iM 1987 Abroad $12 + 12% GST = $13.44 $20 + 12% GST = $22.40 Make aif cheques or postal orders payable to: South African Theatre Journal Mail to: SATJ Subscriptions, P.O. Box 27927, Sunnyside 0132 South Africa. South African Theatre Journal Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 SATJ SUBSCRIPTION RATES (TWO ISSUES PER ANNUM): INDIVIDUALS: INSTITUTIONS: Southern Africa RIS + 12% GST = R16,80 R25 + 12% GST = R28,00 Ee DIALECTICS OF TRADITION IN SOUTH AFRICAN BLACK POPULAR THEATRE by David Coplan I contribute to this collection of essays as a friend of South African theatre and not asa participant: as an outsider and nota son ofthesoil. It does not require a lengthy pesonal involvementto realize that those who are actually creating black theatre in South Africa have far more impact upon the struggle for cultural consciousness and autonomy than do academic bystanders like myself. Nevetheless the intense pressures exerted on this theatre by the institutions, interests, and ideology it seeks to supesede have created an urgent need for guiding principles, intellectual focus, and clarity of purpose in performance practice. I offer my reflections both in recognition and support of myfellow contributors to this volume, who are among those who have workedhardest to serve this need. Their efforts are important because in South Africa, popular theatre is important. Structurally, it is not so tied to complex, capital intensive, institutionally controlled technological mediaasis film or even popular music. Theatre is a movable feast of expressive communication, materializing wherever and whenever communicative energy and imagination combineto giveit life. As Tomaselli’ and Mshengu? have both observed,the very nature of black theatre, rooted in traditions of orality and improvisation, makesit less of a physical artifact and so less subject to state censorship. More importantly: Ofall the arts, theatre is the most accessible and forceful medium through which the black working class is able to articulate its ideology, expose the contradictions of apartheid and communicate a more accurate portrayal of their actual conditions of existence to members of their own and otherclasses? What’s In A Name? In reality, this statement goes beyond a descriptionofthe expressive potential of theatre in South Africa to define what black theatre, at its most effective, really is. Problems of definition and terminology continue in South African SS Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 5 performancestudies, however; a reflection of the cleavages and contradictions that composeblack theatre’s social and ideological context. The terms‘black’, ‘alternative’, ‘committed’ and ‘popular’ have each been suggested as appropriate qualifiers of a theatre that advances the interests of the politically excluded, economically exploited, socially subordinated majority of South Africans. It is easy enough to make an argument against any of these terms. “*Black theatre’, as Tomaselli* argues, seems misleading and reductive, excluding the long-term, profound involvement of white performanceactivists and including, at least potentially, those productions by and for black audiences that merely serve white government and commercial interests. Secondly, as Cape Town actress Nomhle Nkonyeni complained, the notion of black theatre ghettoizes this cultural movement and conceptually amputates its connection with the growing bodyof popularpolitical theatre throughoutthe third world.’ “Alternative’’® has an attractively critical, anti-establishment sound,butin the end suggests a sort of permanent marginality and a negative or diminishing definition-by-what-it-is-not; as if the fault with this theatre is notin its stars, but in itself that it is an underling. ‘““Committed’’’ is to be praised for laying its political cards on the table, andfor including everyoneactively engaged in using theatre to promote popularinterests and radical change. Butthis term also fails in focusing on the messageat the expense of the medium. Steadman’sassertion that “there is no homogeniety between Africans and their ‘culture’ — in the conglomerate social structure of South Africa what is important is socio- economic reality’’® is true on the face ofit. But it is not the whole truth, forit conceives of culture as merely a poolof creative resources, a bag of expressive tricks; selected, reinterpreted, and recombined as social forces dictate. The notion of social reality must include the historical cultures and constitutive processes which give black South African theatre its vitality and special character. To assert thata truly South African theatre is emerging from a crucial conjunction ofculturesis notto reify ‘the Bantu’ or subordinatesocialrealities and consciousnessto the ingrained traditions of an idealized past.It is rather to acknowledgethe structuring capacity ofhistorical experience, andto grant black people a positive, autonomousself-definition based uponhistorically rooted values and relationships, and represented by the symbols ofcultural continuity. As Steadmanobserves’, political nationalism is everywhere in Africa congruent with cultural nationalism. In South Africa,‘‘committed” theatre draws muchof its impetus from the Black Consciousness Movement, whose program includes heightening the awareness of historical culture as a means of promoting black self-esteem, solidarity, and principled political action.'