CLASS, RACE AND OPPRESSION: METAPHOR AND METONYMYIN ‘BLACK’ SOUTH AFRICAN THEATRE Keyan G Tomaselli and Johan Muller Cultural work by academics on what is variously called ‘black’, ‘African’, ‘committed’, ‘alternative’, ‘worker’ or ‘working class theatre’ blossomed during the early 1980s. The work donecan bedivided into two conceptual strands: Thefirst strand is performance theory analyses which locate performance within a discernable dramatistic/semiotic theoretical framework designed to link culture to art. The approachesvary, butthey are loosely linked by their historical materialist point of departure.' This work has beenlargely concerned to define concepts anddeveloptheory to account for the form andorigins of the theatre of the oppressedin SouthAfrica. It is characterised by an attemptto link the forms of this theatre(its ‘text’, whether oral or written) to its context (political, social and economic). Relationships of process are the concernof these performance- centred scholars. They are concered with the conjunctions between social production, ideology and form: between organiser, artist and audience; and between history, social structure and performance.’ Thesestudiestry to identify the dialectical relations which lead from self-awareness toward awareness of social forces and the collective consciousness and organisation neededto forge social change.’ These authors tend to discuss theatricalism — where images speak more than words, and whereaction is symbolic and evocative’ — interms of ‘popular performance’, ‘committed theatre’, ‘worker theatre’, ‘working class performance’ and sometimes, ‘alternative theatre’. For them, culture is the total process which informs the way meanings anddefinitions are socially constructed and historically transformed. Popular cultureis a culture of the present, created in opposition to the received culture. Popular performance mobilizes the historical resources of African culture, hopefully adapting and transforming both indigenous and foreign traditions to incorporate changing circumstances into a meaningful framework of value and accountability.* The representation of these processes in performanceis the main object of their study. Descriptive responses which largely eschew theory form the second conceptual a 40 Critical Ams Vol 4 No 3 1987 approach.® Muchof this work has been published in the South African Labour Bulletin and is written by academics who have collaborated with proletariansin the creation of ‘events’.’ This workis by andlarge uncriticalofeither the ‘events’ themselves, or the processes which led to the ‘events’, being concerned rather with the productions, perhaps understandably so. There is a tendencyfor this groupof writers to assumethat ‘workingclass’ plus ‘culture’ results in ‘working class culture’: ‘‘Emerging worker-plays are not meant for a consumer public, and they are created and performedwithin the perimeter of working-classleisure time and space’’.* Although these writers may produce such disclaimers to the contrary, they tend to identify ‘culture’ as a form of product. The formscan vary: theatre, songs, dances and so on. This position tends to rob cultureofits larger context of production and consumption, its task as organiser of humanrelations in specific social formations; and in this way the essentially political nature of culture is partially displaced.’ But above all, theory, for them, must not be allowed to dominatethe description or the analysis. For instance, an unpublished article by Ari Sitas argues that “practice is primary and theory andcritiqueis always a postmortem examination’’.!° Not only has Sitas been a major force in shaping and generating ‘working class theatre’ in South Africa, but The Junction Avenue Theatre Company of which he was a founder member, has coalesced aroundit a specific approach to form, featuring the imposition of an unquestioned realism, and a concomitant hostility to local ‘aesthetic theorists’ who allegedly rely on the imported ‘thought-shops’ of foreign scholars to produce their ‘object[s] of thought’, resulting in “the most acute insensitivity to local artifacts”."! Sitas’ charge, which is a familiar one amongst cultural workers who haveallied themselves with the working class struggle at the level of the factory floor,at the sites of community resistance, and in termsofthe political organisations of the oppressed, needs to be drawn out becauseit illustrates the pointat issue rather clearly. Certainly science or theory creates its own object. But then, so do the cultural interventionsof intellectuals such as Sitas who exploit the contradictions oftheir relatively privileged class positions to shape proletarian aspirations and imbue them with a ‘revolutionary’ thrust. This notion creates a separate and separated ‘Culture’ as its ‘object of thought’, a definition not unlike the one contained in the conventional hegemonic perspective. This perspective is, as Harveypoints out, based on a two-fold mystification; that work andleisure are ‘opposites’ and that culture relates to leisure rather than to work.!? Briefly, Sitas'? has identified nine contradictions which result from a (moral) struggle conducted within the current dominant forms of culture and which propel this theatre to creativity. These are briefly summarised here as they form the basis of his concept of worker theatre. This paper will draw out the implications of someofthese contradictions below. First, is the primacy of work as a site of oppression and struggle and the difficulty of representing this aesthetically. The second contradiction is the clash of moral codes: the new ~~ itical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 41 — eS iy moralorder derived from workerassociation versus old cultural formations and practices. Third is the incongruity of individual characterisations and collective action. The one draws attention away from the other. Fourthis the clash ofreal time and dramatic time. Storytelling takes time — “tthe worker-actors strongly resist any alteration of reality”'* — audiences get restless after 90 minutes. Performance time is related to the value of dignity. A fifth conflict occurs between the oral communication of a story and the information necessary to explain and construct reality. Cognitive versus cathartic momentsis the seventh contradiction. This dramaturagical device engages the audience in two ways: first it makes the audience aware that they should not confuse the play with reality; and secondly victories against management are shown not to be the definitive statement of the play. The penultimate contradiction concérns the clash between mythological aspects of portrayal as against real aspects of portrayal. Finally, there is the ‘plurimedial’ nature of the ‘event’ which runs established forms like song or dance against a strategical function within the play. Sitas’ attack on scholars employing Lukacs, Brecht, Benjamin, Macherey, and Fanon(sic), seems to contain the germ of a resentment against analysis from any but a conventional