Samuel Ravengai
University of the Witwatersrand, Drama, Faculty Member
- Theatre Studies, Theatre History, Theatre Theory, Mobility/Mobilities, Zimbabwean culture and heritage, Migration Studies, and 17 moreImprovisation, Performance Studies, African Poetry, Dramaturgy, South African Theatre, Staging the Archive/Performing History, Comparative Literature, Theatre of the Absurd, Anthropology of Performance, Political theatre, Workshop Theatre, Performance Theory, Playwriting, Acting and Directing, Adaptation, Devised Theatre, and Zimbabwean Theatreedit
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This collection surveys the theatre produced in Zimbabwe from the last days of colonialism in the 1970s right up to 2009 when the country’s post-independence political and economic crisis, which had started in November 1997, had slowed... more
This collection surveys the theatre produced in Zimbabwe from the last days of colonialism in the 1970s right up to 2009 when the country’s post-independence political and economic crisis, which had started in November 1997, had slowed down significantly. The slowdown followed the inauguration of a Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) brokered Government of National Unity (GNU) that brought together the then ruling ZANU PF party (under the late Robert Mugabe) and its chief post-independence political adversary, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) under the late Morgan Tsvangirai. We use the establishment of the GNU of 2009 as a cut-off point for this collection not least because the political and economic turmoil that characterised the colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwean state became highly enmeshed with the nature and extent of the country’s theatre and cultural production as alluded to in the title of our edited collection.
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... I taught it using exercises developed by Stanislavsky himself, according to the book The Stanislavsky Technique by Mel Gordon (1987). ... Formal English in South Africa is what Darron Araujo (2009) has called general White South... more
... I taught it using exercises developed by Stanislavsky himself, according to the book The Stanislavsky Technique by Mel Gordon (1987). ... Formal English in South Africa is what Darron Araujo (2009) has called general White South African English (WSAfE). ...
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Book chapter in Vambe M. T and Chirere, M., eds. 2006. Charles Mungoshi: A Critical Reader. Harare: Prestige Books, pp. 223-236. ISBN 0-7974-3087-3.
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In this article, I want to look at selected theatrical texts written and/ or performed between 1980 and 1996 in Zimbabwe. During this period, the newly inaugurated Zimbabwean government adopted socialist realism to guide cultural... more
In this article, I want to look at selected theatrical texts written and/ or performed between 1980 and 1996 in Zimbabwe. During this period, the newly inaugurated Zimbabwean government adopted socialist realism to guide cultural production in the country (Ravengai 2006). Theatre and theatrical texts were therefore purposive activities imbued with socialist ethos – the subalterns speaking back to Rhodesian discourse and neo-colonial power, which in yesteryears could not be written or performed openly without censure. Gayatri Spivak (1988) observes that colonial discourse establishes the West as the Subject while the rest of the world is the Other. In the constitution of the Other, the West inflicts what Spivak calls epistemic violence on the Other which seeks to obliterate the text that the Other can invest its itinerary. Rhodesian discourse attempted to achieve the same results of ‘silencing’ the subaltern. It is perhaps appropriate to ask the same question that Spivak asked: Can t...
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ABSTRACT This article is a contextual analysis of the socio-political and ideological conditions of theatre production in Zimbabwe between 1980 and 1996. In this article I discuss the construction of theatre identities, in what I have... more
ABSTRACT This article is a contextual analysis of the socio-political and ideological conditions of theatre production in Zimbabwe between 1980 and 1996. In this article I discuss the construction of theatre identities, in what I have chosen to call alternative Zimbabwean theatre, at the level of theatre training. In the field of Zimbabwean alternative theatre, a white dominated theatre organisation, the National Theatre Organisation (NTO), and a black dominated theatre organisation, Zimbabwe Association of Community based Theatre (ZACT), fought ideological and aesthetic wars and competed with each other for occupying the dominant position. These two organisations competed to host theatre festivals, to train theatre artists, to express their views in the media and consecrate their agents. They competed on the right to define national theatre. It was a cultural struggle to assume the power and right to tell others what national theatre ought to be and to enforce national theatrical conventions. It invariably became a power struggle between two theatrical conventions – the NTO theatrical convention with a strong bourgeois illusionistic theatre orientation and the ZACT theatrical convention with a strong performatic orientation. Since both NTO and ZACT trained the same artists, I argue that theatre makers used their own agency to choose what they wanted from the workshop materials and created theatre that was an admixture of dramatic theatre and African performative modes.
