Loren Kruger | University of Chicago (original) (raw)

Papers by Loren Kruger

The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary South African Theatre, 2015

The art moderne architecture on Chicago’s streets and its Century of Progress Fair in 1933 influe... more The art moderne architecture on Chicago’s streets and its Century of Progress Fair in 1933 influenced the Empire Exhibition and the urban form in Johannesburg in 1936 but in the shadow of the white cities, as their promoters called them, black lives were threatened by planned and unplanned violence. Owing more to property speculation and informal vigilantes than to legislation, Chicago’s black South Side in this period was more segregated than Johannesburg’s inner districts like Doornfontein. Starting with this counter-intuitive fact, the chapter compares critical responses to segregation by African Americans and black South Africans, and the literary expression of these tensions in fiction. Richard Wright’s Native Son and Modikwe Dikobe’s Marabi Dance combine sociological and ethnographic research—by Horace Cayton and St Clair Drake in Chicago and Ellen Hellman in Johannesburg—with melodrama and life-writing to depict with passion and realism black women and men who negotiate infor...

Theatre Journal, 2013

The Dance Umbrella began in 1988 in the twilight of apartheid as a showcase for original modern w... more The Dance Umbrella began in 1988 in the twilight of apartheid as a showcase for original modern work in a dance field dominated by rather uneven ballet companies that were subsidized by the provincial performing arts councils until 1994. Over twentyfour years the event has grown into a vibrant and diverse program that ranges from variations on Broadway-style revues to experimental work that tackles intractable conflicts that beset South Africa and the world. At a moment when the spoken theatre is either shamelessly commercial or cautiously committed to heritage programming-in other words, to revivals of anti-apartheid classics-the best Dance Umbrella pieces offer both innovations in form and critical engagement with thorny topics, from the troubled history of the colonial wars to current controversies in the politics of class, gender, and race. In particular, by foregrounding the body in freedom and in restraint, this year's work highlighted the visceral impact of gender politics more effectively than current spoken theatre has done.

Scrutiny2, 2007

... Fiona Rankin-Smith and Sandra Klopper's investigation of the ``Art of migrant labour... more ... Fiona Rankin-Smith and Sandra Klopper's investigation of the ``Art of migrant labourers'' is particularly noteworthy for its analysis of the transformation of the forms of (women's) beadwork into the ornamental ma-Page 8. ▲ 126.... REVIEW ...

Critical Arts, 2010

... them, have been praised for drawing a growing youth audience and in particular for tackling t... more ... them, have been praised for drawing a growing youth audience and in particular for tackling taboo topics ... negotiations and betrayal; conflicts between tradition and modernity' and pays special attention to the 'HIV/ AIDS pandemic that is ravaging South Africa', young viewers ...

Pamiętnik Teatralny, 2021

American echoes of the Paris Commune have been muffled by the nation’s obsession with freedom at ... more American echoes of the Paris Commune have been muffled by the nation’s obsession with freedom at the expense of solidarity, but performative responses to social upheaval, including drama, parades, and protests, have tested the boundaries of public space and multiple temporalities from 1871 to 2021. This article notes traces of the Commune in the writings and performances of nineteenth century American anarchists but analyzes this legacy primarily in the 2012 performance of Brecht’s The Days of the Commune (1949) at New York sites claimed by the Occupy Movement in 2011. It also uses the argument of Brecht’s contemporary Ernst Bloch for cultural action grounded in an understanding of historical disappointment to anticipates setbacks while maintaining hope for future revolution. The paper delineates five theses on the politics of time: 1) the dramatic appeal of the clean break hides the tension between gradual evolution and a sudden event that ruptures the long span of history (Badiou)...