dramatic perspective. The apparent assumption is that semiotics and aesthetics automatically excludes questionsof ‘real’ culture. His position represents a commontype of culturalism which imposes dualisms through metaphoron representations through performance.Sitas’claim fora ‘unique’ South African workingclass experience seemscentralto his dismissal of cultural theories identified and tested elsewhere, even if they have been injected with a local imperative. His trivialisation of the semiotics of performance, and his dogged rejection of theoretical guidelines which could be adopted and adapted through performance production, not to mention redefined, in the South African context, brings us no closer to an understanding of the communicative elements in the drama he hascollaborated on. By positioning this dramaoutside the semiotics of performance, he is denying crucial elements of workingclass theatre: thatof its communicationalpotentialities, as well as its necessary momentofcritical/theoretical self-reflection. To understand the reasons for the rejection of a theory of production vis-a-vis ‘working class theatre’, it is necessary to make a detour into a discussion of categories which have crept into dramatistic discussions of theatre in South Africa. ‘Constituting its Own Object’ : Problems of Definition An analysis of the theatre under discussion, then, needs to begin its evaluation awareofthe pitfalls of the dominant methodologies. The first concern is with the catch-all use of the term ‘black theatre’.!” 42 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3. 1987 TOWARDSA PROCESS-ORIENTED DEFINITION: ‘BLACK’ THEATRE? The commonsenseusageof the term ‘black theatre’ is largely reductionist and derives mainly from the empirical fact that most performers of this theatre happen to be black. To argue that such theatre deals therefore with black experience is problematical in that the ground of that experience tends to be obscured. Such a definition, by its very operational blandness, obfuscates the more cogent influences and deeper underlying processes consequent upon apartheid which has broughtaboutthelabelin thefirst place. The categorisation oftheatre and dramain SouthAfrica into ‘black’, ‘white’, ‘Afrikaans’, ‘English’ and so on perpetuates the set of hegemonically serviceable dualisms: the dual economy, and hence the structural oppositionsof tribalism (periphery) versus modernity (centre), civilization versus savagery, Christianity versus paganism and politics versus art. In the absence of an elaborated theoretical position, many commentators lapse into use of the label when analysing the dramatic subject matter.'* In this way they inadvertently suppress the theoretical anomalies which could question the vulgarity of the term. Kalwyn Sole!® has echoed the dangers of racial or linguistically defined classifications, while Steadman too, has sounded a note of caution, arguing that ‘black’ could encompassan ideological — as in the idea of Black Consciousness — rather than only an ethnic or functionalist category.*° Steadman goes on to suggest that ‘black’ theatre is understoodbyits practitioners as proletarian theatre. Ethnicity is thereby incorporated into the frameworkofa class analysis and can be used to mobilise cultural resources.*! Indeed, the ‘black’ theatre of the early 1970s articulated a concern with Black Consciousness rather than trying to “conscientize the white man”. Furthermore, many of these plays make consistent references to the imagery of Black Consciousness.”? Pascal Gwala makes the distinction between ‘black drama’ and ‘drama for blacks’.24 The former identifies a theatre that promotes dignity, self-reliance and critical assessment amongAfricans on their ‘own cultural terms’ in the service of the black liberation movement.** This theatre, however, presents an incomplete view of the struggle by suppressing the imagesofsocial disorganisation so ably presented by, for example, Gibson Kente, andsoit also ends up as a catch-all label obscuring morethanit elucidates. Maishe Maponya,in an interview with Carola Luther, distinguished between “African theatre” and a theatre that is projected by whites — that is “‘black theatre”’.”6 The former deals with “‘resistance”and “freedom”and“is something I’ve never seen in a production made by whites and blacksin collaboration, or in a production made by white using black actors”. The inaccuracy of this statement is attested to by the many examples of worker theatre and what Matsamela Manaka himselfcalls ‘black’ theatre where blacks and whites have collaborated in varying degrees.” Challenged on his definitional reductionism oka Critical Arts Vol 4 no 3 1987 43 t p e l i t based on working class spontaneism”.*? This theatre, we assume, emerges somehow outof,oris constituitive of, working class culture. But, as Harvey states, the workingclassis part of the capitalist modeof production and sharesin the culture that serves this mode.?? Though not a homogenousculture, it designates forms of struggle within capitalist culture. The danger here then is that working class culture may cometo be regardedas events and performances in an enclave surrounded — though not swamped by — unfriendly capitalist society. The imageis appealing, but a bit too romantic to be practised. It is undeniable that the theatre that developed underthe auspicesof the trade union movementthat itself developed after 1973 is very different to the theatre that preceeded it, and the worker theatre that has developed elsewhere. This theatre deals mainly with the migrantpart of the workforce. However, since the form taken by this theatre, I/anga, The Dunlop Play, The Frame Play and Ziyajika/Turning Point and The Spar Play has largely been shaped by approach of The Junction Avenue Theatre Company, it is the result of transclass collaborative white and black efforts. This does not negate the validity of ‘worker’ experience, It does however suggest that the designation ‘worker’ is itself the site of diversity, possible diversity, and also ofexternal mediation which has its own theoreticalfish to fry. A Popular Theatre? The term ‘popular theatre’ is often used by academics in South Africa without any theoretical elaboration. Ross Kidd however, applies it to ‘“‘cultural/ educational]activities in which the popularclasses present and critique their own understanding of the world in relation to the broader aim of structural transformation’’.** Specifically, popular theatre seems to be underpinned by four key elements: first, the need for analysis with regard to the political economy and social formation; second, the strength and coherence of the created fictions, which, using irony and contradiction, lead to a detailed and comprehensible understandingofthe problems; third, the need for a continuing organization,** andfourth, the unification and exchangeof experiences between groups engaged in populartheatre.