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In this article, I do a textual analysis of Jonathan Nkala’s, The Crossing, through the lens of Tim Creswell’s theories of mobility and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus. I background the analysis by surveying migration trends since the... more
In this article, I do a textual analysis of Jonathan Nkala’s, The Crossing, through the lens of Tim Creswell’s theories of mobility and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus. I background the analysis by surveying migration trends since the fifth century AD and note that migration is human nature. My major preoccupation is to examine the 16 encounters that Jonathan Nkala, the writer/performer, has with other people on his way to the Western Cape. I argue that Nkala deviates from the victimhood trope characteristic of the other three plays written by Zimbabweans on the same subject of migration. I further argue that when mobility has taken place, the moving agent carries their tacit knowledge in their body which they share in performance with the receiving community. Key words: victimhood, The Crossing, mobility, encounter, migration, Nkala
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Culturally, white theatre in what was known as Rhodesia replicated the bourgeois theatre of London's West End. The many theatre companies that mushroomed at various forts, towns and cities churned out farces, comedies, musicals and... more
Culturally, white theatre in what was known as Rhodesia replicated the bourgeois theatre of London's West End. The many theatre companies that mushroomed at various forts, towns and cities churned out farces, comedies, musicals and pantomimes. Occasionally (white) Rhodesians appropriated Greek plays and Shakespeare as well as other Western genres. Rhodesians seem to have become fossilised in this tradition, which played out the values and tastes of the metropolitan bourgeois class. Modernist theatre, however, encountered a conservative spectatorship unwilling to embrace it in colonial Zimbabwe. Defenders of the Rhodesian way of life saw themselves as the last bastion preserving the values which other Western societies had forsaken or neglected. Rhodesians associated modernist plays with the atheism and permissiveness of Europe. This kind of conservatism was carried over into Zimbabwe at independence in 1980 and modernist playwrights like Dambudzo Marechera were ostracised for what was perceived as writing against the grain.
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ABSTRACT This article focuses on the behaviour of the African body in performance as well as the internal organisation of the songs. In focusing on the body and mechanics of songs I want to investigate how the African body and vocal skill... more
ABSTRACT This article focuses on the behaviour of the African body in performance as well as the internal organisation of the songs. In focusing on the body and mechanics of songs I want to investigate how the African body and vocal skill reflect, mediate and challenge the relations of domination and subordination between western dramatic theatre and indigenous cultural text. What identities of theatre emerge out of this process and how are they produced? I argue that Zimbabwean alternative theatre makers created a deconstructive theatre aesthetic, which adopted and separated elements of dramatic theatre for use in a radically new way. While the content of songs resists Rhodesian discourse, some of their stylistic features are adapted from western music making the notion of resistance an ambivalent one.
Research Interests: Music, Music Education, Music History, Music Theory, Musicology, and 5 moreTheatre Studies, Art, Popular Music, Dance, and Música
ABSTRACT This article seeks to explore the ways in which Zimunya constructs Zimbabwean rural and urban landscapes and cultural identities at a time when the city is making inroads into the rural terrain and the rural hinterland is... more
ABSTRACT This article seeks to explore the ways in which Zimunya constructs Zimbabwean rural and urban landscapes and cultural identities at a time when the city is making inroads into the rural terrain and the rural hinterland is encroaching into the city. I argue that even though Zimunya seems to blame the white man's culture for ‘contaminating’ the rural landscape and cultural identities and seeks to purify his home space, the tale unfolding in the poetic narratives suggests that his society also changes with time. It might not be possible for his society to behave and relate to each other in accordance with pre-capitalist values as existing social and economic conditions have changed. Contrary to existing formalist criticism of Zimunya's poetry such as those posited by Zhuwarara, R. (1985, Introduction. In M. Zimunya (Ed.), Country dawns and city lights. Harare: Longman) who views the rural African society as both overshadowed and threatened by city life, a place which symbolises a civilisation whose capacity to brutalise seems infinite, I argue that both the rural and urban African people have the capacity to ‘resist’ the metropole culture creating a new identity or a system of relations and representations which is not fixed, but dynamic and continually recomposes and redefines itself.
