South African performance and archives of memory

South African performance and archives of memory PDF Author: Yvette Hutchison
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526103249
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
This book explores how South Africa is negotiating its past in and through various modes of performance in contemporary theatre, public events and memorial spaces. It analyses the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a live event, as an archive, and in various theatrical engagements with it, asking throughout how the TRC has affected the definition of identity and memory in contemporary South Africa, including disavowed memories. Hutchison then considers how the SA-Mali Timbuktu Manuscript Project and the 2010 South African World Cup opening ceremony attempted to restage the nation in their own ways. She investigates how the Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park embody issues related to memory in contemporary South Africa. She also analyses current renegotiations of popular repertoires, particularly songs and dances related to the Struggle, revivals of classic European and South African protest plays, new history plays and specific racial and ethnic histories and identities.

South African performance and archives of memory

South African performance and archives of memory PDF Author: Yvette Hutchison
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526103249
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores how South Africa is negotiating its past in and through various modes of performance in contemporary theatre, public events and memorial spaces. It analyses the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a live event, as an archive, and in various theatrical engagements with it, asking throughout how the TRC has affected the definition of identity and memory in contemporary South Africa, including disavowed memories. Hutchison then considers how the SA-Mali Timbuktu Manuscript Project and the 2010 South African World Cup opening ceremony attempted to restage the nation in their own ways. She investigates how the Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park embody issues related to memory in contemporary South Africa. She also analyses current renegotiations of popular repertoires, particularly songs and dances related to the Struggle, revivals of classic European and South African protest plays, new history plays and specific racial and ethnic histories and identities.

Hellenic Common

Hellenic Common PDF Author: Philip Zapkin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000431355
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Hellenic Common argues that theatrical adaptations of Greek tragedy exemplify the functioning of a cosmopolitan cultural commonwealth. Analyzing plays by Femi Osofisan, Moira Buffini, Marina Carr, Colin Teevan, and Yael Farber, this book shows how contemporary adapters draw tragic and mythic material from a cultural common and remake those stories for modern audiences. Phillip Zapkin theorizes a political economy of adaptation, combining both a formal reading of adaptation as an aesthetic practice and a political reading of adaptation as a form of resistance. Drawing an ethical centre from Kwame Anthony Appiah’s work on cosmopolitanism and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s theory of the common, Hellenic Common argues that Attic tragedy forms a cultural commonwealth from which dramatists the world over can rework, reimagine, and restage materials to envision aspirational new worlds through the arts. This study will be of great interest to students and scholars of drama, adaptation studies, literature, and neoliberalism.

Woza Albert!

Woza Albert! PDF Author: Percy Mtwa
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350025062
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Woza Albert! is one of the most popular and influential plays to have come out of the South African cultural struggle of the 1980s and a central work in the canon of South African theatre. Working with the idea of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ taking place in apartheid South Africa, the playwrights improvised a brilliant two-man show consisting of 26 vignettes, commenting on and satirising life under the apartheid regime. The play has become one of the most anthologized and produced South African plays both in South Africa, and internationally and is studied widely in schools as well as universities. This Student Edition contains a commentary and notes by Temple Hauptfleisch, Emeritus Professor at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. METHUEN DRAMA STUDENT EDITIONS are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and classic repertoires. A well as the complete text of the play itself, this volume contains: · A contextualised chronology of the play and the playwrights' lives and works · an introductory discussion of the social, political, cultural and economic context in which the play was originally conceived and created · a succinct overview of the creation processes followed and subsequent performance history of the piece · an analysis of, and commentary on, some of the major themes and specific issues addressed by the text · a bibliography of suggested primary and secondary materials.

Applied Theatre and Sexual Health Communication

Applied Theatre and Sexual Health Communication PDF Author: Katharine E. Low
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 1349959758
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
This book analyses the partnership between applied theatre and sexual health communication in a theatre-making project in Nyanga, a township in South Africa. By examining the bridges and schisms between the two fields as they come together in the project, an alternative way of approaching sexual health communication is advocated. This alternative considers what it is that applied theatre does, and could become, in this context. Moments of value which lie around the margins of the practice emerge as opportunities that can be overlooked. These somewhat ephemeral, intangible moments, which appear on the edges, are described as ‘apertures of possibility’ and occur when one takes a step back and realises something unnoticed in the moment. This book offers an invitation to pause and notice the seemingly insignificant moments that often occurs tangentially to the practice. The book also calls for more outcry about sexual health and sexual violence, arguing for theatre-making as a route to multitudes of voices, nuanced understandings, and diverse spaces in which discussions of sexuality and sexual health are shared, felt, and experienced.