** Theatre is defined by Bappa and Etherton as the actual socialprocess whereby the people come to maketheir ownpolitical and economic analysis for future action. The play provides a means of objectifying social reality for the purpose of changingit. Augusto Boal?’ takes the above analysis further, incorporating an interaction and sharing of the means of theatre production with audiences, actors and creators of dramas. Ultimately, however, even this theatre relies on the interventions ofintellectuals.*® This intervention and mediation has yet to be seriously addressed, thoughthis is beginning to be done by the Association of Writers and Researchers of the New Theatre, and the Participatory Research Group in North and South America, Africa and Asia. ae Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 45 which would lump Jpi Tombi and The Island in the same category, Maponya predicatedhis definition in terms of audience response. Criticism of the system is " moreacceptable to whitesif it comes from white playwrights, he argued:“I mean the guys who are oppressing usare sitting in parliament and discussing things like freedom forthe blacks, and asit’s in their own context, not in ours, they can handle it. But mypolitical commitmentis to the oppressed, the blacks of this country. ..”?® This observation does not explain why a Fugard production — or worker theatre — seemsto draw greater black audiences no matter where they are staged than does “African theatre”. Nor doesit theoretically link up with the Black Consciousnessuse of ‘black theatre’, a discourse which Maponya seemsto sympathise with.” Working Class Theatre? There are similar problemsof ascriptionwith the idea of ‘workingclass theatre‘, as employed by Sitas and others.*® The problem with this notion — as with the empirical use of ‘black theatre’ — is thatit lacks ‘“‘a sustained critical tension with regard to possible forms of interaction between agents of diverse class location”.?! A familiar form of class-economic determinism ensues which usually argues that“the only authentic working class art must derive solely from agents of the working class, which, in turn, would seem to suggest a strategy 44 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 A Process-Oriented Definition What remains to be developed is a more generic notion which acknowledges material origins, process and transformation.Part of this necessary clarification relates to the complex inter-relations which occur when black directors work with their white colleagues, where the social class experiences of each intersect and are encoded into the performance. Plays such as Egoli - City of Gold, The Island, Ziswe Banzi is Dead, The Last Man, Ilanga, The Dunlop Play and The Hungry Earth have all been assisted by the theatrical talents of white people whose own experience can neverduplicatethatoftheir black colleagues. Class characteristics and socialrelations are framed by economicandsocialforces far more powerfully than can be fundamentally affected by the good intentions of individuals whoare willing to comit class-suicide in the service of the oppressed classes. This is not to deny the contribution of, for example, the white and other petty bourgeois members of the Junction Avenue Theatre Companyor white trade unionists to workingclass theatre or the subsequenteffect on the quality of life of working class individuals. But such contributions occur mainly on a humanist rather than ona structural basis and perhaps explains the contradiction of white organic intellectuals tryingto live out their alienated intellect in another form of colonialism through a cathartic performative workingoutofthe realism forged in the workplace. As Arvon points out: Great works are nevercast in the partisan mold ofa singleclass; they expressthe relationshipsof various classes within society as a whole, enablingtheir authors to rise abovetheir class barriers... As aman, he belongsentirely to his class, whose ideology he shares completely, whereas as an artist or a writer who has becomeawareofthe dialectic of his history, he brings to light the objective elements, the real dynamic forces underlyingsocial evolution.”””? T he relations between classes and their expression in art, however, are not as simple as Arvon implies, particularly in South Africa where skin colouris an added dimension of identity and experience. Only a few black directors, for example, are able to breach the ‘dialectic of their history’, and then only partially. Three main kindsofinter-class contact can beidentified in the South African situation, and deriving from these, a numberof further contradictions can be detected. The Practice of Intellectuals Thefirst concerns those black director-authors who form part of the petty bourgeois class, and whosefinancial success, afforded them bytheir plays, tends to push them towards greater aspirations for class mobility. Where co-opted, they assume petty bourgeois values and lifestyle. Such directors alienate themselves from the worker-actors with whom they have created the play, 46 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 unless, of course, they share their class aspirations. In any event, a growingrift may occur between the directors and their proletarian audience who remain locked into the rawer and more immediate experience ofexploitation. They may lose touch with the workingclass ethos from which their plays originally derived their thrust. They will then find it increasingly difficult to identify with and articulate a constructive workingclass ideology though they maytry to continue to alludetoit in their plays. This is particularly the case with Gibson Kente who, although largely ignoring structural causation of black poverty and repressive living conditions, nevertheless continues to draw huge audiences. The ideological rift in his case is compensated for by an emotional identification through slick entertainment and appeal to popular predispositions. It is not implied here that this will necessarily happen in any economically deterministic way; but both theory andpractice indicate that this exists as more than just a possibility. The second case occurs wherethe black petty bourgeois director-authors decide more consciously to resist cooption. Such individuals will find themselves in a highly contradictory situation, for their class position, and its concomitant ideological tendencies pulls them in a certain direction, whereas their own conscious intellectual desire to articulate the working class position and ideology pulls them in another. There is no resolution to this contradiction other than trying to maintain a dialectical tension between the two opposingforces. Consider, for example, the disinterest shown by ex-clerical worker Maponya in collective forms of expression: “I am not interested in working for another organisation like a trade union or educative body, and having my art used as their vehicle. The integrity of my work would be compromised, and I value my independence”’.