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... View all references, interview with David Dzatsunga, Masvingo). What this background information provides is the sense of danger that ZANU-PF is facing. ... Muchemwa (20058.Muchemwa, KZ 2005. “Some thoughts on history, memory and... more
... View all references, interview with David Dzatsunga, Masvingo). What this background information provides is the sense of danger that ZANU-PF is facing. ... Muchemwa (20058.Muchemwa, KZ 2005. “Some thoughts on history, memory and writing”. ...
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How can artistic research offer the opportunity to create knowledge based on African practice and produced from the African context? This presentation will delineate seven approaches to artistic research and argue for decolonial... more
How can artistic research offer the opportunity to create knowledge based on African practice and produced from the African context? This presentation will delineate seven approaches to artistic research and argue for decolonial imperatives.
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The official cultural policy of the colonial state in Zimbabwe was premised on the anglicisation of cultural production with a slavish adherence to the Western dramatic canon. Although this policy was resisted by cultural producers, the... more
The official cultural policy of the colonial state in Zimbabwe was premised on the anglicisation of cultural production with a slavish adherence to the Western dramatic canon. Although this policy was resisted by cultural producers, the resistance was not mainstreamed in any meaningful way as a broad-based policy to be pursued. With independence from Great Britain on 18 April 1980, cultural producers took it upon themselves to mainstream this resistance to the Western canon through a process of decolonising Zimbabwean theatre to create what I have called alternative Zimbabwean theatre. In this article, I want to make sense of this creative process by deploying two sociological concepts: keying and fabrication. I appropriate these two concepts through the lens of decolonial theory, which is an analytical approach that both celebrates and destabilises the colonial and Eurocentric episteme to reconstruct new epistemic systems and forms. With a particular focus on two plays I argue that...
This chapter reviews the normative construction of colonial resistance by analysing how white theatre practitioners, in Rhodesia, resisted and defied official practices of separate development and racial segregation. It explores how the... more
This chapter reviews the normative construction of colonial resistance by analysing how white theatre practitioners, in Rhodesia, resisted and defied official practices of separate development and racial segregation. It explores how the field of cultural production provided an opportunity for intercultural and interracial synergies, which dismantled the official binary construction of social relations in Rhodesia. Using a post-colonialist gaze, the chapter reveals how contamination, hybridity and interculturalism were used as strategies of resistance which in turn defined notions of whitehood from within. The chapter, therefore, argues that the colonial project was resisted from within yet this aspect of colonial resistance has received scant academic attention. The paper looks at the works of prominent directors such as Ken Marshall, Adrian Stanley, Monica Maarsden and Daniel Pearce, among others.
This chapter examines the soft power of colonialism which I call Rhodesian discourse. The chapter interrogates the interplay between Rhodesian discourse and Zimbabwean theatre produced in colonial times with occasional reference to other... more
This chapter examines the soft power of colonialism which I call Rhodesian discourse. The chapter interrogates the interplay between Rhodesian discourse and Zimbabwean theatre produced in colonial times with occasional reference to other forms of cultural production such as literature. Past and present Zimbabwean theatre established its identity in discursive negotiation and contestation with Rhodesian discourse. I ask what is/was Rhodesian discourse and how did it affect the field of theatre production? At independence, Rhodesian discourse was sidelined from the public sphere to give way to the dominant patriotic and socialist discourse. However, the former reconstituted itself in other forms such as neo-colonialism, and colonial mentality within Eurocentric theatre institutions such as the National Theatre Organisation (NTO).