Comparative Drama, 2012

Like their counterparts in other countries beset with internal conflicts if not outright civil wa... more Like their counterparts in other countries beset with internal conflicts
if not outright civil war, South African
theatermakers during the apartheid era found in classical tragedy scenarios
for representing the struggle against the brutality of an authoritarian
state but in post-apartheid South Africa the stakes have changed.. The persistence of inequity and injustice perpetuated by new rulers,
even if they were former victims, prompts a skeptical revaluation of the
official narrative in which the African National Congress (ANC) claims
the moral high ground of a national hero. As the wealth gap increases,
poverty remains entrenched, and death stalks the country in the shape
of AIDS, assaults on women and children, and criminal violence out of
all proportion to the value of property being stolen, the epic narrative
of national liberation and the victory of justice over oppression have
been cast into doubt. Many local theatermakers have used satire to indict the
corruption, impunity, and indifference of the newly powerful. Audiences
Others have turned to dark farce:. But the legacy of death by AIDS, crime or
malign neglect, which has marred the epic narrative that the ANC still
calls the “national democratic revolution” and shadowed the posture of
leaders calling for national unity in the face of deepening disenchantment
and outright suffering, demands the unflinching portrayal of the harm
perpetuated by its agents, in what should be called the tragedy of the commoner. This article looks at adaptations of tragedy from Fugard's Orestes to Farber's Molora that cast a critical eye on the state of the nation and its commoners struggling against rulers

Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, 2015

In narratives that demonstrate the mutual imbrication of urban and ecological imperatives, Henrie... more In narratives that demonstrate the mutual imbrication of urban and ecological imperatives, Henrietta Rose-Innes complements planners’ work that analyses and strives to sustains human and other native and migrating species in Cape Town. Squeezed between cliffs and oceans, urban life here must deal with mountain topography that appears to escape development and with environments that seem to frustrate civic order, particularly the informal settlements on the edges of this cosmopolitan tourist port. Drawing on anti-apartheid tropes of social justice and on post-apartheid challenges to neo-liberal speculation, her fiction and non-fiction writing traces the steps of biped, quadruped and hexapod figures along the borders between habitation and wilderness, urban street and bare earth to capture the beauty and violence of this singular South African city.

Research in African Literatures, 2021

Especially since the 1990s, practitioners and critics have emphatically distinguished live art fr... more Especially since the 1990s, practitioners and critics have emphatically distinguished live art from text-based and theater-bound drama, much of which still favors English and Afrikaans, even if drama in Xhosa, Tswana, and Zulu, among South Africa’s eleven official languages, has reached the stages of subsidized and other prominent theaters. The reasons for this move away from formal texts are complex but dance and visual media can evidently reach broader audiences regardless of mother tongue and break free from the complacency that has infected many subsidized and commercial theaters. Live art at its best reanimates public spaces and informal environments as well as art galleries that, while more formal than city streets, appear more able than theaters to attract audiences to experimental work and to open their doors to political action outside

Comparative Drama, 2014

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24615319 This article uses TEDIUM and HUNCHBACK VARIATIONS by Chic... more https://www.jstor.org/stable/24615319
This article uses TEDIUM and HUNCHBACK VARIATIONS by Chicago playwright Mickle Maher as a point of departure for analyzing the rhythm of attention and distraction, attunement and drag, imaginination and tedium in the experience of making and watching theatre. This analysis draws on Brecht on estrangement, Heidegger on tedium and attunement, Beckett on absorption in failure as well as the plays of Theater Oobleck

Research in African Literature, 2017

In contrast to the outpouring in 2006 of visual and verbal narratives, publications on the occasi... more In contrast to the outpouring in 2006 of visual and verbal narratives, publications on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary in 2016 have been less spectacular, and only one, Students Must Rise, forges connections between the student uprisings of 1976 and the current situation, in which the tiny minority able to reach university has been protesting rising fees and other problems while the majority of youth facing structural unemployment struggle to find any future. This review essay analyzes the 40th anniversary of the Soweto uprising

Research in Africam Literatures, 2011

Speaking at the Centre for Post-Conflict Justice at Trinity College, Dublin in 2010, Kader Asmal,... more Speaking at the Centre for Post-Conflict Justice at Trinity College, Dublin in 2010, Kader Asmal, formerly anti-apartheid activist, recently minister of education, and now professor of law in South Africa, asked the question: APost-Conflict Justice: Industry or Necessity?@ As a critic of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for allegedly sacrificing justice and the criminal prosecution of perpetrators to the ends of national reconciliation (Asmal et al, Reconciliation through Truth), Asmal may have been a controversial choice to inaugurate a centre whose website features Nelson Mandela framed by the new South African flag, and whose members honor the TRC as a key model for the resolution of conflict in Ireland. Nonetheless, the TRC has become, as Paul Gready suggests in The Era of Transitional Justice (hereafter: Era), both an example for later commissions and the stimulus for commentary on an industrial scale.