*° Here, Maponya apparently wants individual recognition as an ‘artist’, and to maintain individual authorship in the face of a collective contribution. His plays are, however, often enriched by drawing on the suggestion ofhis colleagues, While he makes inordinate material demandsonhis actors — “‘he or she mustbe preparedto go outand look for a job to subsidize him/herself’ — he seems to talk abouthis ‘art’ in idiosyncratic terms only. This is a characteristic of the petty bourgeois class and cannot be nullified by his subject matter which exposes the oppressive conditions under which his characters live. This in-between position can only be maintained by dint of self-discipline and requires a much greater awareness than is implied by Arvon. For this reason, these practitioners of worker theatre sometimes resist the theoretical interest shown them by academics, for they are able to grasp implicitly the highly unstable social ground of their praxis. The third case concerns white petty bourgeois intellectuals who use the advantages oftheir class positions, most particularly their education, together with an understanding of and sympathy with the working class to help shape proletarian resistance. The director-authors (or co-actors) may have no direct experienceofproletarianlifestyle and are, therefore, more firmly in the camp of the petty bourgeois than is, for instance, the individual in the previous case. Underthese conditions, identification with the workingclass is a conscious and eS a = Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 47 deliberate action whichentails the questioningofthe ideology oftheir ownclass. The intervention by white directors in the practicalactivity of the active “‘man- in-the-mass’"*' brings to that activity a theoretical consciousness which can facilitate a greater understanding of the world in so far as this consciousness transformsperceptionsof reality. Their theoretical intervention is NOT post hoc as Sitas would haveit, butintrinsically part of the process ofcultural production theory and is not an autonomous“conceptual baggageof aesthetic values”.”? As Coplan observes of the work of Kente and Mhangwane, their plays ‘“‘testify to the existence of an implicit, collective theory of dramatic effectiveness among working-class township audiences”’.“4 Thepointofintellectual interventionis “to construct an intellectual moral bloc which can makepolitically possible the intellectual progress of the mass and not only of small intellectual groups”.That intervention, however, needs to extend to the dialectical redefinition of form itself. Whether this can be done satisfactorily by petty bourgeois intellectuals is of course the big question. REALITY AND ITS MEDIATION Metonymy and Metaphor In some casesthe participationofintellectual white co-directors (or facilitators) has worked against the very earthy metonymic strengths of worker theatre where they have soughtto inject a modicum oftheatrical convention into the play. This practice often entails a dualist perspective where stage + performance are equatedwith ‘theatre’. Theatre,in this sense, stands as representation oflife and underlines its separateness from it. Such a division musttrivialise the centrality of the concepts of performance and metonymy wherelife + theatre exist as a continuum to “‘a theatrical conceit”’.** This approach to direction deemphasises the relations between art andlife by emphasising the discontiguity of such relationships. To protect its own object this position Aas to disparage the power of metonytmy by confiningit to a restrictive literary sense, thereby ironically ruling out a powerful conceptualtool for achievingits end. It also imprisons the mise-en-scene in terms of metaphor. The consideration of “the use of gigantic mechanisms to begin approximating the experiences of production’was seen as necessary to retain a senseofrealism in the play versionofJ/anga. This option wasrejected howeverbecause, amongstotherreasons, it would be “‘not so much the realism in the stage that would dominate but the symbolism of the structure”.“* But as Jakobson and Halle point out, symbolism is primarily metaphoric, and metaphor,as the substitution of one element of language for another,is internalto the circle of semiosis by virtue ofa similarity between their signifieds and not between internal and external referents.*? The connectionin the case ofthelatter is not necessarily one of resemblance, but culture, in other words,arbitrary. In contrast, realism is primarily metonymic. Scenic metonymies are founded on physical contiguity closely linked to the action.*° Whetheror not a the iconic use ofprops could be made to work from the workers pointofview,its representationalbasis hastheeffect of substituting a metaphoric reality through offering relations of likeness rather than connecting the worker-spectator (or non-worker spectators) through metonymy where theybecome Participants in the performanceitself. (This of course, was Sitas’ objective.) In the latter case the emphasis is on the part-wholerelationship ofart (the performance) andlife. Workhereis not separatedfromleisure through the metaphoricalinterventions of either stage design or the comparative nature of metaphor through words or gestures. Wewill return to this point. Performance Performanceis a bundle ofsignifiers. a density of signs.5! derived from an interacting set of floating polysemic systems. Performance semiotizesorfixes the object.” It is not always easy to ascertain what makesa sign into a stage performance (as in J/anga), thoughit is easy to identify stage performances through conventions, metaphor,theuseofartificial signs and dramaturgical structures. The substitution of cause for effect through metonymy ensures performance in the wider social sense; metaphor defines performance in the narrow stage sense.*? Enactments whichderive directly out of processes such as the legal imperatives which brought about I/anga, tend to resist purely metaphorical definition. Such enactments have an ontological significance, whether used in a courtof law, in the workplace, or on stage. Any attempt to decode a performance must take cognizance of the complexity of the cross- referencing which occurs between thetext and its context. This does not mean that audienceswill necessarily confuse the play with reality. Ratherit meansthat audiences will (hopefully) perceive more clearly (through metonymy) the contiguous relationships between the enacted performance and the social experience that is being evoked. The argument comes downto questions of how we perceivereality-out-there on the one hand,andrepresentationsofreality on the stage on the other. Whatare the semiotic links,if any? Are they metonymic, metaphoric, or both? Is there a transcodification, from onesystem (life) to another (the stage)? Is it necessary to accept the stage-audience dichotomy? THE DRAMATISTIC MODEL The connection between dramaasanindividual creative action and drama as a social creative activity has been made by John van Zyl. He proposed a dramatistic model which is both methodology and ontology: “‘At a performance of radical theatre, the audienceis part ofthe performanceandthereis no division betweenthestalls andthe footlights. Signified and signifier become one’”.54 The nature of this amalgamation, however,is distinct from the short-circuiting effect of the filmic sign whichis automatically collapsed withoutthe transcodification which can occurthroughtheatrical performance. On the stage, metonymyis able 1987 48 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3. oe ~~ Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 49 to use contradictions (such as those Sitas has identified) to position the audience in metonymic relation to the performance enacted. Metaphoric based performances, in contrast, tend to reinforce tle abstract separations that are propelled by the capitalist relations of production.Thedistinction is not always quite so neat, however. In township theatre, metaphor and metonymyoften co-exist, This apparent anomalyis best explained through recourse to Umberto Eco’s theory of metaphorwhichidentifies metaphor as embeddedin subadjacent metonymic contiguities.