South African Theatre

Abstract: In keeping with the auto-ethnographical approach (as postulated by Mitra (2010) and Spry (2001)) this paper strives to frame physical actions as expressive performance narratives in my own work as part of contemporary South African theatre. I aim to do so through ...

Maishe Maponya has made an immense contribution to theatre and poetry performance in South Africa. It has been suggested that, as committed and passionate poet, he is the Pablo Neruda or Federico Garcia Lorca of his country. Though Southern Africa is rich in art, music, poetry, theatre and literature and fête them when they are dead, it is notorious for its neglect of artists and their work when they are alive. This is not only not good for the artists themselves but also for their countries.  Maishe was forged in the crucible of the struggle against apartheid and first came to prominence in the wake of the Soweto Uprising of 1976. He fought oppression and denounced injustice in those dark days but then when the goals he and others fought for then and the dreams they dreamed came to be increasingly forgotten, Maponya did not hesitate to denounce this too. In the apartheid era he founded the Bahumutsi Theatre company and produced militant and electrifying plays. With the celebrated Allah Poets, he and the well-known playwright, Matsemela Manaka and the ‘Poet Laureate of Soweto’, Ingoapele Madingoane, staged dynamic performance theatre. After the fall of apartheid in 1994 Maponya became increasingly critical and published two brilliant and hard-hitting collections of poems,  'This Land is my Witness: Poems on the State of the Nation' and 'Truth be Told: Da’s Kak in die Land', both published by Themba Books. The apartheid government hounded and harassed him, banning his plays. The democratic post-apartheid government, simply ignored him – along with many other great South African writers and performers. It is time to give our artists their due and celebrate their lives and works while we still have them.

This volume provides an in-depth analysis of the work of Indian South African playwright Ashwin Singh, which, through the diversity of characters from all ethnic backgrounds, forges an inclusive South African identity. The essays in this volume show how Singh's plays bring South Africa's blatant prejudices and social ills to the forefront as only by confronting unpleasant realities can any far-reaching changes actually take place. The academics and cultural practitioners who have contributed to this volume approach Singh's work from a variety of angles, ranging from history, psychology and experimental literary forms to the performance of the plays, the relevance of the stage directions and the symbiotic relationship between the playwright and the director. The contrast between the climate of optimistic political protest and the complacency and disillusion of the new democratic era is seen to reassess the actions of the past in the light of present outcomes.

On 30 June 2006 at the annual National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa, two giants of South African protest theatre, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, performed as the original cast of the landmark struggle drama Sizwe Banzi Is Dead (1972). The revival marked the first production of the play in over twenty-five years. After its brief stint at the National Arts Festival (30 June–5 July 2006), the play transferred to the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town (11 July–5 August) and then entertained a monthlong run at the State Theatre in Pretoria (17 August–17 September). After its turn at the State, the production stopped shortly at the Hilton College Theatre in KwaZulu Natal (19–23 September) before settling into an extended engagement at Johannesburg's Market Theatre (28 September to 22 October). In March 2007, the original cast revival of Sizwe traveled to the British National Theatre before finally ending its tour at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in April 2008. The two black artists may have endeavored, through the 2006–8 revival of Sizwe,
to separate their identities from the figure of Athol Fugard as author that had hung over much of the play’s production history. In order to further this aim, revival director Aubrey Sekhabi, a playwright in his own right, relied on a late 1970s BBC live recording of Sizwe and not the 1974 Oxford-published script identified as authored by Fugard. In this way, Kani and Ntshona restored to a whole new generation their improvisational coauthorship of the play.

Though both South Asian and South African literary and cultural studies boast deep critical traditions,
rarely have critics specifically focused on dramatic literature and the performative acts of Indian South Africans. Theatre – as an aesthetic genre as well as a social institution – has been remarkably under theorised within Indian Ocean communities, even though its power in Indian South African communities and within South African history and culture has been amply documented and analysed In theatre studies of South Asia, scholars have pushed new frontiers about the studies of colonial modern theatre as well as post-independence Indian theatres, inspired by a performance-studies turn, but the push to link theatre and performance studies with Indian Ocean, and migrant, contexts has yet to fully manifest within scholarly circles. Through an examination of Ronnie Govender’s
play 1949, this article argues that theatre as a medium offers the opportunity to create specific versions of history and community identity not visible in prose literature or the novel. These versions of history and community identity are analysed with reference to the broader history of South Africa as well as
the manners in which Govender’s history both incorporates particular aspects of earlier definitions of Indian identity in South Africa and innovates to create images of Indo-African shared spaces.

