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A long walk to Purgatory: the tales of Dante & Mashudu South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2024-03-10 Michael Lambert
Published in South African Theatre Journal (Ahead of Print, 2024)
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‘Opera and music theatre’, African theatre South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2024-03-04 Jeffrey Brukman
Published in South African Theatre Journal (Ahead of Print, 2024)
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Training strategies towards performing emotions on film: an integrated approach South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2023-11-30 Lelia Bester, Marth Munro
South African film budgets do not allow for extensive preparation and rehearsal periods. South African film actors prepare their portrayal of emotion as part of their performance scores in isolatio...
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Chifunyise and the folktale as ideology and pedagogy: an autoethnography South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2023-11-16 Ignatius T. Mabasa
Writing is very recent in Zimbabwe, with the first Shona novel published in 1956. Before missionaries came with books and the practice of writing, indigenous people were a word of mouth people. The...
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Introduction South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2023-08-14 Mark Fleishman, Veronica Baxter
Published in South African Theatre Journal (Vol. 35, No. 3, 2022)
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A comparative analysis of aspects influencing live theatre ticket purchases of teenagers and students in South Africa South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2023-08-13 Walter Wessels, Pierre-André Viviers, Karin Botha
A decline in live theatre ticket sales and, more recently, the impact of Covid-19 on the live theatre industry, are forcing live theatre providers and marketers to seek alternative ways to keep the...
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Aesthetic distance as deus ex machina when the performer’s trauma is (not quite/quiet) South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2023-08-10 Balindile Ngcobo
This article employs Practice as Research (PaR) as a paradigm to explicate the specialised research insights produced during the theatre-making process of devising and performing ReTAGS’ Antigone (not quite/quiet). I revisit Sophocles’ original Antigone, reading the circumstances of the titular character alongside the contemporary reality of postapartheid South Africa. I further employ the register
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Creating a psychologically believable character: investigating the manifestation of the filicidal mother in And all the children cried (Jones and Campbell 2002) South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2023-05-09 Nicole Holm, Mareli Hattingh Pretorius
This article investigates the extent to which And all the children cried (Jones and Campbell 2002) adheres to research on maternal filicide. This would determine the degree to which an actor charge...
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Occupational Health and Safety concerns within the live events industry at selected venues in Gaborone, Botswana: a pragmatic and utilitarian approach South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2023-03-14 Kgosi Khiba, Owen Seda, Anre Fourie
This paper investigates potential hazards and health and safety risks in the live events industry in the city of Gaborone, Botswana. The study borrows from Charles Sanders Peirce’s (1995) philosoph...
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Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe: hegemony, identity, and a contested postcolony South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2023-03-09 Connie Rapoo
Published in South African Theatre Journal (Vol. 35, No. 2, 2022)
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European tragedy as requiem, ruin, revenant in Magnet Theatre’s Antigone (not quite/quiet) and Thomas Köck’s antigone. a requiem South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2023-03-08 Christina Wald
Offering a comparative case study of two different postcolonial responses to Sophocles’s tragedy Antigone from European and African perspectives, this article brings together Magnet Theatre’s Cape Town production of Antigone (not quite/quiet) with Thomas Köck’s play antigone. a requiem that premiered almost simultaneously in September 2019 in Hannover, Germany. Both re-examine Sophocles’s tragedy to
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Space for haunting: site-specific theatre as method for engaging with the complexity of heritage sites South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2023-02-27 Alex Halligey, Tamara Guhrs
This paper considers a devised, site-specific performance in and about the Windybrow, a mining magnate heritage house-turned-arts-centre in Johannesburg’s inner city Hillbrow. The work was called N...
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Transgressive marginalities in youth pop culture: negotiating the challenges of the post-colony in contemporary Zimbabwe South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2023-02-17 Owen Seda, Ngonidzashe Muwonwa
In the last two decades, Zimbabwe has faced a series of intractable political and socio-economic crises, resulting in abject economic collapse, stratospheric levels of inflation and massive youth u...