*° He argues that performanceoften invents combinatory possibilities beyond the semiotic circle and not anticipated by the code. The interpretants elicited from audiences can differ, and depend on their class experiences and ideologies. Ian Steadman, for example, relates the context of a sequence in Matsemela Manaka’s Pula! (Rain!). One sequenceofthe play places the action amidst the audience: . The theatre is turned into a shebeen and the audience becomesits customers. The actors converse with the audience,offer them drinks, ask for cigarettes, and even dance with themif they are willing. .. the playwright . . discusses the corruption of black unity through alcoholism, prostitution and robbery. The scene reaches a climax wherethe theatre lights are apparently fused, screamsoccuroffstage, and Tsotsis (gangsters) attack the shebeen and rob the actor- customers. During the first performance of this scene in a Sowetan community-hall reality and fiction became momentarily confused — in a situation where such attacks are commonplace.** The mergingofreality with fiction described by Steadman emphasises the power of metonymy where audiences are drawn from the subject’s classes. This experience is ubiquitious, as is evidenced by Manaka’s own observations.°7 Again, in a scene from eGoli, metaphor leads to audience participation, paradoxically, leading the township audience to identify emotionally with metaphorical abstractions as if they were real objects (as in metonymy). Considerthis description by Steadman: eGoli is a unique theatrical metaphor for social and economic conditions in South Africa. John and Hamilton are chained to the economic system which exploits black labour and creates golden cities on the backs of that labour. Beneath the golden city is a networkofgold veins being hollowed out by black workers — the system is in danger of collapse. The chain signifies different things. Firstly, the men are chained in bondage to the economic system. Secondly, they are chained togetheras partnersagainst the forces of oppression. Thirdly, the goal of all workers is to break the chains of oppression. Whenthis writer saw the play in performance in Soweto, the breaking of the chain was accompanied bysalutes andpartici- patory exclamations from black members in the audience.** Thussuchplays, whetherofthe ‘worker’ kind like I/anga or the more‘theatrical’ kind like eGoli, when performed for an audience drawn from the sameclass as the actors, function metonymically, connecting stage experience and audience experience (or interpretants) to each other, thereby integrating them with the everyday class experiences of oppression and struggle. Performance: Off and On-Stage This brings us back to a discussion ofroles andreality. Sitas emphatically rejects the idea that “Alpheus Nhleko, a grinder ata metal foundry” would see that“‘in his ‘life he plays many parts’ or that his theatrical performance is a rebellion to the white man’s machines or technological fantasisation’’.°’ It sounds hard to say, but what Nhleko recognises or not is irrelevant. That he unconsciouslylives this condition does not mean that worker performancesare an opaque transposed content with objective ‘out-there’ real referable objects, about which absolute knowledgecan be obtained. If Nhleko finds it ‘very hard to understand that today he is a worker and tomorrow a boss”, this does not suggest that his historical understandingof his condition is the final word. Reality is not directly apprehensible, but is mediated through signs and ideological subject positions. The manipulation ofthese through the aesthetic of performancelinks the play/performancewith the very life that Sitas claimsis ignored by at least one “well meaning aesthetic theorist”.™ It is this semiotic link that makes the acting ability of the actor/performer largely irrelevant in a Third World context. By Third World we mean countries which are located in termsof their relation to transnational capital which is largely responsible for the “nightmare of the modern factory system”*! Sitas also asks, “thow do you portray steelwork and foundry work with their furnaces smelting awayat 1800°C, the noise and the dust. . .?’"°* Shakespeare provides the answer in the first chorus ofthe first speech in Henry V. The very essenceof theatre is that everything is semiotized. 50 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 ‘Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 51 We would argue then, that the implicit theoretical position taken by our second group of commentators is conceptually barren. It is impossible to analyse beyond mere description or identification of contradictions within the given form that typifies most of conventional Western drama. Such work merely preparesraw datafor a radical analysis. No matter how muchit is argued that an absolute realism exists on the factory floor — a realism that defies dramatic analysis and which is unique to that situation — there is no reason why that realism is not susceptible to semiotic or performative scrutiny,if for no other reason than that they both deal with signs as a matter of their significance or sense. In a number of cases, plays have been brought about by white organic intellectuals who have introduced to working class migrant labourers the - aesthetic/intellectual concepts oftheatre and performance. I/anga, for example, arose out of the frustrations of a trade union lawyer whodevised a role playing exercise in order to facilitate successful communication with his clients who had been gaoled for anillegal strike, and who understood nothing of courtroom procedure, let alone the significance of corroborative evidence, accurate ‘statements and the importance of witnessing the events in question. In this example, the play hadits origins in black labour experience, but that experience was only externalised to a wider audience (that is, the magistrate’s court and later, a trade union hall and later still, a theatre on the Wits campus) in performance. Indeed, the performance on the stage and deftness in handling whatmust have beenfor the workers a remote semiotic context becameineffect the dress-rehearsal for an undeniably real performance no less semiotically overcoded. Michael Vaughan has described this as a ‘drama of occasional mobilisation’.The performances occurredin “cultural spaces” which may be institutional or non-institutional, that act as physical and social carriers of events in popular or workingclass culture’’.