A Century of South African Theatre

Professor Loren Kruger (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

288 Seiten

2019
Methuen Drama (Verlag)
978-1-350-00800-7 (ISBN)

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“Theatre is not part of our vocabulary”: Sipho Sepamla’s provocation in 1981, the year of famous anti-apartheid play Woza Albert!, prompts the response, yes indeed, it is. A Century of South African Theatre demonstrates the impact of theatre and other performances—pageants, concerts, sketches, workshops, and performance art—over the last hundred years. Its coverage includes African responses to pro-British pageants celebrating white Union in 1910, such as the Emancipation Centenary of the abolition of British colonial slavery in 1934 organized by Griffiths Motsieloa and HIE Dhlomo, through anti-apartheid testimonial theatre by Athol Fugard, Maishe Maponya, Gcina Mhlophe, and many others, right up to the present dramatization of state capture, inequality and state violence in today’s unevenly democratic society, where government has promised much but delivered little.

Building on Loren Kruger’s personal observations of forty years as well as her published research, A Century of South African Theatre provides theoretical coordinates from institution to public sphere to syncretism in performance in order to highlight South Africa’s changing engagement with the world from the days of Empire, through the apartheid era to the multi-lateral and multi-lingual networks of the 21st century. The final chapters use the Constitution’s injunction to improve wellbeing as a prompt to examine the dramaturgy of new problems, especially AIDS and domestic violence, as well as the better known performances in and around the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Kruger critically evaluates internationally known theatre makers, including the signature collaborations between animator/designer William Kentridge, and Handspring Puppet Company, and highlights the local and transnational impact of major post-apartheid companies such as Magnet Theatre.

Loren Kruger is a graduate of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and Cornell University, USA and is Professor of English, Comparative Literature, Theatre and Performance Studies and African Studies at the University of Chicago, USA.

List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Theatre and South African Public Spheres

Chapter 1
Commemorating and Contesting Emancipation: Pageants and other enactments

Chapter 2
Neocolonial theatre and the “African National Dramatic Movement”

Chapter 3
(Anti-)Apartheid Theatre in the Shadow of Sophiatown

Chapter 4
Advance and Retreat of the Afrikaner Ascendancy

Chapter 5
Dramas of Black Solidarity

Chapter 6
Theatre as Testimony and Performance Against Apartheid

Chapter 7
Prospects and Retro-spects in Post-anti-apartheid Theatre

Chapter 8
The Constitution of South African Theatre at the Present Time

Abbreviations and Glossary
Abbreviations, key terms from South Africa’s indigenous languages; and distinctive South African variants of English words and phrases

Notes

References

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	29.11.2019
Reihe/Serie	Cultural Histories of Theatre and Performance
Zusatzinfo	20 b/w illus
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	158 x 236 mm
Gewicht	580 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Theater / Ballett
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-350-00800-1 / 1350008001
ISBN-13	978-1-350-00800-7 / 9781350008007
Zustand	Neuware