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(Un)Belonging in the body of the chorus South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Kanya Viljoen
In September 2019, Mark Fleishman in collaboration with the cast created a postdramatic performance of Sophocles’ tragedy ‘Antigone’, entitled Antigone (not quite/quiet). One of the key elements of the performance was the representation of Antigone as a chorus of 13 individual bodies, including that of my own body. During the performance, the chorus came to represent a re-imagined Antigone-figure as
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Antigone [not quite/quiet]: adaptation, the anarchive and afterness South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2023-02-13 Mark Fleishman
This article focuses, from an insider perspective, on a contemporary South African production that was a response to Sophocles’ Antigone, performed at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town in 2019. The production was titled: Antigone (not quite/quiet) and formed part of the Reimagining Tragedy in Africa and the Global South (ReTAGS) research project. The author is credited as the director of the production
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The dramaturgy of Ola Rotimi South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-12-14 Babatunde Allen Bakare
This study examines the evolutional phases of Ola Rotimi as a dramatist and his contribution to Nigerian, African and world drama. In this study, some of Ola Rotimi’s plays are analysed, to investigate and document how his Yoruba and Ijaw cultural background became an important tool in the craftsmanship of his plays, especially those that comment on social issues. In addition, the study discusses the
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The South African live events, technical and production services industry’s market position and COVID-19 funding implications South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-12-09 Thérèse Roux, Marié-Heleen Coetzee
COVID-19 has had a significant economic impact on a global scale. The national lockdown, enacted through the Disaster Management Act 57 of 2002, disrupted multiple economic activities, including that of the Creative and Cultural industries. In the performance and celebrations domain, under which live events (.i.e., theatre and performance) and technical production services (i.e., technical support
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The digital archive as storyteller South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Jayne Batzofin, Sanjin Muftić
Theatre in South Africa is deeply entrenched in the art of storytelling. We live, speak and move our stories in our embodied performance practices. While performance and its development are by their nature ephemeral, how can they be captured as data? And how can the data develop digital outputs that eventually tell their own stories? This paper will outline the way in which the rehearsal process of
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Stand-up comedy and the performance of race and identity in Trevor Noah’s It Makes No Sense and Learning Accents South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-10-28 Tekena Gasper Mark
Stand-up comedy has thrived as a popular form of entertainment in Africa, and it has been used as a tool to question the postcolonial relationship between the West and the Other, which promotes racialized assumptions. Similarly, African stand-up comedians like Trevor Noah, a migrant from South Africa to the United States, who was born in South Africa to a Swiss father and a South African mother, have
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Realism, non-realism and the African performer South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-10-27 Robert Mshengu Kavanagh
The camera, the film, the television and globalization have finished the work the Realists, the Naturalists and Konstantin Stanislavski began. Whereas, for millennia, African art was ideologically non-Realist, realism – one might say, Western realism – has swept the board. I say ‘ideologically’, perhaps the better word is ‘aesthetically’. There were artists who believed that capturing a likeness was
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State theatre in postcolonial Egypt and its role in affirming Egyptian cultural identity South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-10-19 Dalia Saleh Abdel Wahab Farah
The revolution of 23 July 1952 in Egypt was not only a revolution to change political situations; it was a revolution that brought about radical changes in Egyptian society at all levels. In the post-independence Nasserite period, Egypt represented an example of highly significant anticolonial nationalism, aimed to resist first World cultural hegemony. This article seeks to investigate how State theatre
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Performing emotions through technology: towards a degree of agency tool (DoAT) for assessing and applying agency to operated performing objects South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-10-06 Mienke Fouche, Janine Lewis, Laetitia A Orlandi
Performers are exposed to embodied characterization techniques embedded within their training that makes the transference of these concepts comfortable to integrate into external performance modes such as puppetry. So too do performing objects require a nuanced approach towards their performances being equated to characters’ expressions. However, technicians are expected to programme such mechanical
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The intersections of comedy and politics in Zimbabwe: analysing Baba Tencen’s ‘Borderphobia’ and Prosper Ngomashi’s ‘Pastor and his wives’ South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-10-06 Charles Tembo, Allan T. Maganga, Tevedzerai Gijimah
