Mark Fleishman is Professor in the Department of Drama at the University of Cape Town and artistic director of Magnet Theatre, an independent theatre company established in 1987 in Johannesburg and based in Cape Town since 1994. He has created and directed many performance works for the company that have been performed nationally and internationally over the past 26 years and is involved in development projects in urban townships and rural communities using theatre as a tool for social justice and transformation.
His articles have appeared in the South African Theatre Journal, Contemporary Theatre Review and Theatre Research International as well as in numerous edited collections, most recently in Anthony Jackson and Jenny Kidd (eds.) Performing Heritage (Manchester University Press - 2011) and Nicolas Whybrow (ed.) Performing Cities (Palgrave Macmillan – 2014). He is editor of Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa: Cape of Flows in the Studies in International Performance series at Palgrave (2016). He was a visiting scholar on the MAIPR programme at Warwick between 2009 and 2012, and is an active member of the Performance as Research Working Group of the IFTR, and was co-convenor from 2009-2013.
Text of the play In the City of Paradise freely adapted from Aeschylus Oresteia. In the City of P... more Text of the play In the City of Paradise freely adapted from Aeschylus Oresteia. In the City of Paradise is a modern reworking of the ancient story of the House of Atreus in which the descendants of Atreus and Thyestes are locked in an ongoing internecine blood feud. It was originally created in 1998, during the time of the TRC, in workshop with students at UCT under the direction of Mark Fleishman. The play is a reflection on justice and vengeance in our time and situation in the aftermath of apartheid. It brings into sharp focus the fact that many of the same issues still predominate in our society today, unresolved and festering wounds unleash violent and destructive forces that frustrate possibilities for social cohesion. The production was reworked and produced by Magnet Theatre in 2015.
Abstract: This article expands Chantal Mouffe's critique of the 'post-political... more Abstract: This article expands Chantal Mouffe's critique of the 'post-political' as a space in which the partisan model of politics has been overcome and there is no possibility of alternatives, to the realm of knowledge production. It questions the prevalent position that there are no ...
This article considers the proposition that performance as research is a series of embodied repet... more This article considers the proposition that performance as research is a series of embodied repetitions in time, on both micro (bodies, movements, sounds, improvisations, moments) and macro (events, productions, projects, installations) levels, in search of a series of differences. It investigates the proposition in terms of Bergson's notion of ‘creative evolution’ and Deleuze's engagement with it, and is concerned with questions such as: what nature of differences does performance as research give rise to? Where do the differences lie, in the repetitions or in the spaces in between? And is there a point at which the unleashing of differences is exhausted, a point at which, perhaps, the evolution becomes an involution, either a shrinkage of difference, an inverted return to the same, or, in the Deleuzian sense, a new production no longer dependent on differentiation but on transversal modes of becoming?
... MCBURNEY, S. 1994. The Celebration of Lying: an interview with Simon McBurney, interviewed by... more ... MCBURNEY, S. 1994. The Celebration of Lying: an interview with Simon McBurney, interviewed by D. Tushingham. In Tushingham, David (ed.). five: Food fbr the 9ub a new generation of British Theatremakern. London: Methuen. NGEMA, M. 1989. ...
The end of apartheid and the advent of democracy have resulted in the forceful reintegration of S... more The end of apartheid and the advent of democracy have resulted in the forceful reintegration of South Africa into the global economy. One result of this has been the development of a new migratory sub-system centred on South Africa. Rather than attracting international migration from Europe and Asia to South Africa, as had been the case prior to 1994 and the dawn of democracy, this new system attracts migrants from surrounding states in sub-Saharan Africa. These migrants are attracted by the promise of economic prosperity, a supposed cosmopolitanism arising from the idea of the ‘rainbow nation’ with its championing of diversity, and an apparent commitment to the rule of law enshrined in the country’s much vaunted post-apartheid constitution.