These notes are extracted from slightly longer writer's notes published as part of my playtext of "Ubu and the Truth Commission". The play is performed by Handspring Puppet Company and was directed by WIlliam Kentridge. The play is being revived at Edinburgh this month, and so I am attaching the notes as they have edited them. There is also a link to a series of photos taken by Luke Younge, of the production. The link to see the images is:
    https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A3G4TcsmGKz48i

South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is an internationally-regarded-if contested-touchstone for transitional justice, but it functioned above all as exemplary theatre, bringing together thousands of disparate voices. Like the theatrical space generally, it provided a forum for differing narratives about the past to be aired in post-Apartheid South Africa. In Ireland, on the other hand, there has not been – nor are we likely to see – any truth commission. It is this essay’s contention that drama is the nearest the society will get to exploring the past, with the theatre a safe space in which storytelling and debates are taking place beyond the impasse of the political culture. This article approaches this through four plays: Athol Fugard’s The Train Driver and Owen McCafferty’s Quietly (both 2012) and David Ireland’s Cyprus Avenue and Mongiwekhaya’s I See You (both 2016). All reflect complications of dialogue(s) taking place on the past, and themes of reconciliation, in their respective territories.

Miskien moet hierdie resensie oor Breyten Breytenbach se Boklied begin met 'n belydenis. Ek het nie die omstrede opvoering van die drama gesien nie en ek is nie 'n dramakenner, teaterkundige of selfs teater-resensent nie. My bydrae tot die gesprek rondom Boklied kom vanuit die perspektief van iemand wat slegs die teks gelees het en nog altyd groot emosionele sowel as intellektuele plesier geput het uit die lees van Breytenbach se poësie. Alhoewel ek daarvan bewus is dat ek praat vanuit 'n minderheidsperspektief (ek het onlangs 'n ander Afrikaanse digter hoor sê dat daar slegs 'n duisend

The theatre scene is buzzing in South Africa, with over 100 active spaces across the country offering everything from indigenous drama, music, dance, cabaret and satire to West End and Broadway hits, classical opera and ballet. Venues range from the monolithic homes of the former state-supported performing arts councils to purpose-built theatres, a converted fruit market, country barns, casinos, and urban holes-inthe-wall. Add to that a multitude of festivals, and any time of the year in South Africa offers the full range of theatrical experiences. The annual National Arts Festival in Grahamstown -which has showcased the cream of the country's creativity in the performing and graphic arts for over 30 years -has spawned a variety of smaller festivals all over the country, each with its own particular personality.

One night in the dark days of apartheid a house in the comparatively upmarket Soweto township of Dube was petrol-bombed. The young activists who were responsible had labelled the owner a sell-out for creating a hit television series on government-controlled television. His house was gutted. All his papers and manuscripts went up in smoke, including the  scripts of his prolific theatre oevre. It is a great tragedy that of the over sixty plays staged by South Africa’s greatest ever theatre impresario and playmaker, Gibson Mtutuzeli Kente, only four scripts survive. Of these only one is based on an authentic script. The other three were put together by actors who did a wonderful job recalling the dialogue. The surviving scripts have just been published in a collection entitled Selected Plays IV: All That’s Left. Gibson Kente began his stage career in the mid-sixties and never stopped producing until shortly before he died in 2004.  The four plays in this volume – Sikalo, Lifa, How Long and Too late – all date from the heyday of Kente’s career, namely the years leading up to the Soweto Uprising in 1976. The rest is silence. The Selected Plays series is published by Mshengu Publications. So far seven collections have been published - in an effort to preserve and make accessible African plays that would otherwise be lost. In All That’s Left the scripts of Kente’s plays are preceded by detailed introductions and accompanied by virtually the only surviving photographs of scenes from the plays.