® In J/anga, the actors (defendents), audience(the magistrate) and director (lawyer) have a relative autonomy to each other in the courtroom. By using a dramatic form the lawyerdirectedhis clients to articulate their arguments to a third party. In these terms, theatre is a mediation rather than a reflection. The original performance was not disconnected from ‘reality’, even though the play was continued by the Junction Avenue Theatre Company after the original actors had unmediatedly been endorsed back to the homelands. The theatre-as-dramastimulated by the experiences of the lawyerin a capital- labour conflict becomes the theatre of commitment once the actors (in both the sociological and dramatic senses) decide to perform for an audience drawn from a wider set of social experiences. In J/anga, initially at least, that audience comprised their working class peers who attended such plays in unionhalls. Oncethe play was taken outof this organic environment and transplanted toa more conventional theatre, the spontaneous metonymic componentis replaced with a much more controlled, mainly metaphorical text-to-stage relation. This new largely petty bourgeois audience, especially if they are white, is less able to relate to the play as it was originally performed in a union or township church hall. The distinction between audience and players is both architectural and one of class. Jlanga, for example, had to modify its call for strike action as it was thoughtthat the white audience would not appreciate this approach.In theatre- as-dramathe worldis a stage, not only for the actors, but also for the audience. Those conceptualbarriers that do exist are part of the individual’s response to what they are watching/participating in and whether they interpret the performancein a metaphorical or metonymic sense. Whatever interpretation results is largely determined by the class position of the viewers and whether or not or to what degree they are subject to the dominant ideology. Also, techniques which worked well in a hall do not always work in a more conventionaltheatrical environment. Where an actor addresses an audience and involves them in a decision whetherto strike or not, this enhances the metonymic contiguity in a hall populated by a participant audience. In a theatre such a technique can become crudely propagandistic and devoid of subtlety. The architecture of the theatre and composition of audience has caused a change in the meaning of the signs involved. Where one set of meanings operated in the performancein a hall involving a participant audience,in a theatre filled with a moreclass remote audience only someofthetiers of signification are activated. Where the analogical probity of metonymy connects audience and actors to life in the formercase,in the latter it degenerates into digital sets of metaphor(in the Jakobson sense) where the performance operates at a largely symbolic level distinct from thelives and experiences ofits audience. Interpretant production, the generation ofthe idea to whichtheindividualsignsgiverise, is curtailed and the original spur of the performanceis vitiated. CONCLUDING REMARKS: THE ROLE OF CULTURAL AGENTS This paper has takenissue with the maxim that “practice is primary and theory andcritique is always a postmortem examination’”’.®It has argued for a theory of semiotic production with regard to popular performance. A theory of production should notbe forged in isolation from organic socia! movements, popularculture or history. Claimsthattheories ofform or aesthetics are post hoc denies the materiality of theory operatingat the level of resistanceitself, givingit form, direction and a strategic offensive. The revolutionizing of the content of life should be paralleled by a revolutionizing of the content of theatre and the dialectical redefinition of its form. Such a revolution is taking place in forms of committed theatre which have emerged in South Africa over the last decade. It is emerging in the face of attempts to conventionalise that theatre and despite theoretical struggles going on between academics on the place of theory in production. It is taking on a unique form derived from peculiar relations ofproduction in South Africa and eR PSS eee 52 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3° 1987 a fe. 1987' 53 Critical Arts Vol 4No 3 in different (theoretical) responses to it. Capitalism is not just another exploitative social formation.It is one which subsumesall previous formations. Thatis: as againstall previousintrinsically coded formsoflabour,it substitutes a de-coding, an abstraction, a quantification, which opens the way for an endless expansion of production and accumulation. This abstraction, abstract labour,is therefore the limit-point (or decoding)ofall previous formsof labour. As such,it is a decisive and pemanentrevolt against coding, and therefore against culture. Alongthese lines, Deluze and Guattan can say that capitalism has hauntedall previous social formations as a nightmare, threatening the overflow oftheir codes, or in other words, the overflow (overthrow) of traditional culture as a principle.®© : It follows then that in any project of cultura! resistance in our society, like worker theatre, there will be a strong tendency towards a recoupmentofthis loss, of collective desire. Let us suppose for the moment that such a recoupment could be permanently successful. What that would do is block the form of equivalent exchangeintrinsic to late capitalism by becoming a barrier to the privatization of desire upon which generated exchange and abstract labouris predicated. In other words, it would rupture late capitalism at its abstract heart. But to do this in any but a dramatic or performative wayis not really possible since it would involve turning the clock back to its pre-decoded past. It is certainly possible to do this in drama though, precisely by revitalizing the dramatic codes, by in other words re-animating metonymy and metaphor. However,the limits of this tactic must be clearly appreciated, it must always,in someor other way, be a nostalgia ofsortsin thatit involves an impossible revolt of coding (and a pricr history) against the principle of abstraction and decoding (late capitalism). There is a parallel here with ‘anti-theoreticist’ theoretical impulseslike Sitas’ culturalism. Their inclination to side with the particularistic histories against abstract analyses is morally correct. This is indeed the right direction for an aesthetics of cultural resistance to take. As Gramsci in a different connection said, “One cannot makepolitics — history without the passim, without this sentimental connection between individuals and people- nation”’.