This article seeks to discuss how the contest of Rhodesian and African counter-discourses affected the identity of alternative theatre with respect to western dramaturgical frame and acting. The question that this article is trying to... more
This article seeks to discuss how the contest of Rhodesian and African counter-discourses affected the identity of alternative theatre with respect to western dramaturgical frame and acting. The question that this article is trying to answer is how does the dramaturgical frame and acting reflect, mediate, and challenge the relations of domination and subordination between western culture and indigenous African culture? I argue that the western dramaturgical frame and acting are altered through a process of 'keying' and 'fabrication' by alternative Zimbabwean theatre makers between 1980 and 1996. Sometimes the western dramaturgical frame is deconstructed by using aspects of it along side an indigenous theatrical matrix such as in Kavanagh's Mavambo (1985/97) and Mujajati's The Rain of my Blood (1991). I will return to the terms 'keying' and 'fabrication' shortly after this introductory remark.
In this article I attempt to analyse three urban African performances; Nyawo, the tea party, and Beni. I employ the socio-historical analysis model which attempts to understand the relationship between the field of cultural production and... more
In this article I attempt to analyse three urban African performances; Nyawo, the tea party, and Beni. I employ the socio-historical analysis model which attempts to understand the relationship between the field of cultural production and the field of power. Historically the ascendancy to power of the bourgeoisie in Western Europe facilitated the assimilation of its culture and taste by virtually all of Western civil society. Colonisation in Rhodesia (in its blue print form) intended to use the same principle of extending English rulership and influence with the goal of transforming Rhodesia to be like the metropolitan state in manifesting the nature and will of the English in lifestyle, actions, activities and culture.1 As evidenced by the nature of these urban African performances, domination does not necessarily result in absolute collaboration. Rhodesian discourse was both collaborated with and resisted by African cultural producers. I look at this element of collaboration and r...
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This article examines the theatre making and directing styles inherent in urban Zimbabwean theatre in the first ten years after independence. It does so by scrutinising the works of selected urban theatre makers and/or directors in order... more
This article examines the theatre making and directing styles inherent in urban Zimbabwean theatre in the first ten years after independence. It does so by scrutinising the works of selected urban theatre makers and/or directors in order to access the general modifications that they have made to the theatre of the period. The objective is to appreciate the characteristics of such theatre for purposes of delineating the theatrical style of the period. In addition, the article also discusses the manner in which the socio-historical environment influenced a whole array of the creative processes involved in a production. The article further argues that the theatrical style of the period both collaborated with and resisted Western illusionistic theatre aesthetics as practised by the historically dominant white mainstream theatre.
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Summary in English. Word processed copy. Accompanied by videocassette with title: Trauma Centre. Thesis (M.A.(Theatre and Performance))--University of Cape Town, 2001. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 36-7).
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Studies on the history of censorship in Zimbabwe are very scarce. When Zimbabwe attained her independence from Great Britain on 18 April 1980, she chose to follow a socialist system of economic and social development. Even though this... more
Studies on the history of censorship in Zimbabwe are very scarce. When Zimbabwe attained her independence from Great Britain on 18 April 1980, she chose to follow a socialist system of economic and social development. Even though this programme had the best intentions, like most programmes for the future, it was used, together with the recuperation of denuded indigenous culture, as a tool for restricting national debate and for censorship. After the failure of neoliberal policies that had begun in 1990, Zimbabwe plunged into a crisis which began in 1998 and ended in 2008. Protest theatre artists who voiced their displeasure with the underperforming economy and bad politics were censored, politically controlled and sometimes detained by the Zimbabwean Government. I seek to document this stifling of creativity through the method of thick description. I will specifically study the theatre and creative activities of Dambudzo Marechera and take a panoramic view of censorship and political control of theatre, of several key theatre companies of Zimbabwe, during the crisis period.