In his lectures in 1975-1976, Michel Foucault conceptualised the inclination to commit murders in political circumstances, and delineated it as ‘political death’ (2003).1 Such killings encompass both corporeal and psychological execution exercised through diverse means, for instance, murder, manslaughter, genocide, social ostracism and exposure to deadly environments. Apparently, today political death is implemented either through implicit biopolitical stratagems or overt violence by those who are already in power or those who attempt to gain power, and is prompted through phenomena such as racism, patriotism and xenophobia. This paper aims to examine ‘political death’ prompted by racism, and interrogates the ways and means by which these murders are actualised and rationalised, but ultimately rendered invisible in society, as represented in Athol Fugard’s Anglophone play-text, Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972): Set against the backdrop of the apartheid epoch, Fugard’s play focuses on the ...

Euripides’s Medea has been staged a number of times in the new South Africa. This study's purpose is to provide a practical example of a rewritten Medea set in a contemporary Afrikaner community. The political climate and gender views employed in the Euripidean Medea are an- alysed and compared to that of the new text. The themes in the Euripidean Medea are analysed as well as possible themes in the Afrikaner community to provide the new text with contempo- rary social trends in the white Afrikaner community. The style of the Euripidean Medea is an- alysed and adapted in the new play to create a style that can be accommodated in contemporary South African theatre. Appropriating Medea in an Afrikaner community will hopefully provide future theatre-makers with a narrative of the practical process of appropriation from which more universal principles on the practice can be derived as the play has never been fully rewritten in Afrikaans to create an authentic play.

A revival of Credo Vusamazulu Mutwa’s 1993 African epic, "uNosilimela", opened at the Wits Theatre in Johannesburg on 21st May. A timely homage to an extraordinary man and a seminal piece of theatre. When the play was first performed in Johannesburg and Soweto, though it did have a tremendous impact on some, it did not by a long chalk have the impact it deserved. There is a danger that it will not have very much more of an impact now, twenty-five years after the statutory collapse of Apartheid. "uNosilimela" is almost a text book for young Africans on the beauty and the values of precolonial culture, what these days is often referred to as ‘Ubuntu’. An important part of the culture of a people is its arts and here again Mutwa not only fills the plays with the songs and dances of numerous languages and cultures but reveals what they mean and what their function is. He also rejects any ethnic chauvinist tendencies, an important message in this time of zenophobia. "uNosilimela" is rooted in the myths and astronomical knowledge of the ancestors. Structured like a traditional storytelling, its staging, built on Mutwa’s ideas about precolonial performance as well as those of the present time, is one of the most original and exciting elements of the play. For the African playwright and director he suggests it is in African forms and content, storytelling and ritualistic performances that the answers are to found. Their unique dramaturgy has the potential to unlock majority theatre in South Africa.  At the end of the play the earth is destroyed and as one of the characters cries out: “A new Africa will be born out of the ashes of the old. It is the will of God!” Mutwa yearns for a new Africa that is united and knows and is proud of its African identity. This is a powerful call – not only for Africa in general but particularly for South Africa where the people seem to have forsaken their roots and the values of their ancestors and forsaken Ubuntu in order to assimilate themselves into the dominant globalised culture of the white minority and the West.

The dissertation Topographies of Cruelty: Radical Performances in South African and British Theatre, maps physical, social, political, aesthetic, and psychological landscapes of cruelty performed on the body, in the imaginary, in language, in performers, and on the stages through radical theatre performances. By identifying and locating the forms, features, and functions of cruelty employed in the selected plays, this dissertation aims to provide a valuable contribution to the field of literary and cultural studies and to discourses on global violence, crisis, and oppression, the power of literature, and the human capacity for kindness in the face of terror. It also attempts to investigate forms of cruelty in South African and in British theatre on equal terms, thereby countering the hegemonic Eurocentric bias by taking a decolonial, feminist stance.
The radical performances investigated in this doctoral thesis render extreme acts of cruelty and confront their readers and audiences, as witnesses, with actually exercised or experienced pain and violence. Sarah Kane’s Cleansed (1998), Harold Pinter’s The Hothouse (1980) and Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman (2003) deal with psychological cruelty, verbal cruelty, and cruelty in the imagination. Yaël Farber’s A Woman in Waiting (1999), Amajuba: Like Doves We Rise (2000), and He Left Quietly (2002), as well as Lara Foot’s Tshepang: The Third Testament (2005), in turn, negotiate extraordinary and ordinary acts of cruelty as well as life-in-crisis on stage as a conscious mode of giving testimony to committed atrocities and inflicted trauma in recent South African history. The performances #JustMen (2018), a South African workshop play against gender-based violence, and Mojisola Adebayo’s The Interrogation of Sandra Bland (2017), a theatrical response to the Black Lives Matter movement, are both collective activist pieces advocating for social and political change.