** But the trap must not be ignored. If we are indeed, with late capitalism, at the ‘end of history’, the imperative becomes finding ways of breaking through the webs of universalisation capitalism has substituted for culture; not to cast back to previously successful invocations, precisely the invocations that are the present currency of worker theatre. Taking‘natural’ categories of culture — like drama — as privilegedsites for the reinvigoration of organic culture and for the contestation of dominant culture begs the very problematic that should be investigated in order to take resistance beyond symbolic revolt. In times of severe social upheaval, produced by both late capitalism in general and by South Africa’s particular social struggles, normally constituted cultural mechanisms no longer work. They become dead forms. When this begins to happen,andit certainly doesn’t happen overnight, the accomplishmentof social and personal relocation in processes of sense- making is sought outside of accepted and expected cultural formats, in larger scale movements which reformulate the cultural meaning system as a whole. No stage-confined drama — no matter how shop floor authenticated — can compete with the mass participation political theatre of funerals, street demonstrations and mass meetings. The notion ofcommunityparticipationis, in these practices, metonymically being re-defined in a way that could neverreturn the ascendantoppressedto relatively passive audience role on any mass scale again, no matter how relevantthe theatreitselfto their class quandary. Thisis by no means to say that current theatre by workers is irrelevant: it remains an important crucible for the distillation of common work experiences of oppression, But it behovesintellectuals of all types involved in working class cultural interventions to be far more aware of the forms oftheir interventions, andof the nature of theall-important links back to the organic community of experience that these formsallow or forestall. Notes and References 1 W P U D A a s 8 9 10 I} 12 13 14 15 16 See Steadman, 1981, 1983; Coplan, 1984, 1985; Tomaselli, 198la, 1981b; Mshengu, 1978, 1979; Sole, 1984a, 1984b; Kavanagh, 1985; and Blecher, 1980. Coplan, 1984, pl. Ibid. p7. Steadman,1981, p2. Coplan, 1984, p2. See Von Kotze, 1984; Brink, 1984. The wordis Sitas’s, 1984, 1986, The 1986 paperis a shortened, modified version of the 1984 conference paper. Von Kotze, 1984, p92; Sitas, 1986, p87. See also Harvey, 1984, p63. Sitas, 1984, p27. Sitas, 1984, pp2-3: Sitas, 1986, p86. Perhaps underlying Sitas’ unease with the ‘thought-shops’ of foreign and local scholars is that “Tn ‘popular’ formsofliterature, the text does not have the status or character appropriate to (the individualrelation between the reader andthetext); indeed,the text tends not to exist, in an absolutely definitive sense. The relatively elusive status of the ‘popular’ text can pose methodological: problems of research, especially when expectations derived from the dominant methodologies ofthe definitive text are the starting point” (Vaughan,1982, p52), Harvey, 1984. Sitas, 1984, pp15-16; Sitas, 1986, pp93-104. See also Cheadle in Tomaselli, 1981b, p67. Sitas, 1984, p6; Sitas, 1986, p57. Sitas, 1984, argues that “What we are faced with is a lot of content, elements of popular culture and working class life transposed on stage in unresolved, unique and sometimes contradictory ways. There is a screeching contentin search oftheoretical forms, but not yet, there can’t be, aconceptual baggageofaesthetic values that necessarily flows out ofa working class positin in society” (p4). While conceptually clear on the organic origins ofworkingclass experience in termsofthe relations of productin, Sitas claims a lack of theorisation with regard to ‘popular’, ‘theatre’, ‘event’, cculture’, and ‘working class’. Simultaneously, however, he seemsto reject any attempt to connect these through a theoretical injection from : 54 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 1987 55 @ (A ceitical Ares Vol 4 No 3 = 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 él 62 63 - 64 65 66 See Goffman, 1959 on metaphor and performance. Van Zyl, 1977, p39. Eco, 1985. Steadman, 1983, p13. Also see Stead,an, 1986. Manaka, 1980, p24. Steadman, 1983. Sitas, 1984, p5. Sitas, 1986, p85. Sitas, 1984, p8; Sitas, 1986, p86. Sitas, 1984, p16. Vaughan, 1982, p54. Sitas, 1984, pll. Thid. Deleuze and Guattari, 1977. . References ‘ a I l | 17 18 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 a theory ofsigns or aesthetics which considers culture in termsofits significatory content and constitutive relationships. He thus dissoiates content (which can be theoretical) from form (which is not yet ready for theorization). See Tomaselli, 1981b. See, eg, Hauptfleisch and Steadman, 1984, Chapters | & 2. Sole, 1980, 1985. Steadman, 1981, pp2 & 12. Coplan, 1984, p3. Tshabangu, 1975. Sole, 1984, Gwala, 1973. Coplan, 1981, p7. Maponya and Luther, 1984, pp26-27. Manaka, 1984. Maponya and Luther, 1984, p29. This seemsto beindicated by. the following passage from Maponya: : “I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a white African. I won't entertain the idea of whites calling themselvesAfrican. . .In the endit’s a question of heritage” (Luther and Maponya, 1984, p28). 31 32 33 34 35 36 Paradoxically, Kelwyn Sole (1984b, p24 and 1984a, p71) would seem to imply that certain unnamed scholars are guilty of this reductionism. Nowhere have radical performance scholars used the term in this manner. Vaughan, 1982, pp52-54. Ibid. Harvey, 1984. Kidd, 1980, p281. Bappa and Etherton, 1983. Latin American Statement, 1982, p6. The Third World Popular Theatre was one attempt to establish this unity by building up an informal network of theatre workers which would facilitate the exchange of material and ideas. The informality of the network wasto protectit from the victimization of right wing governments (Mwansa and Kidd, 1982, p4). It appears, however, that this network was indeed broken throughintimidation by various governments of their citizens who wrote in the newsletter. Arvon, H. 1970. Marxist Aesthetics. London: Cornell University Press. Barthes, R. 1972. Literature and Signification. In Critical Essays. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Boal, A. 1979. Theatre of the Oppressed. London: Pluto. Bappa, S. and Etherton, M. 1983. Popular Theatre. Voice of the Oppressed. Commonwealth, 25(4). Blecher, H. 19890. Goal Oriented Theatre in the Winterveld. Critical ARts, 1(3): 23-29. Brink, 1984: Literature of the GMW. SA Labour Bulletin, 9(8), 32-53. Bulletin of the ATINT, 1985: Editorial. 