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In this article I examine the performance of Magnet Theatre’s Tears Become Rain and also make reference to several other performances by the same company. My major thrust is to evaluate Magnet Theatre’s Clanwilliam Art Project against its... more
In this article I examine the performance of Magnet Theatre’s Tears Become Rain and also make reference to several other performances by the same company. My major thrust is to evaluate Magnet Theatre’s Clanwilliam Art Project against its set objectives, using Tears Become Rain as a starting point. Tears Become Rain was a single performance of one of the stories of //Kabbo. Every year the creative collective comprising Magnet Theatre, and the University of Cape’s Departments of Fine Art and Archaeology chooses a narrative from one of the 2000 notebooks containing 13,000 pages of oral stories transcribed by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd. These oral narratives are verbatim accounts of the San ex-prisoner, //Kabbo, and a small number of informants who temporarily lived with the writers in Cape Town between 1870 and 1884. This creative collective has been working with close to 700 learners of Clanwilliam aged between five and 18 for eight days each year to produce a performance that gets to be watched by the broader Clanwilliam community including parents, friends and family. One of the objectives of the creative collective is to attempt to reclaim the heritage of the /Xam by reconnecting story and landscape by putting that heritage to work in the Clanwilliam community. It is this performance of the past, its curation and archiving in the present that I want to problematize in this article. I argue that the archive is both a repository filled with random survivals of the past and also a closet that erases or closes out other knowledges. I problematize the notion of preservation of heritage seeing that the San in their nineteenth-century phenotype have completely disappeared in Clanwilliam together with their language and repertoire of embodied acts.
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In this article I attempt to analyse three urban African performances; Nyawo, Tea party, and Beni. I employ the socio-historical analysis model which attempts to understand the relationship between the field of cultural production and the... more
In this article I attempt to analyse three urban African performances; Nyawo, Tea party, and Beni. I employ the socio-historical analysis model which attempts to understand the relationship between the field of cultural production and the field of power. Historically the ascendancy to power of the bourgeoisie in Western Europe facilitated the assimilation of its culture and taste by virtually all of Western civil society. Colonisation in Rhodesia (in its blue print form) intended to use the same principle of extending English rulership and influence with the goal of transforming Rhodesia to be like the metropolitan state in manifesting the nature and will of the English in lifestyle, actions, activities and culture. As evidenced by the nature of these urban African performances, domination does not necessarily result in absolute collaboration. Rhodesian discourse was both collaborated with and resisted by African cultural producers. I look at this element of collaboration and resist...
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My focus in this article is a Zimbabwean television soap opera, Studio 263, concentrating on the period 2002 to 2006, even though it is still running on ZBCTV, albeit with intermittent stops and resumptions. Studio 263 has also been... more
My focus in this article is a Zimbabwean television soap opera, Studio 263, concentrating on the period 2002 to 2006, even though it is still running on ZBCTV, albeit with intermittent stops and resumptions. Studio 263 has also been screened in Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa (from the Mnet Africa Magic channel). The Studio 263 sponsor PSI-Z is a Non-Governmental Organisation that originates from (and arguably represents the interests of) the United States of America. During the period, PSI-Z was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the British department of international development. The funding of Studio 263 by western development aid agencies is generally seen as bringing about development which I will argue places the developing world in a dependent relationship with the West making it a prisoner of history. During this period PSI sponsored Studio 263 and a television talk show called This is Life that was co-produced by PSI-Z and ZBCTV....
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The debate among scholars about Stanislavsky and his method of conceiving a character continues to rage today. Stanislavsky believes the conception of character occurs through cerebral processes, while those who disagree (such as Michael... more
The debate among scholars about Stanislavsky and his method of conceiving a character continues to rage today. Stanislavsky believes the conception of character occurs through cerebral processes, while those who disagree (such as Michael Chekhov, Vakhtangov, Brook and Grotowski) believe that character can be established through the body or somatic impulse. In his last days Stanislavsky even challenged his earlier theories himself by proposing that everything must be turned into physical action. The 'work on oneself' and the 'work on one's role' which he had pioneered from 1909 until 1931, Stanislavsky declared, belonged to the classroom studio for academic purposes (Gordon, 1987). Once this work had been internalised by working actors, it was no longer part of the production process. The method focusing on physical actions was intended to be a corrective measure to the slow rehearsal process normally associated with the Stanislavsky system. Can we, therefore, blindly accept a system that its architect dumped in favour of physical action? To my knowledge none of these theatre innovators challenged the Stanislavsky system on the basis of its cultural bias towards bodies with a Western disposition
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This article focuses on the behaviour of the African body in performance as well as the internal organisation of the songs. In focusing on the body and mechanics of songs I want to investigate how the African body and vocal skill reflect,... more
This article focuses on the behaviour of the African body in performance as well as the internal organisation of the songs. In focusing on the body and mechanics of songs I want to investigate how the African body and vocal skill reflect, mediate, and challenge the relations of domination and subordination between western dramatic theatre and indigenous cultural text? What identities of theatre emerge out of this process and how are they produced? I argue that Zimbabwean alternative theatre makers created a deconstructive theatre aesthetic which adopted and separated elements of dramatic theatre for use in a radically new way. While the content of songs resists Rhodesian discourse, some of their stylistic features are adapted from western music making the notion of resistance an ambivalent one.