This paper is a comparative explication of selected online Zimbabwean comedies as satire. It pursues the revolutionary character of the comedies against an increasingly limiting and impoverishing politico-economic environment. In our rendition, we depart from the general and simplistic thinking that comedy is solely for entertainment’s sake to view it as a puissant genre of art that is deployed not
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The empathetic director as a catalyst for a resonant devising practise South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-08-23 Gavin Matthys, Janine Lewis
Theatre-making processes require symbiotic relationships to be built between the creative role players involved. This symbiosis is most relevant with regards to the director and actors as they spend the most conceptual time together in determining the narrative storytelling. The director assumes the role of a leader and should be encouraging and supportive of the actors’ uninhibited participation as
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Awarawari’rawa … performing statehood for unity in the Nigerian National Festival of Arts and Culture South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-07-26 Tosin Kooshima Tume
In 1970, when the first edition of the Nigerian National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFEST) was organized, the primary aim was to provide a platform to stimulate national healing and unity for a country that had just emerged from a civil war. The festival is one of the mechanisms which the Federal Government of Nigeria devised to combat the challenges that cultural diversity poses to the country
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Santa’s Story: Performing Holocaust postmemory on the world stage South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-07-11 Pedzisai Maedza
This account uses performance and critical analysis to investigate the entangled histories and multidirectional memories that entwine African colonialism and the Holocaust in Santa’s Story by Aviva Pelham. The paper spotlights the intersections between the memory of the Holocaust and colonial Africa by focussing on the memory of women survivors and children of survivors on the African continent. Drawing
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Negative attitudes and perceptions of black South African accents in higher education institutions of the Western Cape Province South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-06-06 Leanetse Seekoe, Chijioke Uwah
There is a negative approach and perception of the black South African accent in Drama Departments of higher education institutions in South Africa. The purpose was to discover the experiences of being an actor-in-training at a Drama Department at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and The South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance (AFDA). The research method was a qualitative
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Theatre and witnessing: an investigation into verbatim ‘theatre as reconciliation’ in post-apartheid South Africa South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-05-16 Harry McCallum
It is often stated that art reflects reality. Therefore, it should not be a surprise that in times of extreme conflict and oppression, theatre practitioners explore themes such as violence, legacy and emancipation during and after such situations. As with any verbatim theatre production, the play is based on real stories and events. Within the South African context, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
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New territories: theatre, drama, and performance in post-apartheid South Africa South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-05-09 Kamogelo Molobye
Published in South African Theatre Journal (Vol. 34, No. 3, 2021)
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What I was Told: verbatim-physical theatre as feminist protest theatre in South Africa South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-04-24 Helena Baard
Verbatim-physical theatre presents the possibility for women’s stories, not only to be told, but to be heard, interacted and engaged with. This article explores the combination of physical- and verbatim theatre for feminist protest theatre in South Africa. It argues that verbatim-physical theatre as feminist protest theatre presents a mode of storytelling that is challenging and oppositional through
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The rhetoric of reconciliation in the music of Ubu and the Truth Commission South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-04-11 Máire Slater
The rhetorical function of the music in Ubu and the Truth Commission is explored through an analysis of the songs and accompanying soundscape to reveal a problematization of the concept of reconciliation. This is achieved by emphasizing the colonial history of South Africa and undermining the explicit messages Pa Ubu delivers in his songs through instrumentation, the use of music identified with the
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Jay Pather, performance and spatial politics in South Africa South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-03-25 Yvette Hutchison
Published in South African Theatre Journal (Vol. 34, No. 2, 2021)
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Joke performance mechanics in Nigerian stand-up comedy South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-03-25 Izuu Nwankwọ
Stand-up comedy in Nigeria today has become not only big business but popular entertainment. It is, indubitably, one of the most obvious of the entertainment industry boom the country has recorded since the 1990s. The overwhelming patronage it has received transcends the deep ethnoreligious divisions within Nigeria and has ensured the prosperity of its practitioners. In this paper, through a histo-cultural