Theatre Research International, 2015

This article compares the two major figures of Chilean and South African theatre, in particular ... more This article compares the two major figures of Chilean and South African theatre, in particular two intimate realist dramas onstage and onscreen in the 1970s and 1980s, when both countries were ruled by tyrannies tolerated by governments in the so-called free world. In Boesman and Lena and Hechos consumados the depiction of solidarity against the dispossession caused by ‘capitalist revolution’ in Pinochet’s Chile or Afrikaner capitalism in apartheid South Africa still resonates today when the rhetoric of struggle appears compromised by the culture of consumption and when post-apartheid and post-dictatorship governments retreat from ‘suspended revolution’ in a world shaped not only in the global South but also in the affluent North by neo-liberal axioms of shrunken government and free markets for the rich against austerity for the poor.

Research in African Literatures, 2023

Like many Black intellectuals that came of age as apartheid was tightening its grip in the 1950s,... more Like many Black intellectuals that came of age as apartheid was tightening its grip in the 1950s, Lewis Nkosi (1936-2010) left South Africa on a one-way ticket. Although he outlived apartheid and returned to his native land on and off after 1991, he lived abroad in the United States in the 1990s and in Europe in the 2000s. Although allied with the African National Congress in exile, he wrote skeptically about emphatic anti-apartheid writing. His essays from the 1950s on reflect his preference for cosmopolitan and experimental authors from Dostoyevsky to Kafka, in other words for modernism broadly speaking, and his creative writing reflects this preference in the ironic and satirical rather than the usual earnest treatment of the struggle. While several critics have noted this modernist preference, none have examined the influence of Black American authors on Nkosi's writing. This omission demands attention, as Nkosi's creative writing, especially drama for stage and radio, draws deeply from Black Americans, even when he steals themes, phrases, and characters without acknowledging sources. The Rhythm of Violence written and performed during his first US sojourn 1960-61, borrows style and phrasing from Black Beat poet Ted Joans, the radio drama "We Can't All Be Martin Luther King," broadcast on BBC 4 in 1971, lifts title and tone--unacknowledged--from activist-writer Julian Bond's ironic poem responding to expectations that all Black intellectuals emulate Dr. King, and The Black Psychiatrist borrows from the decidedly unironic Black nationalist Amiri Baraka. Like Bond and essayist James Baldwin, Nkosi balanced a commitment to struggle--in his case, presenting Black African and Caribbean writers to the BBC and to readers abroad--with an ironic attitude to what he called the absurdity of apartheid and other forms of racism.

Theatre Journal, 2020

In his essay in the inaugural issue of The Global South (2007), Arif Dirlik notes that this term ... more In his essay in the inaugural issue of The Global South (2007), Arif Dirlik notes that this term debuted in the 1980 report of the International Commission on North-South Relations chaired by former West German chancellor Willy Brandt. 1 By the time the United Nations officially endorsed the term in 2004, the Brandt report and the Brandt line had established an apparently clear distinction between rich countries and potential donors, which are mostly in the northern hemisphere; and poorer countries they deemed in need of help, which are located mostly in the southern hemisphere. Even in 1980, however, the division of global power and wealth did not match the shape of the hemispheres as neatly as Brandt suggested: the line dipped deep down below the equator to scoop Australia and New Zealand into the North, while it relegated some countries in the northern hemisphere, such as India and China, below the line in the South. Since the inauguration of the Brandt line, competing updates have shifted to include China, India, and in some cases Brazil and South Africa as players in global networks in the twenty-first century. Analysts have pushed this revision further to identify under-resourced places and populations in the North: as Dirlik puts it, "the Inuits are practically on the North Pole." 2 More recent contributors to The Global South, such as Jon Smith, have attempted to refine definitions by conceptualizing the "South in the North" and calling for the investigation of areas, peoples, and cultural production affected by structural inequality in the rich countries of the North, such as the United States' rural South. These investigations join those of Jennifer Robinson and other urbanists from the South. These scholars critique cities in the South that aspire to "world-class" status, from São Paolo to Johannesburg, and challenge the "northern