Key words: mime, alternative theatre, song, Rhodesian discourse, dance, dramatic theatre.
Key words: mime, alternative theatre, song, Rhodesian discourse, dance, dramatic theatre.
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In this article, I do a textual analysis of Jonathan Nkala’s, The Crossing, through the lens of Tim Creswell’s theories of mobility and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus. I background the analysis by surveying migration trends since the... more
In this article, I do a textual analysis of Jonathan Nkala’s, The Crossing, through the lens of Tim Creswell’s theories of mobility and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus. I background the analysis by surveying migration trends since the fifth century AD and note that migration is human nature. My major preoccupation is to examine the 16 encounters that Jonathan Nkala, the writer/performer, has with other people on his way to the Western Cape. I argue that Nkala deviates from the victimhood trope characteristic of the other three plays written by Zimbabweans on the same subject of migration. I further argue that when mobility has taken place, the moving agent carries their tacit knowledge in their body which they share in performance with the receiving community.
Key words: victimhood, The Crossing, mobility, encounter, migration, Nkala
Key words: victimhood, The Crossing, mobility, encounter, migration, Nkala
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This article seeks to explore the ways in which Zimunya constructs Zimbabwean rural and urban landscapes and cultural identities at a time when the city is making inroads into the rural terrain and the rural hinterland is encroaching... more
This article seeks to explore the ways in which Zimunya constructs Zimbabwean rural and urban landscapes and cultural identities at a time when the city is making inroads
into the rural terrain and the rural hinterland is encroaching into the city. I argue that even though Zimunya seems to blame the white man’s culture for ‘contaminating’ the rural landscape and cultural identities and seeks to purify his home space, the tale unfolding in the poetic narratives suggests that his society also changes with time. It might not be possible for his society to behave and relate to each other in accordance with pre-capitalist values as existing social and economic conditions have changed. Contrary to existing formalist criticism of Zimunya’s poetry such as those posited by Zhuwarara, R. (1985, Introduction. In M. Zimunya (Ed.), Country dawns and city lights. Harare: Longman) who views the rural African society as both overshadowed and threatened by city life, a place which symbolises a civilisation whose capacity to brutalise seems infinite, I argue that both the rural and urban African people have the capacity to ‘resist’ the metropole culture creating a new identity or a system of relations and representations which is not fixed, but dynamic and continually recomposes and redefines itself.
Keywords: cultural identities; landscape; hybridity; indigenes; metropole
into the rural terrain and the rural hinterland is encroaching into the city. I argue that even though Zimunya seems to blame the white man’s culture for ‘contaminating’ the rural landscape and cultural identities and seeks to purify his home space, the tale unfolding in the poetic narratives suggests that his society also changes with time. It might not be possible for his society to behave and relate to each other in accordance with pre-capitalist values as existing social and economic conditions have changed. Contrary to existing formalist criticism of Zimunya’s poetry such as those posited by Zhuwarara, R. (1985, Introduction. In M. Zimunya (Ed.), Country dawns and city lights. Harare: Longman) who views the rural African society as both overshadowed and threatened by city life, a place which symbolises a civilisation whose capacity to brutalise seems infinite, I argue that both the rural and urban African people have the capacity to ‘resist’ the metropole culture creating a new identity or a system of relations and representations which is not fixed, but dynamic and continually recomposes and redefines itself.
