New Territories: Theatre, Drama, and Performance in Post-apartheid South Africa

Description

South African theatre, drama, and performance is a vibrant and rapidly developing area of contemporary theatre studies. In this critical anthology of essays and interviews, some of the world’s most respected scholars and practitioners writing and working in the area of South African theatre today share their detailed examinations and insights on the complex and contradictory context of post-apartheid society. Loosely grouped into the categories of Theatre, Drama, and Performance, the essays collected here offer a sampling of work being staged, produced, and written in the country today. The contributors document, contrast, and analyse significant case studies, representing examples from site-specific performance to new South African plays, from traditional indigenous performance practice to the reimagining of Western classics. The anthology takes the year of South Africa’s first democratic election, 1994, as its departure point and includes a broad range of topics that capture the current paradigm. Cover Table of Contents Acknowledgments New Territories: Exploring the Post-apartheid Stage (Greg Homann and Marc Maufort) Ubizo – Voices of elok’shini: Listening Afresh to Theatre Voices from Cape Town’s Townships (Gay Morris) Eastern Cape Voices in Post-apartheid Theatre (Veronica Baxter) “After Titus:” Towards a Survey of Shakespeare on the Post-apartheid Stage (Chris Thurman) Claiming Western Texts for Contemporary South African Theatre: Issues of Relevance and the Dead-end Pursuit of National Identity (Greg Homann) SUN: Composition, Continuum, Choreopoem. A Theatre-making Case Study in Post-apartheid South Africa (Mwenya B. Kabwe) “The Dangerous Side of Writing:” The Post-apartheid Memory Plays of Athol Fugard (Brian Crow) Zakes Mda: The Satirist (Patrick Ebewo) The (New) Playwrights of the (New) Revolution (Zingi Mkefa) Re-imagining Space and Identity: A New Generation of Post-apartheid Afrikaans Playwrights (Petrus du Preez) Staging Miss Julie: Re-Visioning Strindberg (Marcia Blumberg) Negotiating the Post-apartheid Condition: Violence, Trauma and the Realist Aesthetic in Contemporary South African Drama (Marc Maufort) Reanimating the Ordinary: Walking, Talking and Performing in Johannesburg and Beyond (Loren Kruger) Spectacles of Participation: Performing amaXhosa Authenticity at the National Arts Festival of South Africa (Anton Krueger and Zoë Reeve) Laws of Recall: Body, Memory and Site-Specific Performance in Contemporary South Africa (Jay Pather) “My Exit Interview.” Malcolm Purkey Talks to Geoffrey Davis “Moments of Discovery.” An Interview with James Ngcobo “Truth is in the detail.” Craig Higginson Talks to Anne Fuchs and Geoffrey Davis “Don’t start him on the funding question, ever.” Mark Fleishman and Jay Pather Talking to Geoffrey Davis and Anne Fuchs Index Notes on Contributors