Theatre Journal, 2023

In 1999, at the end of the decade that began with the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and... more In 1999, at the end of the decade that began with the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and now notorious assertions of the "end of History," the triumph of the West and of neoliberal notions of self-correcting markets and individual entrepreneurs eager to profit from their own commodification, Theatre Journal (hereafter: TJ) published a special issue on theatre and capital. 2 Although as editor I could not foresee the degree to which self-commodification would be spurred by digital marketing, two articles in the issue, by Baz Kershaw arguing that the industry's reduction of both performance and spectatorship to profit-making was "discouraging democracy" in Britain, and by Maurya Wickstrom offering a complementary analysis of "retail theatre" on Broadway, scrutinized the marketing of theatre as tourist entertainment. Read together, they highlighted the kinship between the "Cool Britannia" of Prime Minister Tony Blair and the America of President Bill Clinton, who continued their predecessors' neoliberal policies of financial deregulation and the privatization of cul

Critical Stages, 2020

Review and response on A Century of South African Theatre (Bloomsbury 2019) in which the book's a... more Review and response on A Century of South African Theatre (Bloomsbury 2019) in which the book's author repudiates the reviewer's nostalgia for white theatre and stresses the importance of South Africa's diverse cultural heritage

The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary South African Theatre, 2015

The art moderne architecture on Chicago’s streets and its Century of Progress Fair in 1933 influe... more The art moderne architecture on Chicago’s streets and its Century of Progress Fair in 1933 influenced the Empire Exhibition and the urban form in Johannesburg in 1936 but in the shadow of the white cities, as their promoters called them, black lives were threatened by planned and unplanned violence. Owing more to property speculation and informal vigilantes than to legislation, Chicago’s black South Side in this period was more segregated than Johannesburg’s inner districts like Doornfontein. Starting with this counter-intuitive fact, the chapter compares critical responses to segregation by African Americans and black South Africans, and the literary expression of these tensions in fiction. Richard Wright’s Native Son and Modikwe Dikobe’s Marabi Dance combine sociological and ethnographic research—by Horace Cayton and St Clair Drake in Chicago and Ellen Hellman in Johannesburg—with melodrama and life-writing to depict with passion and realism black women and men who negotiate infor...

Theatre Journal, 2013

The Dance Umbrella began in 1988 in the twilight of apartheid as a showcase for original modern w... more The Dance Umbrella began in 1988 in the twilight of apartheid as a showcase for original modern work in a dance field dominated by rather uneven ballet companies that were subsidized by the provincial performing arts councils until 1994. Over twentyfour years the event has grown into a vibrant and diverse program that ranges from variations on Broadway-style revues to experimental work that tackles intractable conflicts that beset South Africa and the world. At a moment when the spoken theatre is either shamelessly commercial or cautiously committed to heritage programming-in other words, to revivals of anti-apartheid classics-the best Dance Umbrella pieces offer both innovations in form and critical engagement with thorny topics, from the troubled history of the colonial wars to current controversies in the politics of class, gender, and race. In particular, by foregrounding the body in freedom and in restraint, this year's work highlighted the visceral impact of gender politics more effectively than current spoken theatre has done.

Scrutiny2, 2007

... Fiona Rankin-Smith and Sandra Klopper's investigation of the ``Art of migrant labour... more ... Fiona Rankin-Smith and Sandra Klopper's investigation of the ``Art of migrant labourers'' is particularly noteworthy for its analysis of the transformation of the forms of (women's) beadwork into the ornamental ma-Page 8. ▲ 126.... REVIEW ...

Critical Arts, 2010

... them, have been praised for drawing a growing youth audience and in particular for tackling t... more ... them, have been praised for drawing a growing youth audience and in particular for tackling taboo topics ... negotiations and betrayal; conflicts between tradition and modernity' and pays special attention to the 'HIV/ AIDS pandemic that is ravaging South Africa', young viewers ...