° The term “popular theatre” has great support among working-class theatre movements elsewhere,'! and would seem promising butforits suggestion of a theatre merely by and not necessarily for the people. Thus we could identify ‘people’s theatre as distinct from ‘popular’theatre. “‘People’s theatre” arises and manifestsitself spontaneously through the mobilizingoffolk resources, but may be appropriated by commercialinterests of the state, which useit to serve their own interests. '? “Populartheatre” provides not only an autonomous form of expression anda sourceofidentity and popular understanding.It also represents the people’s interests, overcomes their negative self-images, asserts their grievances and aspirations, and mobilizes support for a “total’ liberation process, '? In accomplishing this, popular theatre arises from the people’s theatre in so far as the latter represents an expressive response to collective social experience. Like people’s theatre, popular theatre must mobilize the performance resources of South Africa’s historical culture, so as to reinterpret experience and articulate commoninterests in modes immediately meaningful to the popular audience. Popular theatre advances popular consciousness and aspirations by maintaining continuity — both culturally and institutionally — with the communitythatit serves. This is the conception advanced by Brecht, who argued: Popular meansintelligible to the broad masses; taking over their own formsof expression andenriching them; adopting and consolidating their standpoint; representing the most progressive section of the people in such a way that it can take over the leadership: thus intelligible to other sections too; linking with tradition and carrying it further; handing on the achievementsofthe section of the people thatis struggling for the lead.'* In what form such a theatre can hopeto exist underpresentconditions in South Africa is the question we must address. These attemptsat proper terminology areall very well, but the editor’s choice of a title for this volumetacitly recognizes that ‘‘black theatre” is the term thatis likely to stick. This is not simply dueto thepolitics ofrace or semiotic inertia, but to the implicit popular recognition of who this theatre is really for and about. International efforts notwithstanding, nothing of value can be accomplished in South Africa without the engagementof black South Africans. Black popular consciousness and leadershipwill define the terms under which a moreliberated existence can be secured forall the country’s people. Steadman hashelpedto straighten the course by suggesting that black theatre be identified most fundamentally with the values articulated by the Black Consciousness Movement.!} In his view, black theatre is that “which dedicates itself to the depictionoflife lived as a black man,” and which “exemplifies how performance in SouthernAfrica canreflect change andcontinuityin relation to the complexities of the social structure.” Leaders ofthe Black Consciousness Movementhave nevertheless recognized the inherent contradiction in a struggle for political equality rooted in an ideology of colour consciousness. Hence Pascal Gwala,in envisioning a “national theatre”, 6 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 Critical Arts Vol 4.No 3 1987 7 equates blackness with both national consciousness andfull, equal humanity for blacks, and by implication for everyone.'® For him,“the Black in Black dramais allied with liberation; the search for dignity and self-reliance”.'’ This “Black ethic,” as he terms it, based in historical culture and expressed through techniques drawn from every relevanttheatrical tradition, could produce an authentic national theatre; a theatre at once indigenous and universally human.'® The material and social conditions for such a theatre do notyet exist. But by re-examining the roots of what,in the spirit of unity, I shall call black popular theatre, we may cometo better understand whatis happening and what is possible in the way ofa theatreallied with the interests of acommon humanity. The Indigenous Traditions Unlike the peoples ofthe Niger basin, Africansliving south of the Limpopo had no indigenous theatre in the European sense prior to the 20th century. They nonetheless possessed traditions of story-telling (Xhosa: intsomi; Sotho: tsomo), praise poetry (izibongo; dithaka), and dance that were clearly dramatic in that their performance employed episodic, mimetic narrative to create visualas well as oral representations of character and conflict. Political ceremonies and religiousrituals had their theatrical dimensions, as they do in mostsocieties, but their thorough integration into the instrumentalities of