Performativity and the Representation of Memory: Resignification, Appropriation, and Embodiment

Performativity and the Representation of Memory: Resignification, Appropriation, and Embodiment PDF Author: Dinis, Frederico
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
The age of digital culture has not only brought significant transformations in how we perceive memory, history, and heritage, but it has also raised pressing questions about authenticity and ownership of memory. The role of digital technologies in shaping collective identities is a topic of intense scrutiny. Moreover, contemporary societies grapple with complex issues in the politics of memory, especially with the proliferation of diverse narratives and the manipulation of public spaces. The book's content is therefore highly relevant, offering critical reflection and scholarly analysis to these societal challenges. Performativity and the Representation of Memory: Resignification, Appropriation, and Embodiment offers a comprehensive exploration of these issues, examining how contemporary practices of re-enactment intersect with digital contexts to shape our understanding of memory and heritage. The book analyzes the processes of memory creation and transmission in digital environments, providing a nuanced understanding of how memory is constructed, shared, and contested in the digital age. It also explores the role of arts-based research and participatory practices in documenting and preserving collective memories, offering insights into new forms of memory sharing and identity formation.

From Memory to Marble

From Memory to Marble PDF Author: Elizabeth Rankin
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110669021
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 959

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Book Description
For the first time, the 92-metre frieze of the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, one of the largest historical narratives in marble, has been made the subject of a book. The pictorial narrative of the Boer pioneers who conquered South Africa’s interior during the 'Great Trek' (1835-52) represents a crucial period of South Africa’s past. Conceptualising the frieze both reflected on and contributed to the country’s socio-political debates in the 1930s and 1940s when it was made. The book considers the active role the Monument played in the rise of Afrikaner nationalism and the development of apartheid, as well as its place in post-apartheid heritage. The frieze is unique in that it provides rare evidence of the complex processes followed in creating a major monument. Based on unpublished documents, drawings and models, these processes are unfolded step by step, from the earliest discussions of the purpose and content of the frieze, through all the stages of its design, to its shipping to post-war Italy to be copied into marble from Monte Altissimo, up to its final installation in the Monument. The book examines how visual representation transforms historical memory in what it chooses to recount, and the forms in which it is depicted. The second volume expands on the first, by investigating each of the twenty-seven scenes of the frieze in depth, providing new insights into not only the frieze, but also South Africa’s history. François van Schalkwyk of African Minds, co-publisher with De Gruyter writes: From Memory to Marble is an open access monograph in the true sense of the word. Both volumes of the digital version of the book are available in full and free of charge from the date of publication. This approach to publishing democratises access to the latest scholarly publications across the globe. At the same time, a book such as From Memory to Marble, with its unique and exquisite photographs of the frieze as well as its wealth of reproduced archival materials, demands reception of a more traditional kind, that is, on the printed page. For this reason, the book is likewise available in print as two separate volumes. The printed and digital books should not be seen as separate incarnations; each brings its own advantages, working together to extend the reach and utility of From Memory to Marble to a range of interested readers. For more material you can browse at Stanford's database "Voortrekker Monumentality: a digital archive".

Creating African Fashion Histories

Creating African Fashion Histories PDF Author: JoAnn McGregor
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253060133
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Creating African Fashion Histories examines the stark disjuncture between African self-fashioning and museum practices. Conventionally, African clothing, textiles, and body adornments were classified by museums as examples of trade goods, art, and ethnographic materials—never as "fashion." Counterposing the dynamism of African fashion with museums' historic holdings thus provides a unique way of confronting ways in which coloniality persists in knowledge and institutions today. This volume brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and curators to debate sources and approaches for constructing African fashion histories and to examine their potential for decolonizing museums, fashion studies, and global cultural history. The editors of this volume seek to answer questions such as: How can researchers use museum collections to reveal traces of past self-fashioning that are obscured by racialized forms of knowledge and institutional practice? How can archival, visual, oral, ethnographic, and online sources be deployed to capture the diversity of African sartorial pasts? How can scholars and curators decolonize the Eurocentric frames of thinking encapsulated in historic collections and current curricula? Can new collections of African fashion decolonize museum practice? From Moroccan fashion bloggers to upmarket Lagos designers, the voices in this ground-breaking collection reveal fascinating histories and geographies of circulation within and beyond the continent and its diasporic communities.