Keywords: cultural identities; landscape; hybridity; indigenes; metropole
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This article is a contextual analysis of the socio-political and ideological conditions of theatre production in Zimbabwe between 1980 and 1996. In this article I discuss the construction of theatre identities, in what I have chosen to... more
This article is a contextual analysis of the socio-political and ideological conditions of theatre production in Zimbabwe between 1980 and 1996. In this article I discuss the construction of theatre identities, in what I have chosen to call alternative Zimbabwean theatre, at the level of theatre training. In the field of Zimbabwean alternative theatre, a white dominated theatre organisation, the National Theatre Organisation (NTO), and a black dominated theatre organisation, Zimbabwe Association of Community based Theatre (ZACT), fought ideological and aesthetic wars and competed with each other for occupying the dominant position. These two organisations competed to host theatre festivals, to train theatre artists, to express their views in the media and consecrate their agents. They competed on the right to define national theatre. It was a cultural struggle to assume the power and right to tell others what national theatre ought to be and to enforce national theatrical conventions. It invariably became a power struggle between two theatrical conventions – the NTO theatrical convention with a strong bourgeois illusionistic theatre orientation and the ZACT theatrical convention with a strong performatic orientation. Since both NTO and ZACT trained the same artists, I argue that theatre makers used their own agency to choose what they wanted from the workshop materials and created theatre that was an admixture of dramatic theatre and African performative modes.
Keywords: NTO, indigenous text, socialism, performatic, ZACT
Keywords: NTO, indigenous text, socialism, performatic, ZACT
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Zimbabwe is a culturally rich country located in Southern Africa. Its colonial name was Rhodesia which changed to the current name at independence from Britain in 1980. Zimbabwe has a diverse population comprising two dominant cultural... more
Zimbabwe is a culturally rich country located in Southern Africa. Its colonial name was Rhodesia which changed to the current name at independence from Britain in 1980. Zimbabwe has a diverse population comprising two dominant cultural groups – the Shona and the Ndebele. The African population as of 2013 stood at 99.7 per cent of the total population of 13,724,317 people. The remaining percentage is shared by whites and Asians. According to the new constitution Zimbabwe has 16 official languages; English, Shona, Ndebele, Kalanga, Ndau, Chewa, Nambya, Shangani, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Chibarwe, Sign language and Khoisan. In terms of religion, Zimbabwe is thoroughly Christianised with half of the population following syncretic Christian/African religious formations while 25 per cent are either mainstream or Pentecostal Christians; 24 per cent of the population follow African traditional religion while the other 1 per cent is Muslim. This syncretism is evident in the current Zimbabwean theatre under review in this article.
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This article intends to situate Zimbabwean political theatre within the discourse of national identity. National identity is deployed here as denoting any given set of myths, stories and beliefs propagated to justify a dominant group in... more
This article intends to situate Zimbabwean political theatre within the discourse of national identity. National identity is deployed here as denoting any given set of myths, stories and beliefs propagated to justify a dominant group in maintaining power and in the case of Zimbabwe such generated myths and images are sectarian. Institutions such as theatre must be established to protect, nourish, articulate and perpetuate such identities. What is emerging now in Zimbabwe is that even if the government has supported such institutions often posturing as independent of sectarian political expedience, the resultant public imagery is the official version of history which incriminates those who have different views as sell-outs. Political theatre in Zimbabwe is one of the mediums which generates public imagery that challenges or maintains the ZANU-PF version of national memory. I argue that the totality of the state is expressed in its monopoly of images of meaning that float in the public mind through the medium of theatre. Where such theatre is consistent with what Ranger calls ‘patriotic history’ it is protected as memory should be guarded against dissolution. However, national identity can be an umbrella for determining what speech and passion is permissible and what is not. Thus in Zimbabwe, national identity has become a camouflage for a series of political controls that occupy the creative space and deny the opportunity for a pluralism of views and freedom of expression.
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Culturally, white theatre in what was known as Rhodesia replicated the bourgeois theatre of London's West End. The many theatre companies that mushroomed at various forts, towns and cities churned out farces, comedies, musicals and... more
Culturally, white theatre in what was known as Rhodesia replicated the bourgeois theatre of London's West End. The many theatre companies that mushroomed at various forts, towns and cities churned out farces, comedies, musicals and pantomimes. Occasionally (white) Rhodesians appropriated Greek plays and Shakespeare as well as other Western genres. Rhodesians seem to have become fossilised in this tradition, which played out the values and tastes of the metropolitan bourgeois class. Modernist theatre, however, encountered a conservative spectatorship unwilling to embrace it in colonial Zimbabwe. Defenders of the Rhodesian way of life saw themselves as the last bastion preserving the values which other Western societies had forsaken or neglected. Rhodesians associated modernist plays with the atheism and permissiveness of Europe. This kind of conservatism was carried over into Zimbabwe at independence in 1980 and modernist playwrights like Dambudzo Marechera were ostracised for what was perceived as writing against the grain.
