THE PLAYSCRIPTS OF GIBSON MTUTUZELI KENTE: The Story of a Publication (original) (raw)
Related papers
Review: "A Contended Space: The Theatre Gibson Mtutuzeli Kente" by Robert Mshengu Kavanagh
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.
Historicizing anglophone theater in postcolonial South Africa: select political and protest plays
International Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies
This article explores the ways in which Anglophone dramas in postcolonial South Africa became a tool of political and protest theater. It examines the emergence of Anglophone theater, explores its development into political praxis and discusses the performance or non-performance contexts, as well as their specific socio-political milieux, with reference to the select plays from South Africa. These plays are compelling as they characterize specific tensions internal to South Africa, while alluding to colonial legacies and global coercion. Historicization is a crucial phase in this study and the key part of the methodology that establishes their political and aesthetic significance, both at the time of performance and after. The central argument of the article is that Anglophone theater of South Africa is subjected to and bound bysocio-political and cultural dynamics of the country; the emergence of political and protest theater is often caused by subtle or overt subterfuges of biopolitics exercised internally within this postcolonial territory.
2003
This dissertation focuses on the nature and manifestation of tragedy within African experience in selected plays written by black South African playwrights. The plays under discussion are We Shall Sing for the Fatherland (1973) by Zakes Mda, The Hungry Earth (1978) by Maishe Maponya, and Sarafina (1985) by Mbongeni Ngema. The many conflicting statements regarding the "death" and existence of tragedy in contemporary drama lead one to ask the following two fundamental questions: Can there be tragedy in contemporary South African drama and what structural devices are there to account for the m_anifestation of this elusive phenomenon? This dissertation works towards defining the concept of an African vision of tragedy by examining the nature and form in which tragedy manifests itself in South African drama. Secondly, it considers the extent to which this phenomenon is similar or different from conventional elements and structural forms of Western tragic drama. This dissertation argues that there exists a distinct and viable vision of tragedy in black South African drama which can be called African. It contends that dramatic texts do not all have the same degree of profundity of tragic vision because their subject matter, techniques and depth of artistic exploration differ, and vary according to their cultural roots. The basis on which old forms of tragedy are used to interpret the version of contemporary tragedy is therefore called into question, and as a result, the analysis of structural forms v and thematic preoccupations of contemporary tragedy needs a set of criteria different from that of Euro-American drama. The portrayal of a tragic hero as a common man whose tragic stature is measured in terms of his ability to feel, to be aware of forces closing down on him in The Hungry Earth, the manifestation of tragedy as generated not only by individual volition, but by an economic structure established by those in power in We Shall Sing for the Fatherland, and, finally, the mingling of tragicomic elements of entertainment and communication to accommodate both tragedy and comic elements •without destroying the integrity of either in Sarafina, indicate a definite development and imitation of tragedy from emphasis on form to meaning. By asking a question like: "What constitutes tragedy in black South African drama, and how are such processes represented and modelled in the selected plays?" this dissertation enters into a dialogue of global and local perspectives of tragedy in order to contribute to our understanding of an African, and specifically South African, concept of tragedy firmly rooted in its socio-cultural context.