material, social, and spiritual life made performance continuous with experience and material consequence. These performancetraditions contradict the prevalent notion that there never was, and therefore cannot be, indigenous black theatre in South Africa. Athol Fugard achieved his outstanding position in international English language theatre in large measureby creating vehicles for black actors to represent black experience by meansof black performancetraditions. The oral basis of both expression and transmission, in fact, helps account for the continuity of tradition in today’s black popular drama." It should immediately be clear that “tradition” here refers to expressive principles and processes, not products. The realization of indigenous African performancetraditionsis not confined to Zulu izibongo poetry, Xhosa lintsomi folk narratives or Sotho mohobelo dance. Indeed, the use of these historical formsin black dramais onlyeffective or meaningfulin so far as their portrayal derives from contemporary reality. Beyond this reality, of course, rural folk culture, especially those forms whicharelinked with the pre-colonialautonomy of black societies, provides powerful symbols of ideologicalcommitment and identity. Unfortunately, the political history of “African tradition” has madeit one of the most contentious dilemmas in the development of black popular theatre. Since the arrival of the first missionaries, the slur of primitivism and moral inferiority cast upon indigenous culture by whites has hindered the efforts of aS 8 Critical Ans Vol 4 No 1 1987 Western-educated black leaders to employ historical culture in creating solidarity and positive identity among Africans. Just as tragically, the divide- and-conquerstrategies of settler colonialism, followed by the relentless construction of a colour-caste system, has given indigenoustraditions a bad name. AmongurbanAfricansin general, the notion oftradition has never been entirely freed from the suggestion of black ‘backwardness’ and ethnic division: the allies of oppression and apartheid. Since the 1920s, government and commercial interests have increasingly exploited African language and performance media in the service of the dominantideology. For them, African traditions are anotehr material resource which can be decontextualized and distorted to reinforce an image of blacks congruentwith rationales for their political exclusion and economic dependency. Indeed, the owners andagents ofmass cultural media now regard themselves as the preservers and championsofthe ‘richness and beauty of the Africantribal heritage’. Even conservative whites becameperfectly willing to prefix ‘noble’ to the label of ‘savage’ once the military, political, and social structures that had vitalized African cultural forms had been disembowelled. Small wonder, then, thatthe black intelligentsia and urban workingclass in general came to regard their historical cultures with ambivalence. As anideal, the symbolism ofAfrican tradition is as pridefulas glory, as sacred as ancestry, as supportive as the family, and as personalasthe self. But as a reality, to many urban Africans, pre- industrial culture can seem as exoticasa museum,as stagnantas the homelands, as futile as a faction fight. The alienation of black people from the resources of their traditions and their history is doubly tragic, because it severs the vital connections between town and countryside, between middle and working classes, between ethnic heritage and Black Consciousness, between past and present, between identity and autonomyofself.It is essential then, to re-examine cultural tradition as concept and process rather than as content, so thatits use in black theatre can heighten rather than alienate popular consciousness. From the timesofthe earliest records, and probably before, the poerformance traditions of Bantu-speaking South Africans have been based upon the principlesof interconnection,visibility, imagery, and efficacy. Thefirst principle, interconnection, is so pervasivethatthe otherprinciples can only be understood in referencetoit: distinctions between principles are in fact hermenutic, rather than empirical. The interconnectionsare of two basic kinds:1) synesthetic — the flow of meaning,translationof images, and coordination ofexpression between various visual, aural, and tactile media including dance, song, mime, poetry, narrative, costume, and ceremonial enactment; 2) the continuity between expressive and instrumental action, which effectuates identity and social structure and mediates relations amongindividuals and groupsin the social, natural, andspiritual aspects of being. A perceptive if ethnocentric account of synesthetics comes from A T Bryant, x NA NA DRRee 9 OODnEAE ay nog a Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 who observed two Zulu men’s regiments performing in first fruits cerenrony early in this century: The two choirs thenceforth sang together, each its own part, with different words and different tunes, and yetall so tastefully blended together as to create perfectly harmonious, albeit exotic, music. As they sang they all danced together, assuming simultaneously, in perfect unity and much barbaric grace, identically the same poses of body and movementof limbs, shields, and sticks, as to present a combination of harmonious sound and rhythmic action most graceful to ear and eye... .7° In African dance songs, words, music, and movementform ‘an indissoluble whole”’,?! a complex of intersense modalities with a unified focus of meaning. Similarly, in story-telling, “the formal structure of the performanceis a synthesis of verbal narrative, body movement, vocal dramatics, and song’’.”