Wet, Lara Foot, Zakes Mda, Yaël Farber, Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom, Mike van Graan and Brett Bailey. It includes a survey of emerging playwrights and significant plays, and the book closes with an interview with Aubrey Sekhabi, the Artistic Director of the South African State Theatre in Pretoria. Written by a team of over twenty leading international scholars, The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary South African Theatre is a unique resource that will be invaluable to students and scholars from a range of different disciplines, as well as theatre practitioners.



Interculturalism and Performance Now

Author : Charlotte McIvor

Publisher : Springer

Page : 383 pages

File Size : 26,64 MB

Release : 2018-12-29

Category : Performing Arts

ISBN : 303002704X

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Book Description

This book is the first edited collection to respond to an undeniable resurgence of critical activity around the controversial theoretical term ‘interculturalism’ in theatre and performance studies. Long one of the field’s most vigorously debated concepts, intercultural performance has typically referred to the hybrid mixture of performance forms from different cultures (typically divided along an East-West or North-South axis) and its related practices frequently charged with appropriation, exploitation or ill-founded universalism. New critical approaches since the late 2000s and early 2010s instead reveal a plethora of localized, grassroots, diasporic and historical approaches to the theory and practice of intercultural performance which make available novel critical and political possibilities for performance practitioners and scholars. This collection consolidates and pushes forward reflection on these recent shifts by offering case studies from Asia, Africa, Australasia, Latin America, North America, and Western Europe which debate the possibilities and limitations of this theoretical turn towards a ‘new’ interculturalism.