The Archive and the Repertoire

The Archive and the Repertoire PDF Author: Diana Taylor
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822385317
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
In The Archive and the Repertoire preeminent performance studies scholar Diana Taylor provides a new understanding of the vital role of performance in the Americas. From plays to official events to grassroots protests, performance, she argues, must be taken seriously as a means of storing and transmitting knowledge. Taylor reveals how the repertoire of embodied memory—conveyed in gestures, the spoken word, movement, dance, song, and other performances—offers alternative perspectives to those derived from the written archive and is particularly useful to a reconsideration of historical processes of transnational contact. The Archive and the Repertoire invites a remapping of the Americas based on traditions of embodied practice. Examining various genres of performance including demonstrations by the children of the disappeared in Argentina, the Peruvian theatre group Yuyachkani, and televised astrological readings by Univision personality Walter Mercado, Taylor explores how the archive and the repertoire work together to make political claims, transmit traumatic memory, and forge a new sense of cultural identity. Through her consideration of performances such as Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s show Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit . . . , Taylor illuminates how scenarios of discovery and conquest haunt the Americas, trapping even those who attempt to dismantle them. Meditating on events like those of September 11, 2001 and media representations of them, she examines both the crucial role of performance in contemporary culture and her own role as witness to and participant in hemispheric dramas. The Archive and the Repertoire is a compelling demonstration of the many ways that the study of performance enables a deeper understanding of the past and present, of ourselves and others.

Routledge Handbook of African Theatre and Performance

Routledge Handbook of African Theatre and Performance PDF Author: Kene Igweonu
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040019919
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 811

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of African Theatre and Performance brings together the very latest international research on the performing arts across the continent and the diaspora into one expansive and wide-ranging collection. The book offers readers a compelling journey through the different ideas, people and practices that have shaped African theatre and performance, from pre-colonial and colonial times, right through to the 20th and early 21st centuries. Resolutely Pan-African and inter- national in its coverage, the book draws on the expertise of a wide range of Africanist scholars, and also showcases the voices of performers and theatre practitioners working on the cutting-edge of African theatre and performance practice. Contributors aim to answer some of the big questions about the content (nature, form) and context (processes, practice) of theatre, whilst also painting a pluralistic and complex picture of the diversity of cultural, political and artistic exigencies across the continent. Covering a broad range of themes including postcolonialism, transnationalism, interculturalism, Afropolitanism, development and the diaspora, the handbook concludes by projecting possible future directions for African theatre and performance as we continue to advance into the 21st century and beyond. This ground-breaking new handbook will be essential reading for students and researchers studying theatre and performance practices across Africa and the diaspora. Kene Igweonu is Professor of Creative Education at University of the Arts London, where he is also Pro Vice-Chancellor and Head of London College of Communication. An interdisciplinary researcher, Professor Igweonu has extensive experience of senior academic leadership in immersive and interactive practices and performance practice. His practice research and publication interests are in storytelling, theatre, and performance in Africa and its Diaspora, as well as the Feldenkrais Method in health, wellbeing, and performance training. A champion for arts and creative industries, Professor Igweonu is Chair of DramaHE, Council Member for Creative UK, and until August 2023, President of the African Theatre Association.

History, Memory and Public Life

History, Memory and Public Life PDF Author: Anna Maerker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351055569
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
History, Memory and Public Life introduces readers to key themes in the study of historical memory and its significance by considering the role of historical expertise and understanding in contemporary public reflection on the past. Divided into two parts, the book addresses both the theoretical and applied aspects of historical memory studies. ‘Approaches to history and memory‘ introduces key methodological and theoretical issues within the field, such as postcolonialism, sites of memory, myths of national origins, and questions raised by memorialisation and museum presentation. ‘Difficult pasts‘ looks at history and memory in practice through a range of case studies on contested, complex or traumatic memories, including the Northern Ireland Troubles, post-apartheid South Africa and the Holocaust. Examining the intersection between history and memory from a wide range of perspectives, and supported by guidance on further reading and online resources, this book is ideal for students of history as well as those working within the broad interdisciplinary field of memory studies.