Serious Fun at Sun City: Theatre for Incarcerated Women in the "New" South Africa (original) (raw)

2016, "Serious Fun at Sun City: Theatre for Incarcerated Women in the 'New' South Africa.'

Since 2008, a select group of women prisoners from "Sun City," the central prison in Johannesburg, South Africa, has been allowed to challenge prevailing narratives about women, crime and justice using theatre and dance performance to enter the public sphere. Drawing on my experience working on the 2009-2012 productions of 'Serious Fun,' directed by Rhodessa Jones, I argue the women prisoners' layering of customary, anti-apartheid and contemporary kwaito song and dance born in the townships, with personal stories of wrong-doing forces a radical reconstruction of contemporary crime discourse, and ultimately, of the Rainbow Nation itself.

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