* It is these interconnections which move traditional performance into the realm of dramatic action, an inherently multi-media art form. The principle which most directly effects this transition from dance-song to drama is visibility: the coordinated translation of verbal and musical images into metaphors of movement. Delegorgue, travelling in Zululand in the 1830s, witnessed the dancing of royal regiments before King Dingane: ‘“‘each man indicating the action and pathosof the songbythe direction ofhis stick, the motion of his other she Bos, hand, andthe turn of his body’”’.* As Adams’ Sotho informants putit: A beautifulsong is a song that whenitis sung the sound agrees with the rhythmicaction of the feet. The beautyof the song is mostly not its words but whatis apprehended withtheeyes.” The importance of expression in action, of making meaning visible, has been documented in genres of dance, oral poetry, and narrative throughout black South Africa. In Xhosastory-telling, for exmaple: Movementis vital to the tradition; action is all important and characteris revealed not by description but through action. Similarly, theme is revealed not by preaching or digressions, but through action.?5 Lestrade explicitly noted the movement towards dramain his literary classification of South African Bantu song: . With satiric songs we enter definitely upon the class of lyric connected with concerted dramatic action. Such songs . . are often illustrated by mimic action parodying the thing satirized. Andit is with this type of song, also, that we enter the type of Bantu poetry which, in modern times, very frequently takes the European andhis waysas the object of satire. Dance songsinvolvepraisesof the skill of some able performer, or a narration of somereal or imaginary past event... being acted out as well as sung. In the mimic songs, we have even more direct dramatization, some events being described atfull length in the words, and symbolically imitated in vigorous action. Butit is in the game-songs, work-songs,and ritual songs, andeven... in the songs in tales, that we encounter the greatest degree of combination between the lyric and dramatic. In these, we are not listening to a mimic narration of real or imaginary events: we are hearing, from the lips of the performers themselves, a symbolized description ofa real and living action taking place in the very present Beforeor eyes. The union between lyric and drama could hardly be closer.?6 In some areas of Southern Africa, satirical songs were an element in a more complextheatrical display. In 1586, Friar Joao Dos Santosvisited a Chope royal court in Southern Mozambique, and recorded that “The king . . has another class of kaffir who are called marombes, which means the sameasjester, and whosang, shoutedpraises, told jokes, and performed acrobatics”’.”’ In the early 1900s such comedians performed at dance competitions on the South African goldmines. There they dressed in old European top hats andtailcoats, worn comically askew. Their jokes, satiric praises, displays of mime and acrobatics drew upon their experience at the mines as well as upon the lives they left at home. They also created miniature dramas satirizing European mine personnel, . 10 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3.. 1987 ii Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 ii as well as the trance dances and healing rituals of traditional diviners, then as now a favourite with audiences of African migrant workers. Recently, J K McNamara observed Ndau dancers from Mozambiqueuse the mine dance arena to dramatize the common work experienceofall the miners underground, After an enactment of a mine accident “from which thevictim miraculously recovered aftercertain rites had been performed over him by an underground‘boss boy’, or team leader”, a sequence followed in which the lead dancer, wielding a spade, lashed ‘rock’ into a ‘cocopanrail loader’ (in reality a tomato box). When lashing was completed the dancer suddenly turned up the box onto the arena floor, an action whichrepresents the tippingofore-bearing rock into the ore-pass. The action also appeared to have a subversive intention in terms of sabotaging the products of labour, judging from the approving roar of the crowd that followed.” This dance-drama was performed by a team who had undergonerites of initiation together in the same rural homedistrict. It demonstrates, as did Mitchell’s classic study of Zambia's kalela dance, how