Pamiętnik Teatralny, 2021

American echoes of the Paris Commune have been muffled by the nation’s obsession with freedom at ... more American echoes of the Paris Commune have been muffled by the nation’s obsession with freedom at the expense of solidarity, but performative responses to social upheaval, including drama, parades, and protests, have tested the boundaries of public space and multiple temporalities from 1871 to 2021. This article notes traces of the Commune in the writings and performances of nineteenth century American anarchists but analyzes this legacy primarily in the 2012 performance of Brecht’s The Days of the Commune (1949) at New York sites claimed by the Occupy Movement in 2011. It also uses the argument of Brecht’s contemporary Ernst Bloch for cultural action grounded in an understanding of historical disappointment to anticipates setbacks while maintaining hope for future revolution. The paper delineates five theses on the politics of time: 1) the dramatic appeal of the clean break hides the tension between gradual evolution and a sudden event that ruptures the long span of history (Badiou)...

Comparative Drama, 2012

Like their counterparts in other countries beset with internal conflicts if not outright civil wa... more Like their counterparts in other countries beset with internal conflicts
if not outright civil war, South African
theatermakers during the apartheid era found in classical tragedy scenarios
for representing the struggle against the brutality of an authoritarian
state but in post-apartheid South Africa the stakes have changed.. The persistence of inequity and injustice perpetuated by new rulers,
even if they were former victims, prompts a skeptical revaluation of the
official narrative in which the African National Congress (ANC) claims
the moral high ground of a national hero. As the wealth gap increases,
poverty remains entrenched, and death stalks the country in the shape
of AIDS, assaults on women and children, and criminal violence out of
all proportion to the value of property being stolen, the epic narrative
of national liberation and the victory of justice over oppression have
been cast into doubt. Many local theatermakers have used satire to indict the
corruption, impunity, and indifference of the newly powerful. Audiences
Others have turned to dark farce:. But the legacy of death by AIDS, crime or
malign neglect, which has marred the epic narrative that the ANC still
calls the “national democratic revolution” and shadowed the posture of
leaders calling for national unity in the face of deepening disenchantment
and outright suffering, demands the unflinching portrayal of the harm
perpetuated by its agents, in what should be called the tragedy of the commoner. This article looks at adaptations of tragedy from Fugard's Orestes to Farber's Molora that cast a critical eye on the state of the nation and its commoners struggling against rulers

Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, 2015

In narratives that demonstrate the mutual imbrication of urban and ecological imperatives, Henrie... more In narratives that demonstrate the mutual imbrication of urban and ecological imperatives, Henrietta Rose-Innes complements planners’ work that analyses and strives to sustains human and other native and migrating species in Cape Town. Squeezed between cliffs and oceans, urban life here must deal with mountain topography that appears to escape development and with environments that seem to frustrate civic order, particularly the informal settlements on the edges of this cosmopolitan tourist port. Drawing on anti-apartheid tropes of social justice and on post-apartheid challenges to neo-liberal speculation, her fiction and non-fiction writing traces the steps of biped, quadruped and hexapod figures along the borders between habitation and wilderness, urban street and bare earth to capture the beauty and violence of this singular South African city.

Research in African Literatures, 2021

Especially since the 1990s, practitioners and critics have emphatically distinguished live art fr... more Especially since the 1990s, practitioners and critics have emphatically distinguished live art from text-based and theater-bound drama, much of which still favors English and Afrikaans, even if drama in Xhosa, Tswana, and Zulu, among South Africa’s eleven official languages, has reached the stages of subsidized and other prominent theaters. The reasons for this move away from formal texts are complex but dance and visual media can evidently reach broader audiences regardless of mother tongue and break free from the complacency that has infected many subsidized and commercial theaters. Live art at its best reanimates public spaces and informal environments as well as art galleries that, while more formal than city streets, appear more able than theaters to attract audiences to experimental work and to open their doors to political action outside