1(1)2. Coplan, D. 1981. Politics, Class, and Culture in South African Black Theatre. Unpublished paper presented at the AFrican Studies Association, Bloomington. Mimeo. Coplan, D. 1984, Editorial: Popular Culture and Performancein Africa. Critical Arts, 3(1), 1-8. Coplan, D, 1985: In Township Tonight: South Africa’s Black City Music and Theatre. London: Longman, Crow,B. and Etherton, M. 1980. Popular Drama and Popular Analysis in Afreica. In Kidd, R and Colletta, N. (eds.). Traditions for Development: Indigenous structures andfolk media in non-formal education. German Foundation for International Developmentand International Council for Adult Education. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1977: Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Viking, New York. Eco, U. 1985: The Semiotics of Metaphor.In Innes, R E (ed.): Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 247-271. Elam, K. 1980. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. London: Methuen, Harvey, R. 1984. Working Class Culture? SA Labour Bulletin, 10(2), 63-74. Hauptfleisch, T. and Steadman, I. 1984. South African Theatre. Pretoria: HAUM. Goffman, I. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City: Doubleday. Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections From Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wisehart. Gwala, P. 1973. Quoted in Black Review. p105. Jakobson, R. and Halle, M. 1956. Fundamentals of Language. The Hague: Mouton. Kavanagh, R. (Meshengu). 1985. Theatre and Cultural Struggle in South Africa. London: Zed Press. Latin American Statement on Popular Theatre, 1982, Third World Popular Theatre Newsletter. 1(1), 6. Luther, C. and Maponya, M. 1984. Problems and Possibilities: A Discussion on the Making of Alternative Theatre in South Africa. The English Academy Review No 2,19-32. Mattelart, A. 1983. Introduction: For A Class and Group Analysis of Popular Communication Practices. In Mattelart, A. and Siegelaub, S, (eds,) Communication and Class Struggle. 2 Liberation, Socialism. Bagnolet: IMMRC. Manaka, M. 1980. Theatre of the Dispossessed. Staffrider, 3(3). Mshengu,R. 1978. Tradition and Innovation in the Theatre of Workshop °71. Theatre Quarterly, 28, 63-66. Another grouping is the Association of Workers and Researchers of the New theatre (ATINT — Associacion de Trabajadores e Investigadores del Nuevo Teatro) whose commitmentis to “participatory theatre for social change” (Bulletin of the ATINI, 1985, p2). This organisation is primarily oriented to South America. There are a numberof other bodies such as the Participatory Theatre Research Group which is based in Canada. Boal, 1979. Crow and Etherton, 1980, p574. Arvon,1970, pp32-33. Maponyaand Luther, 1984, p32. Gramsci, 1971. See, eg, Blecher and Simon's improvisational experiments in the Winterveld; Cheadle’s role “playing exercise in Ifanga. Also The Dunlop and Spar Plays. Sitas, 1984. Coplan, 1981. Gramsci, 1971, pp332-333. Sitas, 1984, p5. Ibid, p16; Sitas, 1986, p95. Ibid, p17; Ibid, p96. Jakobson and Halle, 1956. Veltrusky, 1940, p88. Barthes, 1964, p262. Elam, 1980, p20. 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 = > ann i 56 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 . Mshengu, R. 1979. After Soweto: People’s Theatre and the Political Struggle in South Africa. Theatre Quarterly, 9(13), 31-38. Mwansa,D. and Kidd, R. 1982: Editorial, Third World Popular Newsletter, 1(1), 3-5. Sitas, A. 1984. Culture and Production: The Contradictions of Working Class Theatre in South Africa. Unpublished paper presented at History Workshop 1984, University of Witwatersrand, Mimeo. Sitas, A. 1986. Culture and Production: The Contradictions of Working Class Theatre in South Africa. Africa Perspective, New Series 1/2, pp84-111. Sole, K. 1980. Editorial. Africa Perspective, 16. Sole, K. 1984a, Black Literature and Performance: Some Notes on Class and Populism. SA Labour Bulletin, 9(8), 54-76. Sole, K. 1984b. Identities and Priorities in Recent Black Literature and Performance: A Preliminary Investigation. Paper No 22 presented at Conference on Economic Development and Racial Domination, University of Western Cape. Steadman,I. 1981: Editorial: Culture and Context: Notes on performance‘in South Africa. Critical Arts, 2(1), 1-13. Steadman, I. 1983. Black South African Theatre After Nationalism. Paper presented to Association for CommonwealthLiterature and Language Studies, Ontario. Mimeo. Steadman, I. 1986: Popular Performance in South Africa, University of Natal, Durban: CCSU Seminar Paper No 7. Tomaselli, K G, 198 1a. From the Laserto the Candle. Tanga Le So Phonela Abasebanzi: An Example in the Devolution of Theatre. 4 Labour Bulletin, 6(6), 64-70. Tomaselli, K G. 1981b. The Semiotics of Alternative Theatre in South Africa. Critical Arts, 2(1), 14-33, Tshabangu, M. 1975. An Interview on S’ketch, pl9. Van Zyl, JA F. 1977, Towards a Socio-semiology of Performance. In Van Zyl, J A Fand Tomaselli, K G.(eds.). Media and Change. Johannesburg: McGraw-Hill, 35-48. Vaughan, M. 1982. Ideological Directions in the Study of Southern African Literature. English in Africa, 9(2), 41-63, Veltrusky, J. Man and Object in the Theatre. In Garvin, P L. (ed.). A Prague School Readerin Esthetics, Literary Structure and Style. Washington: Georgetown University Press. von Kotze, A. 1984: “Worker Plays”, S A Labour Bulletin, 9(8), 92-111. ‘ : . CITE Published continually since 1967, Cineaste is today in- temationally recognized as America's leading magazine | on the art and politics of the cinema. ‘A trenchant, eter- nally zestful magazine,” says the InternationalFilm Guide, “in the forefront of American film periodicals. Cineaste always has something worth reading, andit permits its ane more space to develop ideas than most maga- nes." Published quarterly, Cineaste covers the entire world of cinema — including Hollywood, the independents, Europe, and the Third World—with exclusive interviews, lively articles, and in-depth reviews. Subscribe now, or send$2 for a sample copy, and see what you've been missing! 58 New York, NY 10009 P.O. Box 2242 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 - TE Tren ae your guide to searching using a personal computer you wish Mail to: To receive yourfree copy, simply Ourrecently published 20-page abstrects, inc. 2% P.O. Box 22206 San Diego, CA 92122-0206 return the coupon below, And,if to attend an SA online user workshop, please be sure to mark the appropriate box. booklet will show you how to turn your personal computerinto an effective research tool. You can have access to more than 180,000 citations and abstracts from the worldwideliterature of sociology as fast as you cantype “symbolic inter- actionist” (or, if you prefer, “structural functionalist”). Please send me one copy of == your guide to searching abstracts using a personal computer. | The Guide contains: * Hints on search strategies | wish to attend an online training session in my area [1]. The best time for me would be (give month) * Aglossary of terms, and more... * Sample searches conducted on * A review of Boolean logic user-friendly systems _State Zip __ Institution Street Address City Send to: Name-please print * - Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 59