performancetraditions based in ethnic and communityloyalties can express a general solidarity and an identity of values and interests amongall workers ina culturally heterogeneous context.?9 The principle of visibility in turn affects the operation of imagery in African performance,as an examinationoftraditionalpraise poetry quickly shows, Zulu izibongo and Sotho dithoko for example appear superficially to consist of aesthetically embroidered historical verse narratives. But scholars agree that narrative sequenceis entirely subordinate to the delineation ofcharacter against the background ofnormativeculturalvalues. Structurally, the poemsare a series of verbal pictures created from the limitless figurative resources of African language. As elaborations upon a mutually resonantset of master metaphors,*? these images are ordered according to an emotional and aesthetic logic of incrementaleffect. Zulu literary scholar and poet B W Vilakazi once compared izibongo to an exhibition ofsculpture,in which stanzasarelike lights directed so as to illuminate various aspects of each work. Thelights act independently and from different angles, to bring the figureto life.>! In this case, the sculptures must surely represent the human form, because the versespresent facets ofpersonality in sensory images. The poem advances more through the concatenation of imagery than throughnarrative, and the spirit of the story is more importantthantheplot. Oral prose narrativesreflect this principle in the stringing together of independent episodes around a central character?2 and in the “use ofparallel sets of images to embody a theme’’.>? The principle of imagery, in the context of notions of visibility and inter- ae 12 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3. 1987 connection, movesthe performanceofpraise poetry in the direction of drama. Therecitation of izibongois a kind of dramatic enactment, in which history is made theatrical by pictorial metaphors and by expressive body movements adjusted in their rhythm to the tempo of the chanted words. On occasion choreography supersedes poetry, for the fewer the words, the better the poetis able to represent history in action.** The ultimate realization of this form of dramatic actionis the giya, the improvised solo dance dramatization of military prowess performed in coordination with the shouting of their praises by the membersoftheir regiment or “homeboy” dance team. While thereis a standard vocabulary ofgiya movements, each performerbrings to them his own skill and interpretation; an expression of individual personality in the language of collective values.3> Zulu women composepraise poetry as well, and performanceis accompanied by solo dancing and dramatic gestures. The audiencesings, claps, and exclaimsin support, but the poem itself is a statement of personal identity, “expressing tension between the ethics of community solidarity and thestriving egotism of the individual”.** The performance oforal poetry is in this sense inherently dramatic becauseit is in reality a collective act. Common experience and perceptions based upon shared values and understandings providethe context within whichany performance becomesaesthetically, emotionally, and socially meaningful. As Scheub remarks, “African oral tradition is never simply a spokenart. It is an enactment, an event, a ritual performance. Patterning of imagery is the most visible artistic activity, involving the blending of the contemporary world and the fanciful fabricationsofthe tradition”.” Today, the juxtaposition of images provides the central aesthetic dynamic of black theatre.?® Tradition and Cultural Dynamics It is important to emphasize that these traditional forms are not archaic, or frozen,or only a thing of the past. As Lestrade recognized back in 1937, new traditional literature in Southern Bantu languages is being composedall the time.*? Landeg White has shown how praise poems have served to record shifting powerrelations in Zulu society over the past two centuries; changing in style, imagery, and themein responseto historical factors. Xhosa praise poetry, which traditionally recounted the exploits and failings of chiefs and war captains, now eulogizes African indunas (compoundoverseers) andshift bosses on the mines.*° Sotho miners have left praise poetry to its original purpose, and invented sefela,*! a new genreoforal poetry aesthetically encodingtheirlife experience as migrant workers. Sotho women sing and dance their “seoeleoele”’ poetic narratives in drinking bars throughout Lesotho andin the black townships of the Orange Free State and Transvaal. On the mines Xhosapraises are composed A Critical Arts Vol 4.No 3 1987. 13 in responseto specific aspects of present events and situations. Today, as in the past, oral poetry endows“history with the cultural symbolism of the imaginative tradition” .*? Each performance employs standard, previously composed, and improvised verses in fresh combinations, and no tworecitationsare precisely the same. This episodic, improvised mode of expression is fundamental to black performanceculture andits continuing socialvitality. The underlying principle on whichthis vitality depends may be summarized as “‘efficacy”’.