Keeping it in the family: incest, repression and the fear of the hybrid in Reza de Wet's English plays Reza de Wet has more than once referred in interviews to the syncretic relationship she sees as existing in the "long history" between Afrikaner and black cultures. Due to its close association with black African cultures, she claims that Afrikaner culture has fused a belief in mythologies and "magical thinking" with a "European consciousness" (Solberg, 2003:180). This article investigates ways in which some of De Wet's English translations-as well as her play "Concealment" (De Wet, 2004)demonstrate the consequences of a fear of this amalgamation; a dread of hybridity. Concurrent with this anxiety is the danger inherent in a repression of desire. In a number of De Wet's plays it seems that what is cloistered and protected within the purity of family (possibly a metaphor for the Afrikaner people) conceals an incestuous perversion.

Apartheid in South-Africa pervaded every dimension of public and social life. Theater, both as a form of art and as a sphere of public life, was thus also subjected to the policy of segregation: under the Group Areas Act racially mixed casts as well as mixed audiences were prohibited. There were places, however, where those restrictions were bypassed and where white theater directors cooperated with non-white artists. Examples include the Market Theater in Johannesburg and the Space Theater in Cape Town,where non-racial productions were created by one of the most prominent South African playwrights and directors, Athol Fugard. The economic situation of those independent theater companies, as well as the political situation in the country, informed the used means of expression. This is where the theory of Jerzy Grotowski came into play. This paper shows how Grotowski’s premises were realized in the South African context and what influence they had on the South African tradition of workshop theater

This forthcoming publication by Robert Mshengu Kavanagh on the work of the great South African playwright, choreographer, composer and and arts entrepreneur, Gibson Kente, is reviewed by Duma Ndlovu, poet, writer, film and television producer and director. Ndlovu's stage productions include "Bergville Stories" and his television drama "Muvhango" and Uzalo". Robert Mshengu Kavanagh has written extensively on South African theatre and was active himself in South Africa in the 1970's when Kente was in his heyday. The book rejects the compartmentalisation of Kente into a 'township' playwright and attempts to measure his real achievement in the context of the history and traditions of majority theatre in South Africa.

Dalk is dit strategies om hierdie resensie van die gepubliseerde teks van Breyten Breytenbach se Die toneelstuk te begin met 'n verwysing na die "Bywoord" wat dit vergesel. Laasgenoemde is 'n soort kunsternaarsdagboek waarin die dramaturg die ontstaan en groei van die stuk opgeteken het. In sekere opsigte herinner dit aan sy 'roman' Woordwerk, alhoewel die intiem-biografiese element hier selfs nog sterker is. Gesien in die lig van besware teen die sogenaamde onverstaanbaarheid van

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 of visual metaphor and argues that visual metaphor can be used to circumvent problems or restrictions that arise in the data collection phase of the verbatim theatre process. These range from the context wherein the production is created, the length of the production, and especially ethical boundaries, including the responsibility of the verbatim theatre maker to represent both the subjects and material at the intersection between verisimilitude and contextual restrictions The article examines scenes from the production to conclude that visual metaphor can enrich the verbal aspect of the verbatim research to expand, replace or comment on the content generated and explored during the data collection phase.

Culturally, white theatre in what was known as Rhodesia replicated the bourgeois theatre of London's West End. The many theatre companies that mushroomed at various forts, towns and cities churned out farces, comedies, musicals and pantomimes. Occasionally (white) Rhodesians appropriated Greek plays and Shakespeare as well as other Western genres. Rhodesians seem to have become fossilised in this tradition, which played out the values and tastes of the metropolitan bourgeois class. Modernist theatre, however, encountered a conservative spectatorship unwilling to embrace it in colonial Zimbabwe. Defenders of the Rhodesian way of life saw themselves as the last bastion preserving the values which other Western societies had forsaken or neglected. Rhodesians associated modernist plays with the atheism and permissiveness of Europe. This kind of conservatism was carried over into Zimbabwe at independence in 1980 and modernist playwrights like Dambudzo Marechera were ostracised for what was perceived as writing against the grain.