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Looking back to move forward: celebrating 20 years of an innovative contemporary African dance company South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-03-22 Kamogelo Molobye
Published in South African Theatre Journal (Vol. 34, No. 2, 2021)
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The Methuen drama guide to contemporary South African theatre South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-03-22 Kgafela oa Magogodi
Published in South African Theatre Journal (Vol. 34, No. 1, 2021)
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The crossing South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-03-11 Samuel Ravengai
Published in South African Theatre Journal (Vol. 35, No. 1, 2022)
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Hubris of absenteeism South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-02-14 Myer Taub, Andrew Lamprecht
Harnessing Walter Benjamin’s [2009. One way street and other writing. London: Penguin Classics] Eingedenken and Jetztzeit along with the co-author’s notion of the Absent (a term in impossible redemption) into insurgent allegorical devices, are useful in reassembling reflections of ‘Time Flies’: a treasure hunt led performance project co-created by the co-authors between 2008 and 2018. The reflective
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Narratives of resistance in Amakhosi Theatre Production’s Workshop Negative South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-02-08 Nkululeko Sibanda
This paper deploys theories of social performance as a lens to engage and examine narratives of resistance in Amakhosi Theatre Productions’ Workshop Negative. It locates and frames Amakhosi Theatre Productions’ Workshop Negative as a personal and community narrative inscribed with agency. Deploying the social theories of performance and the narrative of resistance approach as an analytical framework
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Ubuntu aesthetics in African theatre of the South South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-01-20 Pfunzo Sidogi, Hulisani Ndou
The centrality of Ubuntu in much of African theatre of the South is well documented. Likewise, discourses that explicate the stylistics and aesthetics of African theatre abound. In this paper, we harmonize these existing theorizations on the expression of Ubuntu within African theatre and the prevailing readings of the aesthetics of such theatrical practices into the notion of ‘Ubuntu aesthetics’.
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Consumption and excess: South African Indian comedy and the stereotypical performance of identity in post-Apartheid South Africa South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-01-19 Vidhya Sana
Performing excess is a trope of comedy that dates back to the earliest times – with jokers and clowns being the most popular example of how comedy allows individuals to abandon restrictions of decorum and social graces. In a society where increasing democratic freedom allows for expressions of identity to be performed more openly, it is interesting to note how excess has been linked to the consumption
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A public intellectual study of South Africa’s Mike Van Graan South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2022-01-12 Albert Olatunde Oloruntoba
The roles of prominent anti-apartheid fighters, trade unionists, journalists, religious leaders, writers – fictional and non-fictional – and artists have been important in the documentation of the public intellectual culture in South Africa. These are sets of people whose efforts and influences enhanced the achievement of a democratic South Africa. However, since the official end of apartheid in 1994
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Forays into contemporary South African theatre: devising new stage idioms South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2021-08-24 Anton Krueger
(2020). Forays into contemporary South African theatre: devising new stage idioms. South African Theatre Journal: Vol. 33, No. 2-3, pp. 112-120.
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The outstanding actor, seven keys to success (2nd ed.) South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2021-04-26 Nicole Holm
(2020). The outstanding actor, seven keys to success (2nd ed.) South African Theatre Journal: Vol. 33, No. 2-3, pp. 110-112.
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The mediality of pre-recorded digital performing arts on YouTube: a skills-development module South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2021-02-15 Stephen Faber, Marié-Heleen Coetzee, Marth Munro
This article assessed the efficacy of a skills-development module in pre-recorded digital performing arts (PRDPA) that was presented as an online workshop within the South African educational paradigm. The PRDPA module embraces the democratization of online media that the internet, in specific YouTube offers. PRDPA skills may enable young performers to introduce themselves to an online audience, promote
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The Theatre of August Wilson South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2020-10-12 Samuel Ravengai
(2020). The Theatre of August Wilson. South African Theatre Journal: Vol. 33, No. 2-3, pp. 106-110.
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Translation and performance in an era of global asymmetries: Part 2 South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2020-08-13 Sara Matchett, Mark Fleishman
(2020). Translation and performance in an era of global asymmetries: Part 2. South African Theatre Journal: Vol. 33, Translation and Performance in an Era of Global Asymmetries Part 2, pp. 1-4.