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In this article, I want to look at selected theatrical texts written and/ or performed between 1980 and 1996 in Zimbabwe. During this period, the newly inaugurated Zimbabwean government adopted socialist realism to guide cultural... more
In this article, I want to look at selected theatrical texts written and/ or performed between 1980 and 1996 in Zimbabwe. During this period, the newly inaugurated Zimbabwean government adopted socialist realism to guide cultural production in the country (Ravengai 2006). Theatre and theatrical texts were therefore purposive activities imbued with socialist ethos – the subalterns speaking back to Rhodesian discourse and neo-colonial power, which in yesteryears could not be written or performed openly without censure. Gayatri Spivak (1988) observes that colonial discourse establishes the West as the Subject while the rest of the world is the Other. In the constitution of the Other, the West inflicts what Spivak calls epistemic violence on the Other which seeks to obliterate the text that the Other can invest its itinerary. Rhodesian discourse attempted to achieve the same results of ‘silencing’ the subaltern. It is perhaps appropriate to ask the same question that Spivak asked: Can the subaltern speak? Using their own subjectivity and agency, subaltern Africans can speak and know their conditions. I analyse these theatrical texts through the lens of socio-historical theory which assumes that a theatrical text contains extra-textual elements which point to something beyond itself. These clues offered by the text invariably point to the context(s) containing their real meaning. These contexts are first suggested by the theatrical text which contextual material I then use to explain the thematic significance of the theatrical text. My observation is that playwrights of the period valorised the power of the subaltern giving a stinging attack on the white and emerging black petit bourgeoisie.
Keywords: subaltern, socio-historical theory, bourgeoisie, injustice, commitment
Keywords: subaltern, socio-historical theory, bourgeoisie, injustice, commitment
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Charles Mungoshi is one of the most prolific writers Zimbabwe has produced. As with any attempt at categorisation, it proves futile to bunch Mungoshi with most Zimbabwean writers in the same cauldron of realism, as some of his works... more
Charles Mungoshi is one of the most prolific writers Zimbabwe has produced. As with any attempt at categorisation, it proves futile to bunch Mungoshi with most Zimbabwean writers in the same cauldron of realism, as some of his works operate beyond that realm. His Shona novel Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura (1983), for example, employs multiple narrators who rely on the stream of consciousness technique to tell their stories. The spaces explored are psychic as opposed to the real, tangible and concrete spaces that form the hallmark of realism. These techniques employed by Mungoshi are predominantly used in avant-garde writing. However, the bulk of his work, including the playtext under study in this chapter Inongova Njakenjake (Each Does His Own Thing) (1980) uses realism as a creative method. This chapter testifies to the ethical sublime in Mungoshi's Inongova Njakenjake (Each Does His Own Thing) (1980) by way of thematic interpretation including a discussion of the quality and validity of ideas expressed in the playtext. This chapter will dissect and analyse the playtext, attempting to give insight into Mungoshi's writing technique highlighting the creative talent, craftsmanship and those constituent elements that are worthy of special consideration. As Pushkin, A succinctly puts it 'criticism is the science of discovering the beauties and shortcomings in works of art and literature' (cited in Chiwome 2002:vii). The real crux of the matter is how the above issues relate to the visualisation or staging of the play Inongova Njakenjake (Each Does His Own Thing) (1980). The argument presented is that Mungoshi has always taken recourse to poetry, the short story and/or the novel as channels to unload his obsessions and his experiment with a play, which is a different genre, has been unfortunately characterised by the domination of the word at the expense of the visual dimension creating serious technical problems for the prospective director and performer. This diagnosed problem is traceable to, among other things, Mungoshi's ‘panic’ without the narrator (a tool he uses in novel writing) and textual structural fragility.