This article investigates the way the methodology of process drama, and specifically the convention of dramatised poetry, can enhance the angermanagement skills of adolescent girls. The article presents findings from a recent study that set out to teach anger-management skills to adolescent girls using process drama conventions. The argument explores the notion of process drama propounded by the prominent applied drama scholar Cecily O'Neill (1995) and the applicability of this methodology for stimulating the perception, awareness and identification of various forms of anger as prerequisites to anger management in adolescent girls. As the adolescent girl finds herself at the crossroads of childhood and adulthood, emotions of frustration and anger towards parents and peer groups often surface. It is therefore beneficial for her to be empowered with the insight and skills required to identify and manage her anger. The fictitious world within process drama creates a safe space where sensitive issues can be explored without uncovering personal issues. Poetry is, in many instances, loaded with emotional content and can therefore be used as a vehicle for considering emotional issues that would otherwise not be possible. This article therefore reports on a multidiscipline research project, namely the dramatisation of poetry, as a convention of the methodology of process drama, to enhance anger management, as an emotional competence in the 14-to 15-year-old adolescent girl. Keywords: process drama; dramatised poetry; emotional intelligence; angermanagement; adolescent girls management. These building blocks are based on Mayer and Salovey's (1997, p. 10) definition of emotional intelligence, suggesting that perception, awareness and identification of emotions are prerequisites for emotional management. Process drama In order to contextualise the empirical study and frame the argument put forward in this article, the notion of process drama-in relation to its broader field, namely applied drama needs to be framed. Since the 1990s the terms 'applied drama' and 'applied theatre' have been used to refer to, among other approaches, drama in education, theatre in education, process drama, community drama, prison theatre, and theatre in health education. Although there are conceptual, methodological and contextual differences associated with applied drama/theatre, it is perhaps best defined by its collective aims of 'personal and social transformation [rather] than by the various forms it can take' (Conrad 2004, p. 4). Applied drama is a 'dramatic activity that primarily exists outside conventional mainstream theatre institutions, which [are] specifically intended to benefit individuals, communities and societies' (Nicholson 2005, p. 2). It entails a synergy between drama/ theatre-based practices and approaches and participatory theatre (Nicholson 2005, p. 2; Prentki and Preston 2009, p. 2), resulting in a hybrid mode of theatrical engagement that is socially critical and reflective, and aims at involving individuals and communities in identifying collective concerns, analysing challenging conditions and exploring possibilities for communal action or change (Maritz and Coetzee 2012). It is an embodied methodology, calling for experiential and physical involvement in the exploration of, and empathetic engagement with, abstract knowledge in order to foster understanding or learning. For the purposes of this article, we will explore the notion of process drama, as put forward by the prominent applied drama scholar and practitioner Cecily O'Neill (1995), and its associated methodologies in relation to the broad aims of applied drama. We will also explore the applicability of this methodology for stimulating the perception, awareness and identification of various forms of anger as prerequisites for anger management in adolescent girls. O'Neill based her work on the main tenets of the iconic drama-in-education practitioner, Dorothy Heathcote, and her compatriot Gavin Bolton, to develop a mode of applied drama that would be manageable in educational circumstances for school teachers (O'Toole, Stinson and Moore 2009, p. 103). There is no clear-cut difference between drama in education and process drama, as process drama evolved from the former (O'Toole et al. 2009, p. 200). Both refer to a mode of applied drama that encourages learning through drama/drama as a mode of learning and the use of drama as a methodology in an educational context. Process drama is based on the notions of reflective teaching and learning (Jacobs, Vakalisa and Gawe 2004) and action-reflection interplay (Bolton 1999, 2003; Taylor 2003) to stimulate learning. As such, it is a participatory, learner-centred methodology launching the participants into fictitious realities or 'a dramatic elsewhere' (O'Neill 1995, p. 45) through various conventions, including the conventions primarily used in this research, namely role play, improvisation and dramatised poetry. Placing the participants in parallel realities empowers them to examine situations, problems or issues from various perspectives within the safe parameters of make-believe environments (O'Neill 1995, p. 45). In practical terms the educator (or participants) suggests a scenario in which the process-drama conventions such as role play, writing in role, tableaux, dramatised poetry and 'mantle of the expert' was employed. 5. It is important to mention that the authors do not assume that the workshops were necessarily the only aspect that facilitated awareness of emotional competence and associated skills related to anger management. However, as the workshops are aimed at this goal, the discussion that follows demonstrates a direct response in and to the aims and content of the workshops.

