Greg Homann

Edited by Greg Homann & Marc Maufort

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. 

P.I.E. Peter Lang, Brussels

“This book directly addresses the important questions regarding research methodologies, the relationship between text-based drama, performance, theatre & performance in site specific or found spaces. And these categories of work have implicitly defined the structure of the book.” – South African Theatre Journal

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. New Territories: Exploring the Post-apartheid Stage (Greg Homann and Marc Maufort)
2. Ubizo – Voices of elok’shini: Listening Afresh
 to Theatre Voices from Cape Town’s Townships (Gay Morris)
3. Eastern Cape Voices in Post-apartheid Theatre (Veronica Baxter)
4. “After Titus:” Towards a Survey of Shakespeare
on the Post-apartheid Stage (Chris Thurman)
5. Claiming Western Texts for Contemporary South African
Theatre: Issues of Relevance and the Dead-end Pursuit
of National Identity  (Greg Homann)
6. SUN: Composition, Continuum, Choreopoem.
A Theatre-making Case Study in Post-apartheid
South Africa (Mwenya B. Kabwe)
7. “The Dangerous Side of Writing:” The Post-apartheid
Memory Plays of Athol Fugard” (Brian Crow)
8. Zakes Mda: the Satirist (Patrick. Ebewo)
9. The (New) Playwrights of the (New) Revolution (Zingi Mkefa)
10. Re-imagining Space and Identity: A New Generation
of Post-apartheid Afrikaans Playwrights (Petrus du Preez)
11. Staging Miss Julie: Re-Visioning Strindberg (Marcia Blumberg)
12. Negotiating the Post-apartheid Condition: Violence, Trauma and the Realist Aesthetic in Contemporary
South African Drama (Marc Maufort)
13. Reanimating the Ordinary: Walking, Talking 
and Performing in Johannesburg and Beyond (Loren Kruger)
14. Spectacles of Participation: Performing amaXhosa
Authenticity at the National Arts Festival of South Africa (Anton Krueger and Zoë Reeve)
15. Laws of Recall: Body, Memory and Site-Specific
Performance in Contemporary South Africa (Jay Pather)

INTERVIEWS

• “My Exit Interview.” Malcolm Purkey Talks to Geoffrey Davis
• “Moments of Discovery.” James Ngcobo Talks to Geoffrey Davis
• “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 Talks to Geoffrey Davis and Anne Fuchs