For the San, stories inhabited the landscape. They floated on the wind, coming from a distance, b... more For the San, stories inhabited the landscape. They floated on the wind, coming from a distance, behind the backs of mountains and along well-travelled tracks. They drifted towards those who were alert to them, those who sat waiting for them to float into their ears. We know these things because they were told by //Kabbo, a /Xam elder, to the German-born linguist Wilhelm Bleek in the 1870s. //Kabbo's words were written down in a phonetic script devised by Bleek and translated into English.
In this essay the author reflects on the pedagogic choices he made when teaching in the MAIPR pro... more In this essay the author reflects on the pedagogic choices he made when teaching in the MAIPR programme: how to teach practice within a programme designed to develop researchers not practitioners, the discoveries that emerged from those choices, how his approach changed over time and whether the international nature of the programme (his coming from Africa in particular) affected this in any way. It is the author's contention that, while much has been written about Practice/Performance as Research (PaR) from a theoretical perspective – what the particular ontology of PaR might be, the methods of engaging in PaR – little to his knowledge has been written about how to teach it to potential practitioner-researchers. His objective therefore is to begin to think about the pedagogy of PaR in the contemporary university in a global context.
Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material inf... more Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible.
Text of the play In the City of Paradise freely adapted from Aeschylus Oresteia. In the City of P... more Text of the play In the City of Paradise freely adapted from Aeschylus Oresteia. In the City of Paradise is a modern reworking of the ancient story of the House of Atreus in which the descendants of Atreus and Thyestes are locked in an ongoing internecine blood feud. It was originally created in 1998, during the time of the TRC, in workshop with students at UCT under the direction of Mark Fleishman. The play is a reflection on justice and vengeance in our time and situation in the aftermath of apartheid. It brings into sharp focus the fact that many of the same issues still predominate in our society today, unresolved and festering wounds unleash violent and destructive forces that frustrate possibilities for social cohesion. The production was reworked and produced by Magnet Theatre in 2015.
Abstract: This article expands Chantal Mouffe's critique of the 'post-political... more Abstract: This article expands Chantal Mouffe's critique of the 'post-political' as a space in which the partisan model of politics has been overcome and there is no possibility of alternatives, to the realm of knowledge production. It questions the prevalent position that there are no ...
This article considers the proposition that performance as research is a series of embodied repet... more This article considers the proposition that performance as research is a series of embodied repetitions in time, on both micro (bodies, movements, sounds, improvisations, moments) and macro (events, productions, projects, installations) levels, in search of a series of differences. It investigates the proposition in terms of Bergson's notion of ‘creative evolution’ and Deleuze's engagement with it, and is concerned with questions such as: what nature of differences does performance as research give rise to? Where do the differences lie, in the repetitions or in the spaces in between? And is there a point at which the unleashing of differences is exhausted, a point at which, perhaps, the evolution becomes an involution, either a shrinkage of difference, an inverted return to the same, or, in the Deleuzian sense, a new production no longer dependent on differentiation but on transversal modes of becoming?
... MCBURNEY, S. 1994. The Celebration of Lying: an interview with Simon McBurney, interviewed by... more ... MCBURNEY, S. 1994. The Celebration of Lying: an interview with Simon McBurney, interviewed by D. Tushingham. In Tushingham, David (ed.). five: Food fbr the 9ub a new generation of British Theatremakern. London: Methuen. NGEMA, M. 1989. ...
The end of apartheid and the advent of democracy have resulted in the forceful reintegration of S... more The end of apartheid and the advent of democracy have resulted in the forceful reintegration of South Africa into the global economy. One result of this has been the development of a new migratory sub-system centred on South Africa. Rather than attracting international migration from Europe and Asia to South Africa, as had been the case prior to 1994 and the dawn of democracy, this new system attracts migrants from surrounding states in sub-Saharan Africa. These migrants are attracted by the promise of economic prosperity, a supposed cosmopolitanism arising from the idea of the ‘rainbow nation’ with its championing of diversity, and an apparent commitment to the rule of law enshrined in the country’s much vaunted post-apartheid constitution.