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Walk in India and South Africa: notes towards a decolonial and transnational feminist politics South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2020-01-02 Swati Arora
The essay discusses Maya Rao's Walk and The Mothertongue Project's Walk: South Africa to explore the languages of transnational and embodied feminist politics that these performances conjure. The t...
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‘And while I am falling, I listen’: on translation processes in I turned away and she was gone (2014) Jennie Reznek* in conversation with Sruti Bala South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2020-01-02 Jennie Reznek, Sruti Bala
Jennie Reznek is Co- Artistic Director and Trustee of Magnet Theatre in Cape Town, South Africa. I turned away and she was gone is the fifth solo work that she has developed under the banner of Mag...
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Necessary misapplications: the work of translation in performance in an era of global asymmetries South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2020-01-02 Sruti Bala
The moment the concept of translation is employed with reference to theatre or music and performance, i.e., to a form that includes but exceeds language, the concept becomes detached from its conve...
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The application of a translational performance method using archival material, personal narrative, mythology and somatic practices: the making of Womb of Fire South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2020-01-02 Sara Matchett, Rehane Abrahams
The article offers a pragmatic investigation that addresses translation both as an embodied activity of recalling erased memory and as a recuperation of the dis-membered post-slave/post-colonial fe...
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Constructing Patience: postcolonial theatre as a possibility for redemption South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2019-09-02 Vasti Vermeulen, Myer Taub
This paper centres on the definition of failure in a theatrical work. Failure is pursued as an epitome for possibilities, thus shifting the boundaries of theatrical work outside of conventional lines of understanding. The notion is to remove the fear of failure within a work, in order to explore new means through which a work can be produced. In this article, myself, the researcher, and my supervisor
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Woza Albert! (student editions) South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2019-07-10 Anton Krueger
Publishing Woza Albert! back in 1983 was a smart move by Methuen Publishing, since it went on to become South Africa’s most canonical dramatic text. As Temple Hauptfleisch points out in his introdu...
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A Century of South African Theatre South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2019-05-04 Anton Krueger
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Contemporary plays by African women South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2019-05-04 Alison Hofer
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Visual metaphor as tool to stage the ‘Unsayable’ in the verbatim, youth theatre production Wag, ek kry gou my foon [en soos sulke goed] South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2019-05-04 André Kruger Gerber
This article explores the process of constructing visual metaphor for a youth verbatim theatre production within the South African, Afrikaans school context. The process of verbatim theatre creation within this context is explored, with examples from both the process and the production Wag, ek kry gou my foon [en soos sulke goed] (2017). The article further examines the aesthetic and thematic applications
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The missing language of freedom: code-switching in Yaël Farber’s Mies Julie (2012) South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2019-05-04 Sarah Youssef
In 2013, Yaël Farber’s adapted August Strindberg’s naturalistic drama Miss Julie into a contemporary play, set in South Africa’s Cape Karoo semi-desert. Farber maintains in her version the various concerns the original play addresses, including class and gender, however by transporting the play to post-Apartheid South Africa, questions pertaining race and identity are reflected upon in a socio-political
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Determining the key factors contributing to children's theatre ticket purchases at Afrikaans arts festivals in South Africa South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2019-05-04 Pierre-André Viviers, Karin Botha
In South Africa, the popularity and rapid expansion of festivals are resulting in festivals competing for revenue and visitors’ leisure time. Many Afrikaans arts festivals in SA are experiencing declines in ticket sales and/or visitor numbers, thereby threatening the sustainability of this attendee market. However, another concern is the ageing of this attendee market. Festival organizers/marketers
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Unlocking the text: an exploration of key exercises by Cicely Berry to find a sound-based directing concept for Athol Fugard’s play Sorrows and Rejoicings South African Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2019-05-04 Zoettje Hofmeyr
Selected exercises on language and sound by voice teacher Cicely Berry were used to develop and explore a sound-based approach to directing the play Sorrows and Rejoicings by Athol Fugard. Berry’s various strategies grounded the practical exploration of and improvisation on the poem Tristia by Ovid, and made possible a more open approach to the play; within the realism of the language a poetic and