L’articolo analizza il rapporto di reciproca influenza tra il lavoro di Peter Brook e il teatro sudafricano clandestino dell’epoca dell’apartheid, in particolare i registi Athol Fugard e Barney Simon. Brook instaura con la drammaturgia sudafricana un rapporto stretto e singolare. Negli anni 1970 il suo testo Lo Spazio Vuoto diventa un modello teorico per la creazione di un teatro innovativo e rivoluzionario in Sudafrica. Brook, dopo aver scoperto la produzione sudafricana, non smette di interessarsene, organizzando durante gli anni dell'apartheid, un Festival Musique et Théâtre d’Afrique du Sud a Parigi. Dagli anni 1980 in poi, Brook porta in scena numerosi testi della nuova drammaturgia sudafricana tra cui Woza Albert!, Sizwe Banzi is dead, Le Costume, The Suit. La linea circolare che Brook e i drammaturghi sudafricani disegnano, ruota intorno alla nozione di Spazio Vuoto, riaffermandola.

Hierdie artikel ondersoek die oorsprong, ontwikkeling en estetiese beginsels van die intieme musiekspel. Die artikel begin met ’n oorsig van die Suid-Afrikaanse konteks waarin musiekspelvervaardiging geskied, en die gevolgtrekking is dat die hoë produksiekoste dit vir (veral Afrikaanse) praktisyns besonder uitdagend maak om musiekspele te skep. Daar word ’n geskiedkundige oorsig gelewer oor die internasionale ontwikkeling van die intieme vorm deur die vroeë ontwikkelinge tussen 1918 en 1959 te bestudeer. Daarna word Tom Jones en Harvey Schmidt se 1960’s-era intieme musiekspele ondersoek, gevolg deur enkele intieme musiekspele na die 1970’s wat Company (1970 en 2006) en March of the falsettos (1990) insluit. Die artikel bou voort op Melodie Galloway (2010) se definisie van die intieme musiekspel deur die begrip as uitgangspunt te gebruik om dit dan binne die Suid-Afrikaanse konteks toe te pas. ’n Meer gedetailleerde omskrywing van die vorm se estetiese beginsels word in die artikel verskaf. Deur die oorkoepelende tekstuele kenmerke van familiedrama in ’n intieme musiekspel toe te pas, word geargumenteer dat sommige eienskappe van dié sosiale struktuur dikwels ’n nuttige bron vir dramatiese gebeure vir die intieme vorm kan wees. Die artikel eindig met ’n kritiese terugskouing op ’n Afrikaanse intieme musiekspel, Fees (2016), met teks en lirieke deur André Gerber en musiek deur David Wolfswinkel, wat as ’n Afrikaanse voorbeeld van die intieme vorm voorgehou word. Die artikelskrywers kom tot die gevolgtrekking dat die intieme musiekspel ’n doeltreffende vorm kan wees om met verminderde produksiekoste ’n musiekspel op die planke te kan bring.

This article examines the controversy surrounding the London run of Brett Bailey's ethnographic display 'Exhibit B'. By placing responses to Exhibit B from critics, audience members and actors in dialogue with nineteenth‑century responses to ethnographic shows by Khoisan peoples, I will argue that ethnographic performance has always engendered an intimacy between actor and audience. Bailey’s use of ethnographic performance to narrate the history of colonial encounter in Africa far from reinscribing regimes of looking which represent the African body as the abject object against which the white spectator defines his positionality, enables him to offer spectators and actors an emancipation from predetermined regimes of looking and a space in which the intimacy of encounter enables a more active engagement with both the colonial past represented and its legacy in the present.