For the San, stories inhabited the landscape. They floated on the wind, coming from a distance, b... more For the San, stories inhabited the landscape. They floated on the wind, coming from a distance, behind the backs of mountains and along well-travelled tracks. They drifted towards those who were alert to them, those who sat waiting for them to float into their ears. We know these things because they were told by //Kabbo, a /Xam elder, to the German-born linguist Wilhelm Bleek in the 1870s. //Kabbo's words were written down in a phonetic script devised by Bleek and translated into English.
In this essay the author reflects on the pedagogic choices he made when teaching in the MAIPR pro... more In this essay the author reflects on the pedagogic choices he made when teaching in the MAIPR programme: how to teach practice within a programme designed to develop researchers not practitioners, the discoveries that emerged from those choices, how his approach changed over time and whether the international nature of the programme (his coming from Africa in particular) affected this in any way. It is the author's contention that, while much has been written about Practice/Performance as Research (PaR) from a theoretical perspective – what the particular ontology of PaR might be, the methods of engaging in PaR – little to his knowledge has been written about how to teach it to potential practitioner-researchers. His objective therefore is to begin to think about the pedagogy of PaR in the contemporary university in a global context.
Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material inf... more Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible.
Object relations contains a collection of images and essays in which the contributors trace the p... more Object relations contains a collection of images and essays in which the contributors trace the power of objects that connects them to ideas, to people and to their pasts. The essays reveal an array of objects that for the authors have either emotional associations or provoked their thinking in a significant way. The book draws together ideas about objects through both text and image, a pairing that has evolved from a personal desire for collecting, arranging and photographing objects and using these images in conjunction with narrative.
Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa focuses on a body of performance work, the work of Mag... more Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa focuses on a body of performance work, the work of Magnet Theatre in particular but also work by other artists in Cape Town and other parts of the continent or the world, that engages with the Cape as a real or imagined node in a complex system of migration and mobility. Located at the foot of the African continent, lodged between two oceans at the intersection of many of the earth's major shipping lanes, Cape Town is a stage for a powerful mixing of cultures and peoples and has been an important node in a network of flows, circuits of movement and exchange. The performance works studied here attempt to get to grips with what it feels like to be on the move and in the spaces in-between that characterises the lives, now and for centuries before, of multiple peoples who move around and pass through places like the Cape. The contributors are a broad range of mostly African authors from various parts of the continent and as such the book offers an insight into new thinking and new approaches from an emerging and important location.
The thematic note or curatorial statement for the event asked us to consider the relation between... more The thematic note or curatorial statement for the event asked us to consider the relation between two concepts: crisis and art and the translation of the one into the other.
Should the context in which art is created somehow be evident in the work? Or is there intrinsic value in its aesthetics? ? Can a work not simply be beautiful in itself? What is the relation of realistic context to the pleasing aesthetics of the work?
I was tasked specifically to consider the question of beauty and its relation to a situation of crisis which in one sense at least indicates a time of intense difficulty or danger. But not just any beauty, rather that which we make through the practice of art. And I was asked to do this from a perspective that in some way is African.