Comparative Drama, 2014

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24615319 This article uses TEDIUM and HUNCHBACK VARIATIONS by Chic... more https://www.jstor.org/stable/24615319
This article uses TEDIUM and HUNCHBACK VARIATIONS by Chicago playwright Mickle Maher as a point of departure for analyzing the rhythm of attention and distraction, attunement and drag, imaginination and tedium in the experience of making and watching theatre. This analysis draws on Brecht on estrangement, Heidegger on tedium and attunement, Beckett on absorption in failure as well as the plays of Theater Oobleck

Research in African Literature, 2017

In contrast to the outpouring in 2006 of visual and verbal narratives, publications on the occasi... more In contrast to the outpouring in 2006 of visual and verbal narratives, publications on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary in 2016 have been less spectacular, and only one, Students Must Rise, forges connections between the student uprisings of 1976 and the current situation, in which the tiny minority able to reach university has been protesting rising fees and other problems while the majority of youth facing structural unemployment struggle to find any future. This review essay analyzes the 40th anniversary of the Soweto uprising

Research in Africam Literatures, 2011

Speaking at the Centre for Post-Conflict Justice at Trinity College, Dublin in 2010, Kader Asmal,... more Speaking at the Centre for Post-Conflict Justice at Trinity College, Dublin in 2010, Kader Asmal, formerly anti-apartheid activist, recently minister of education, and now professor of law in South Africa, asked the question: APost-Conflict Justice: Industry or Necessity?@ As a critic of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for allegedly sacrificing justice and the criminal prosecution of perpetrators to the ends of national reconciliation (Asmal et al, Reconciliation through Truth), Asmal may have been a controversial choice to inaugurate a centre whose website features Nelson Mandela framed by the new South African flag, and whose members honor the TRC as a key model for the resolution of conflict in Ireland. Nonetheless, the TRC has become, as Paul Gready suggests in The Era of Transitional Justice (hereafter: Era), both an example for later commissions and the stimulus for commentary on an industrial scale.

Theatre Research International, 2015

This article compares the two major figures of Chilean and South African theatre, in particular ... more This article compares the two major figures of Chilean and South African theatre, in particular two intimate realist dramas onstage and onscreen in the 1970s and 1980s, when both countries were ruled by tyrannies tolerated by governments in the so-called free world. In Boesman and Lena and Hechos consumados the depiction of solidarity against the dispossession caused by ‘capitalist revolution’ in Pinochet’s Chile or Afrikaner capitalism in apartheid South Africa still resonates today when the rhetoric of struggle appears compromised by the culture of consumption and when post-apartheid and post-dictatorship governments retreat from ‘suspended revolution’ in a world shaped not only in the global South but also in the affluent North by neo-liberal axioms of shrunken government and free markets for the rich against austerity for the poor.

Research in African Literatures, 2023

Like many Black intellectuals that came of age as apartheid was tightening its grip in the 1950s,... more Like many Black intellectuals that came of age as apartheid was tightening its grip in the 1950s, Lewis Nkosi (1936-2010) left South Africa on a one-way ticket. Although he outlived apartheid and returned to his native land on and off after 1991, he lived abroad in the United States in the 1990s and in Europe in the 2000s. Although allied with the African National Congress in exile, he wrote skeptically about emphatic anti-apartheid writing. His essays from the 1950s on reflect his preference for cosmopolitan and experimental authors from Dostoyevsky to Kafka, in other words for modernism broadly speaking, and his creative writing reflects this preference in the ironic and satirical rather than the usual earnest treatment of the struggle. While several critics have noted this modernist preference, none have examined the influence of Black American authors on Nkosi's writing. This omission demands attention, as Nkosi's creative writing, especially drama for stage and radio, draws deeply from Black Americans, even when he steals themes, phrases, and characters without acknowledging sources. The Rhythm of Violence written and performed during his first US sojourn 1960-61, borrows style and phrasing from Black Beat poet Ted Joans, the radio drama "We Can't All Be Martin Luther King," broadcast on BBC 4 in 1971, lifts title and tone--unacknowledged--from activist-writer Julian Bond's ironic poem responding to expectations that all Black intellectuals emulate Dr. King, and The Black Psychiatrist borrows from the decidedly unironic Black nationalist Amiri Baraka. Like Bond and essayist James Baldwin, Nkosi balanced a commitment to struggle--in his case, presenting Black African and Caribbean writers to the BBC and to readers abroad--with an ironic attitude to what he called the absurdity of apartheid and other forms of racism.