This essay highlights a shift in South African literature towards ideals of individualism and explores some of the paradoxes inherent in the competing claims of individuality and heritage. The characters created by Greig Coetzee in Happy Natives are examined as examples of identities constructed in terms of tradition, function and indoctrination. The comic potential of these incongruent identity constructions is then elaborated by means of Henri Bergson's description of the humour arising from an inability to adapt to changing fashions. Ultimately, appeals towards tradition and individuality begin to look like similar proposals.

H.I.E. Dhlomo along, with many other South African writers, poets, artists and intellectuals, were ignored by the mainstream, despite the fact that they and their people were and are the majority. The mainstream in South Africa, both during and post apartheid, has been and still is the arts, literature and culture of Western liberalism as mediated by the white minority. The theatre of Gibson Mtutuzeli Kente, the poetry of S.E.K. Mqhayi, the music of R.T. Caluza and the writings of Dhlomo were well known during their time, well known, that is, in the black sub-culture. But whatever is known at one time in that sub-culture rapidly recedes into the penumbra of insignificance and neglect whereas the equivalents in the mainstream of Afrikaans and English culture become national heritage. The life and work of H.I.E. Dhlomo is at one and the same time both a heroic and tragic illustration  of the dilemmas and ultimate choices of the Christian, educated elite in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

This essay analyzes the use of drag and gender subversion by two white South African performers, Pieter-Dirk Uys and Steven Cohen, during the long decade bisected by South Africa’s political transition (roughly 1990 to 2001). While satirist Uys invented his drag alter ego Evita Bezuidenhout to critique the hypocrisy of the apartheid regime, his post-apartheid performances modeled a rehabilitated, self-critical whiteness. Breaking the fourth wall, Uys (as Evita) interviewed Nelson Mandela on live television and educated South Africa’s still racially divided communities on voting laws. Rather than embracing the narrative of the rainbow nation central to the new democratic dispensation, performance artist Cohen used his queer body to enact what he calls “monster drag,” highlighting whiteness’s simultaneous alienation and privilege in relation to the black majority state. While vastly different in objective and aesthetic, these performances allowed for what the essay calls a “prismatic” deconstruction of white identity within the context of political transformation. Through a process of categorical ambiguity and affective displacement, each performer used drag to open up a space for the whites who had formerly been classified as “European” to claim a queer form of Africanness. As time has advanced and the dream of the rainbow nation has faded, however, nonwhite drag performers have increasingly taken center stage to challenge the boundaries of both queerness and whiteness. The essay ends with an analysis of black queer South African performance artist Athi-Patra Ruga’s ongoing series The Future White Women of Azania as an example of new directions in South African queer performance.

Among Fugard's post-apartheid plays there is one that escapes the limitations of sentimental nostalgia evident in his recent turn inwards -The Train Driver (2010a). In this short play he develops a challenging sense of the country's dealings with the past by focusing upon the traumatic experience of a 'track suicide' remembered in morbidly excessive terms by the white driver, whose tragic story is told by a black gravedigger. The driver's hysteria, symptomatically the result of an identification with the death of the 'nameless one' whose burial place he seeks, is balanced by the sympathy and acceptance of the gravedigger who assists him in his quest. The dynamic between the two men, only fully graspable in performance, is at the centre of the play, which is set in a squatter camp cemetery, a liminal urban space emphasising the continuity of past wrongs in a country in which the conspicuous consumption and selective remembering of an elite masks everyday poverty and violence. What finally emerges is the continuing importance of theatre in conveying a recognition of individual suffering and loss that cannot and should not be ignored. The Train Driver may be said to engage in Adornian terms with an aesthetic of resistance to the present, denying redemptory longings.

In past research we 1 have demonstrated how methodologies used in the training of performers can both encourage whole-brain learning and answer to the demands of South Africa's current educational paradigm, outcomes-based education (OBE). OBE is a needs-driven, outcomes-driven and competency-orientated pedagogy, which aims at incorporating learners as active agents within the learning process as opposed to the previous content-driven, teacher-orientated approach to education (Coetzee 2004).