As I begin I must acknowledge the privileged position I speak from that is a product of the traum... more As I begin I must acknowledge the privileged position I speak from that is a product of the traumatic system under scrutiny here. I do not intend to speak for the pain of the other only alongside. I can really only reflect from my own position as a South African classified as white under the apartheid system and who continues to be defined in those terms today. And as a person of Jewish descent who was once of this continent, Europe, but was forced out as a consequence of discrimination and othering. I will begin this presentation by drawing on the ideas of some post-Shoah theorists and artists as a way into reflecting on the ways in which young theatre makers in South Africa today engage with a past which remains present in their lives despite 22-years of supposed post-apartheid existence. In particular, the presentation will focus on the recent work of Cape Town-based theare-maker, Mandla Mbothwe, in productions such as Inxeba Lomphilisi and Did We Dance: Ukutshona Ko Mendi. For Mbothwe, the failure of the previous generation to deal adequately with the trauma of apartheid has produced an unresolved tension in the lives of young South Africans, many of whom did not directly experience apartheid in its legal sense but continue to experience its aftermath in a state of what political scientist, Lawrence Hamilton, describes as 'unfreedom' – a state in which they have attained political freedom but do not possess the means to be free, given the persistent levels of poverty, inequality and social exclusion they experience. I would suggest, however, that this 'unfreedom' is also a result of a particular kind of melancholy (in the Freudian sense), a traumatic haunting, that continues to have significant impact on their lives. My focus here is on the particular dramaturgical strategies adopted by Mbothwe which I would suggest are emblematic of his generation and those who follow in his creative footsteps. These choices run counter to the recently entrenched confessional model for dealing dramaturgically with traumatic experiences and emphasize instead, the impossibility of producing a coherent or comprehensible narrative of trauma and the use of physicality and particular modes of vocality to produce an immediate, visceral and affective performance aesthetic to overcome perhaps as Blanchot would have it, " [t]he danger that the disaster acquire meaning rather than body " (1995: 41).
Proceedings of the Arts Research Africa Conference , 2020
Artistic Research and the Institution: a cautionary tale Prof Mark Fleishman, Centre for Theatre,... more Artistic Research and the Institution: a cautionary tale Prof Mark Fleishman, Centre for Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies, UCT 1. Points of departure The central question I will examine today might be stated as follows: what impact do the specific institutional contexts, academic or otherwise, in which we produce research have on the art work itself and the potential ways of knowing associated with it? If we were to shift from a concern with epistemology (how we go about doing artistic research), or ontology (what in fact artistic research is), to a Levinasian concern with ethics, what would an ethical approach to the work of art entail with reference to these institutional pressures/distortions? I have been engaged with artistic research since the mid-1990s. Over that time I would suggest, artistic research has undergone a process of institutionalization. I understand institutionalization to be a process by which individuals come to accept shared definitions of a particular reality-the process by which actions are repeated and given similar meaning by oneself and others. Such an understanding requires us to accept that institutions are not 'naturally' occurring entities but are made by people over a period of time. Any process of institutionalization involves regulative elements: the development of policies and work rules; normative elements : the emergence of habits and work norms; and cognitive elements: the institution of a relatively stable set of beliefs and values. All three help to provide a basis for legitimacy and durability. One vector of institutionalization has been driven from within the arts disciplines themselves. Artistic research has developed a history, a number of structured organisations (PARIP; The Society for Artistic Research; The Performance as Research Working Group of the IFTR; The SenseLab etc) in different geographical locations, and a set of writings, a literature consisting of a body of key texts. And while these texts are by no means equally available or meaningful to all and the literature assembles and reassembles differently according to regional specificities, understandings and proclivities, the literature ensures an element of legitimacy and a perception of stability to the practice. Even if we cannot/don't necessarily always agree on everything to do with artistic research, the existence of the literature suggests that something actual is out there when we speak of artistic research in our various contexts. One of the papers from that body of literature, published in 2009, continues to haunt me in the sense that it unsettles any certainty I might entertain about what we now quite confidently assert about artistic research.
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Papers by Mark Fleishman
Should the context in which art is created somehow be evident in the work? Or is there intrinsic value in its aesthetics? ? Can a work not simply be beautiful in itself? What is the relation of realistic context to the pleasing aesthetics of the work?
I was tasked specifically to consider the question of beauty and its relation to a situation of crisis which in one sense at least indicates a time of intense difficulty or danger. But not just any beauty, rather that which we make through the practice of art. And I was asked to do this from a perspective that in some way is African.