Theatre Journal, 2020

In his essay in the inaugural issue of The Global South (2007), Arif Dirlik notes that this term ... more In his essay in the inaugural issue of The Global South (2007), Arif Dirlik notes that this term debuted in the 1980 report of the International Commission on North-South Relations chaired by former West German chancellor Willy Brandt. 1 By the time the United Nations officially endorsed the term in 2004, the Brandt report and the Brandt line had established an apparently clear distinction between rich countries and potential donors, which are mostly in the northern hemisphere; and poorer countries they deemed in need of help, which are located mostly in the southern hemisphere. Even in 1980, however, the division of global power and wealth did not match the shape of the hemispheres as neatly as Brandt suggested: the line dipped deep down below the equator to scoop Australia and New Zealand into the North, while it relegated some countries in the northern hemisphere, such as India and China, below the line in the South. Since the inauguration of the Brandt line, competing updates have shifted to include China, India, and in some cases Brazil and South Africa as players in global networks in the twenty-first century. Analysts have pushed this revision further to identify under-resourced places and populations in the North: as Dirlik puts it, "the Inuits are practically on the North Pole." 2 More recent contributors to The Global South, such as Jon Smith, have attempted to refine definitions by conceptualizing the "South in the North" and calling for the investigation of areas, peoples, and cultural production affected by structural inequality in the rich countries of the North, such as the United States' rural South. These investigations join those of Jennifer Robinson and other urbanists from the South. These scholars critique cities in the South that aspire to "world-class" status, from São Paolo to Johannesburg, and challenge the "northern

Theatre Journal, 2023

In 1999, at the end of the decade that began with the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and... more In 1999, at the end of the decade that began with the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and now notorious assertions of the "end of History," the triumph of the West and of neoliberal notions of self-correcting markets and individual entrepreneurs eager to profit from their own commodification, Theatre Journal (hereafter: TJ) published a special issue on theatre and capital. 2 Although as editor I could not foresee the degree to which self-commodification would be spurred by digital marketing, two articles in the issue, by Baz Kershaw arguing that the industry's reduction of both performance and spectatorship to profit-making was "discouraging democracy" in Britain, and by Maurya Wickstrom offering a complementary analysis of "retail theatre" on Broadway, scrutinized the marketing of theatre as tourist entertainment. Read together, they highlighted the kinship between the "Cool Britannia" of Prime Minister Tony Blair and the America of President Bill Clinton, who continued their predecessors' neoliberal policies of financial deregulation and the privatization of cul

Critical Stages, 2020

Review and response on A Century of South African Theatre (Bloomsbury 2019) in which the book's a... more Review and response on A Century of South African Theatre (Bloomsbury 2019) in which the book's author repudiates the reviewer's nostalgia for white theatre and stresses the importance of South Africa's diverse cultural heritage

Beyond the Internationale: https://charleshkerr.com/ , 2024

Many people know the Internationale, the rousing anthem of solidarity the world over, but few Eng... more Many people know the Internationale, the rousing anthem of solidarity the world over, but few English-speakers know its author. Eugène Pottier (1816-87) penned the Internationale in the wake of the collapse of the short-lived but memorable Paris Commune of 1871, but he wrote many revolutionary songs and poems before and after the Commune. Some, like the Internationale, look forward to revolution, even when faced with temporary defeat. Others treat traditional lyric subjects such as the life of his child. Still others tackle topics as relevant in the twenty-first century as they were in the nineteenth, such as ecology or political economy. French publishers have reprinted Pottier’s work, most recently in a bicentennial selection in 2016, but he is unknown in the English-speaking world. This collection translates Pottier’s songs and speeches (many delivered to like-minded exiles in the United States) for the first time and the Internationale in languages, from Afrikaans to Zulu via German, Spanish, Yiddish and others, in addition to English versions, most recently by Billy Bragg in 1990. The introduction provides a brief account of Pottier’s life in France and the U.S. and of the Commune and its worldwide legacy, with a bibliography for further reading.