Theatre: regulation, resistance and recovery

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521199285.029

27 - Theatre: regulation, resistance and recovery

from PART V - APARTHEID AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1948 TO THE PRESENT

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 January 2012

Loren Kruger

Edited by

David Attwell and

Derek Attridge

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David Attwell: Affiliation:
University of York
Derek Attridge: Affiliation:
University of York

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Summary

Although twentieth-century literary drama in English and Afrikaans appeared in separate milieus in print, on stage or in informal circulation, theatrical practice mixed indigenous forms like izibongo (praises) and ingoma (music) with modern inventions like vaudeville, minstrelsy and the jazz musical. This diversity reflected a syncretic history and hinted at an integrated future, despite the entrenchment of segregation. Whilst segregationists would have denied these facts, supporters of an integral South Africa found in theatre a place and occasion for staging unity in diversity and an alternative public sphere in a hostile state. Theatrical forms identified with South Africa in the last half-century have been thoroughly hybridised, whether in variations of international forms like satirical skits or intimate confessionals or in distinctly local transformations:

• the musical fuses ingoma ebusuku (literally: ‘music by night’; analytically: performance by professionals or aspirants in urban settings for cash) and the African American jazz revue to produce multilingual drama with songs, dance and dialogue.

• the testimonial play or theatre of witness, protest or resistance, testifies to individual and collective struggle, blending dialogue, narrative, and polemical statements; its trajectory includes Herbert Dhlomo's The Pass (1942), Athol Fugard's No-Good Friday (1958), as well as Survival (1976) and other collectively created plays, culminating in Born in the RSA (1986). The best bear powerful witness, but the relative authority and authorship of witness and interpreter remain controversial. (For these and other South African theatrical genres, see Kruger, Drama of South Africa, pp. 1–34, 86–99, 154–209)

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Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of South African Literature , pp. 564 - 586

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521199285.029 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2012

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