In terms of the arts and theatre of the majority, the 1970’s in South Africa were a particularly rich and active decade. By publishing two key resources, namely The Complete S’ketsh’ and Selected Plays Vol. 1: The Theatre of Workshop ’71, the South African theatre artist and academic, Robert Mshengu Kavanagh, had hoped to supplement significantly the rather sparse existing documentation and resources on the period available to the practitioners and students of South African theatre. Three others of his publications carried this process further, namely his study of the work of the foremost theatre practitioner of the age, Gibson Kente [A Contended Space: The Theatre of Gibson Mtutuzeli Kente], the re-publication by ZED Books of his Theatre and Cultural Struggle in South Africa and a new re-written and re-edited edition of an earlier Witwatersrand University Press publication, Making People's Theatre, now Making Theatre. In this paper Kavanagh widens the field to include two publications of Zimbabwean plays, one the plays of the political theatre group, Zambuko/Izibuko and the other those of the professional youth theatre company, New Horizon. Zambuko/Izibuko was a very active, militant political theatre group whose aim was to use theatre as a weapon and a tool with which to mobilise support and solidarity in the fight against apartheid and further the struggle for socialism in Zimbabwe. It adapted the forms of agit-prop and workers’ theatre to create an original and impactful blend of powerful statement, striking images, dance, song and visuals. The five plays included in the volume were presented all over Zimbabwe and elsewhere within the Southern African region - an agit-prop anti-apartheid piece; a lyrical and moving account of the Mozambican people’s tragically aborted quest to build a new society; a play initially drafted in an African National Congress camp in Tanzania on Mandela’s inspiration for the people of South Africa; a trenchant, witty but poetic exposure of the International Monetary Fund Structural Adjustment Programme in Zimbabwe; and a moving memorial to the assassinated hero of the struggle in South Africa, Chris Hani. The New Horizon Youth Theatre Company sprung from the work of the Zimbabwean arts education trust, CHIPAWO, to educate and develop children and young people through the performing arts and media. The theatre company is intended to provide youth who have passed through CHIPAWO’s music, dance, theatre and media programmes with an opportunity for further training and the possibility of pursuing a professional career in theatre. The plays selected for publication were all created and performed in the first decade of the new millennium. They are all imaginative and free adaptations and interrogations of the work of various authors, namely Henrik Ibsen, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Mungoshi and Lutanga Shaba. A feature of New Horizon’s stage performances was the versatility of the actors, who were equally proficient at acting singing, playing drums, marimba and mbira and dancing both modern and traditional choreographies.
AFRICAN THEATRE, HISTORY AND POSTCOLONIAL RESISTANCE: AN APPRAISAL OF OLA ROTIMI'SOVONRAMWENNOGBAISI
Journal , 2018
The upward trend in African historical plays drew much attention of researchers to the relationship between history proper and the historical plays or imaginative reconstruction of history. The contention was that, although these plays were primarily regarded as fiction or imaginative reconstruction of the past based on the playwrights' interpretation of history, many theatre scholars argued that the value of these plays prevailed over history to the audience if there is a clash with history proper. This began with Aristotles's assertion that "poetry/literature is more philosophical and elevated than history", and that literary plot tends to be unabridged, corrective and therefore more permanent. Following on from that, this paper theorized, in this work, that historical plays resist and counteract imperial discourse, or jaundiced imperial historians in their biased history of their clash with African monarchs and heroes. Secondly, the paper argued that through the shades of Cultural Resistance that hybridize conventional theatre, postcolonial plays are central in the promulgation of anti-colonial resistance and therefore have the tendency to change a distorted history. Hence theatre, the most symbolic form of art, can be historically corrective and evocatively accurate. To illustrate this, the paper examined a postcolonial play; Ola Rotimi'sOvonramwenNogbaisi. The play reconstructs and corrects a badly damaged and awfully misrepresented African monarch; Oba OvonramwenNogbaisi of the old Benin Empire. The researchers examined the colonial resistance captured by the play, through postcolonial theory, and cast light on the attitudes the play reflects regarding the coloniser and the colonised, the extent to which the play helps in decolonisation process and how the play reconstructs the images of the damaged heroes, so as to restore national pride and integrity.
Supplementing documentation and resources in South African Theatre: Majority Theatre in the 1970s
Paradoxically and almost perversely, apartheid legislation in the early 1960s led to the development of a rich and dynamic theatre in the black urban and sometimes rural areas, a development which was checked by the uprisings in 1976. Up to now academics, authors, students and practitioners who have shown an interest in the arts of that period have had little grist for their mill. I was active in the theatre during those years and have written a fair amount about it. However I am now in a position to make available a number of resources which I hope will contribute to a deeper and more detailed understanding of the theatre of that time. .