MARKET SEGMENTATION OF VISITORS TO AARDKLOP NATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL: A COMPARISON OF TWO METHODS The Aardklop National Arts Festival is one of the three largest arts festivals in South Africa. Arts festivals such as Aardklop are also one of the most rapidly growing events tourism segments. It sustains different forms of art; contributes to the livelihood of artists; stimulates the growth of regional and local economies; and promotes specific destinations. Destinations realise the benefits associated with arts festivals, thus there has been a remarkable increase in the annual number of festivals hosted by different destinations. However, the competition in the festival market has important implications for all South African arts/cultural festivals. In order for a festival to be sustainable, and to reap the continuous economic contribution and benefits that festivals offer, the importance of effective/strategic marketing of the festival must be realised. An essential step towards strategic market planning is market segmentation. It is an effective tool to divide existing and potential markets into homogenous groups/segments based on meaningful characteristics. This assists marketers/organisers of the festival to understand the needs and preferences of these segments; and to adjust the festival product/programme accordingly. A variety of methods is available for market segmentation. Two such methods are correspondence analysis and expenditure-based segmentation. The primary goal of the study was to apply and compare these two market segmentation methods of visitors to Aardklop National Arts Festival. A literature study was undertaken to analyse arts festivals, market segmentation and specific market segmentation methods; and an empirical study was undertaken to obtain the relevant data for analysis. Surveys were conducted at the festival and data obtained from 2005 to 2008 was used. Questionnaires were distributed randomly during the 5 day festival period, and a total of 1 671 questionnaires were completed. In order to achieve the goal, the study was divided into 2 articles. In Article 1, a correspondence analysis was applied to visualise the relationship between the age of respondents and other variables. Results confirmed the existence of significant differences in socio demographic and behavioural variables/characteristics between different age groups of visitors to IV Aardklop. Older visitors (46 years and older) are associated with higher spending and attend shows/productions such as drama, classical music, cabaret and visual art and exhibitions. They are also more likely to hear about Aardklop in the written media such as magazines, newspapers, newsletters and e-mail; to stay for shorter periods of time; and to come from the Gauteng and Free State provinces. Younger visitors (aged 18 to 25) are associated with the lowest spending and rely on word-of-mouth as a source of information through which they hear about Aardklop. They are more likely to come from the North West province, to attend rock shows/concerts and to attend the festival for longer periods of time. These results rendered strategic insights regarding marketing, since a market profile of different age groups of visitors can be formulated, and the festival product/programme can be developed according to their needs and preferences. As a result, the current market can be maintained and emerging markets can be identified and targeted, resulting in long-term growth and sustainability of the festival. In Article 2, K-means clustering was done to group members together, based on their similarity with regard to spending patterns/behaviour so that these clusters could be used in the ANOVA analysis. The ANOVA analysis was applied by using the identified clusters to do expenditure-based segmentation. In the results, 4 expenditure segments were identified and the analysis confirmed the existence of significant differences in socia-demographic and behavioural variables/characteristics between these different expenditure groups among Aardklop visitors. The high spenders are between the ages of 46 and 60 years, stay for longer periods of time and travel longer distances to the festival. They have attended other festivals as well in the past and their main reason for travelling to Potchefstroom is to attend Aardklop. These visitors prefer to attend drama and cabaret shows/productions and they are likely to travel from Gauteng. Based on these aspects, the high spenders can be differentiated from other spending segments. This is beneficial to the marketers/organisers of Aardklop, since it assists in maintaining the high spending market by fulfilling their needs/preferences, while also motivating them to spend more on ticketed shows/productions. The untapped spending potential in the other spending segments were also identified, along with detailed descriptions of these segments. Marketers/organisers of Aardklop can therefore also target these segments through customised packages, which can eventually convert members in these spending segments to higher spenders, thereby expanding the high spending segment. This will maximise the economic impact of Aardklop and will result in the competitiveness, sustainability and further growth of the festival. The correspondence analysiS as a market segmentation method, although exploratory, is a sophisticated technique that gives a powerful and comprehensive visual representation of the v relationship I possible associations between variables and respondent age groups. However, this method does not always provide a detailed profile of each age category. Expenditure-based segmentation as a market segmentation method offers a good range of information and has been found to provide a more detailed profile of each spending segment, as opposed to the profiles identified in the correspondence analysis. However, since both these methods can be used for effective segmentation of the Aardklop market, it is important to consider what exactly needs to be accomplished in the marketing research, so that the more appropriate market segmentation method may be selected.