In a remote and impoverished village in the Karoo, South Africa, a young girl, Thomaza, struggles to survive. A violent and terrifying incident and a chance encounter with an escaped moose changes her life forever. A story of pain, redemption and hope, combining traditional African storytelling and magical realism the multi-award-winning Karoo Moose was first produced by the Baxter Theatre, Cape Town.
“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.
The Fall is a play collaboratively written by the original cast as a reaction to and reflection on the South African student protests in 2015 and part of 2016. The #RhodesMustFall and subsequent student-led movements in South Africa alerted the country and the world to the latent ongoing issues brought about by colonialism and apartheid in South Africa. Students were also protesting about the lack of change in the way black Africans were educated and treated at South African universities more than two decades after the end of white-minority rule. They were also angry about fee increases, which disproportionately affected black students, in a country of continued extreme income inequality. The Fall details the experiences of seven students within this movement and how they deal with their traumas, while still moving towards activism for a free decolonised education. This powerful ensemble piece goes to the heart of how race, class, gender, power and history's voices intersect. It premiered at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town, toured to other venues in South Africa and to the Edinburgh Festival and the Royal Court Theatre, London. It was awarded The Stage Cast Award and a Scotsman Fringe First award in Edinburgh, and was described in The Stage as:"a truly ensemble production which has both teeth and heart. And one which stands for student revolt around the world and down the ages."
Breaking new ground in this century, this wide-ranging collection of essays is the first of its kind to address the work of contemporary international women playwrights. The book considers the work of established playwrights such as Caryl Churchill, Marie Clements, Lara Foot-Newton, Maria Irene Fornes, Sarah Kane, Lisa Kron, Young Jean Lee, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Djanet Sears, Caridad Svich, and Judith Thompson, but it also foregrounds important plays by many emerging writers. Divided into three sections-Histories, Conflicts, and Genres-the book explores such topics as the feminist history play, solo performance, transcultural dramaturgies, the identity play, the gendered terrain of war, and eco-drama, and encompasses work from the United States, Canada, Latin America, Oceania, South Africa, Egypt, and the United Kingdom. With contributions from leading international scholars and an introductory overview of the concerns and challenges facing women playwrights in this new century, Contemporary Women Playwrights explores the diversity and power of women's playwriting since 1990, highlighting key voices and examining crucial critical and theoretical developments within the field.
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.
Contributors from various theological higher education institutions in South Africa and beyond come together to reflect on the best pedagogical practices to teach on often complex issues of gender, sexual orientation, race, and class, and on how they impact on health in our classrooms, in our churches, and in the communities where we live and work.
Over the years, Marion has watched her life drain away. Children and husband gone, she ekes out her life in a country utterly transformed. But it’s the only home she has. As the new South Africa prepares for the World Cup finals, old divisions and suspicions seem as deep as ever, and the intruder she has been expecting, dreading and needing, arrives. Will true reconciliation turn darkness into hope? Solomon and Marion is a brand new play from an award winning South African writer, and it recently won the Fleur Du Cap Awardfor Best New South African Play. Foot is Artistic Director of the Baxter Theatre Centre and has won a bevy of South African theatre accolades. Foot has put most of her energy into helping other playwrights and theatre-makers realise their work, and she has nurtured several dozen new South African plays to their first staging. This includes producing the international hit Mies Julie written and directed by Yael Farber. Her own hard-hitting plays tackle social issues and have laid barethe brutality and sickening frequency of child rape in South Africa; Tshepang (2002) was based on a real event, the alleged gang rape of a nine-month-old baby by six men in a remote, impoverished community. Foot used refined, ironic humour to sketch a portrait of the community, then turned everyday objects into symbols with horrific poetic effect. Karoo Moose (2007) returned to the subject of child rape and a rural town — a shattered, forsaken community where ‘there are no fathers’. A 15-year-old girl is sold for sex to pay off the gambling debts of her jobless and spiritually crushed father,‘an opportunist with no opportunities’. And in Solomon and Marion, Foot explores the cruelty of the meaningless murders which betray her country. Hear and Now, Karoo Moose and Tshepang are also published by Oberon Books. Winner of the Fleur Du Cap Award for Best New South African Play
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.
All About South Africa is a comprehensive reference book for all South African children with enquiring minds and a lively interest in the world around them. Packed with colourful photographs and illustrations, the simple and thematically presented text is both easy to read and to understand. This fascinating introduction to our country looks at life in southern Africa long, long ago, and explores the culture of our land and the people who helped shape our unique South African community. It provides an intriguing insight into the ever-changing world of science and technology and our sometimes puzzling economy. This valuable reference work also introduces young readers to our equally important natural heritage: the coasts, mountains and climate of the land, and the country’s rich variety of wildlife. Now in it’s 7th print edition and fully updated, this well-researched and visually stimulating volume offers all this information and much, much more. Complemented by lists of recommended place to see, All About South Africa is an essential addition to the bookshelf of every South African child.
The global rise of festival culture and experience has taken over that which used to merely be events. The Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals provides an up-to-date, contextualized account of the worldwide reach and impact of the 'festivalization' of culture. It introduces new methodologies for the study of the global network of theatre production using digital humanities, raises questions about how alternative origin stories might impact the study of festivals, investigates the festivalized production of space in the world's 'Festival Cities', and re-examines the social role and cultural work of twenty-first-century theatre, performance, and multi-arts festivals. With chapters on festivals in Africa, Asia, Australia, the Arab world, the francophone world, Europe, North America, and Latin America it analyses festivals as sites of intercultural negotiation and exchange.