*? Efficacy in ritual performance substantiates the covenant between human and supernatural powers. Efficacy in dramatic performance meansto go beyond simple diversion into representations that affect audience consciousness and will to action. Following this principle, performance not only reflects but also formulates and augments experience as “‘part of the complicated feedbackprocess that brings about change’’.“* In praise poetry, the imagistic measurement of the subject against the standardofcultural ideals enhancessocial control as well as power. The praise poet mediates between chiefs and their people as diviners do between people and thespirits.*¢ ° Thepraises ofpolitical leaders have been a fixture at mass political meetings for many decades. In the Transkei ‘homeland’, they have becomea form ofpolitical resistance to the Prime Minister, ChiefMatanzima,since the censorshiporarrest of an fimbongi, as if he were a common journalist, would undermine the legitimacy of Matanzima’s traditional authority.‘7 On the mines, Xhosa iimbongi perform a similar function in representing miners’ interests, moral values, and grievances to the black indunas. Among the miners themselves, iimbongi provide social comment and promote adherence to the norms of umteto, the informal black culture of the mines. The jimbongi is also a peacemaker, whose “subtle mockery and bawdy humour undoubtedly defuse many a tense situation where members of various nations are grouped together in unnatural surroundings”’.*® The sameprinciple operates in dance drama, which traditionally promotes group solidarity and social harmony.*? Amongthe Zulu, social harmony is a matter of mediating the structural tensions between opposing groups. At traditional weddings, the social and procreative alliance of rival clans 1s expressed in fiercely competitive ukuqqumushela and ingodia dancing between members ofthe bride and the groom's parties.*° In former times,royal military reviews and ukubuthwa ceremonies marking the creation of new regiments were occasions for competitive dancing and singing.*! The rivalry was so intensethat fights often broke out between participants whofelt that performance alone was not sufficient to express it. Rural-based homeboy danceclubs flourish today among Zulu migrant workers in Johannesburg. While the clubs take on other social functions, competitive danceitself is the reason for their formation and continuity. The expressive structure of the danceis therefore a factor in and an index of social adaptation. Like the old regiments, these clubsare also fighting units in the stick fights and factional clashes so important to the maintenance of 14 critical Arts Vol 4.No 3 1987 the workers’ ubuntu (humanidentity) in the urbanpolitical economy.°2 The overall implicationsof the principle of.efficacy for black theatre are that performances are so linked to their social meaning that they are entirely continuous with experience itself. There is thus no necessary psychic distance between spectators and actors, audiences and dramatic action, reality and representation. The Transformation of Tradition: Black Popular Theatre During the late 1950s, two events signalled the emergenceofa clearly identifiable black theatre in Johannesburg: the arrival from Port Elizabeth of young playwright Athol Fugard; and the multi-racial musical theatre production, King Kong. Fugard’s lays,starting with Nongogo in 1958, were ‘well-made’ in the Western literary s\ se, yet represented a new use of black actors to represent South African social experience throughthe use of African expressive techniques. Over the years, Fugard has developed the ‘workshop’ method tointegrate African principles of imagery, visibility, and improvisational composition into contemporary Western theatre. Although his productions have seldom been directed towards or performed for black audiences, he played a majorrole in the formaltraining of a generation of black actors in theatre outside the township variety stage. The workof black actors like Zakes Mokae or Fats Bookhalane in The Blood Knot(1962) and John Kani and Winston Ntshona in Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972) reflect the success ofimprovisational workshoptechniquesin infusing Fugard’s _ literary plays with an Africansensibility. These actors’ use ofAfrican expressive principles gave the performanceof these plays that quality of profound tragi- comedy which is South Africa’s uniquestylistic contribution to world theatre. Theyalso introduced Western audiencesnot onlyto the social and psychological horrors of South Africa’s human nightmare butto the vitality and richness of African performanceculture. King Kong (1959) was a musical drama based onthe spectacularrise and tragic downfall of flamboyant black South African heavyweight boxing champion Ezekial “King Kong” Dhlamini.*? Amid the cultural ferment and political tension in Johannesburgin the late 1950s, King Kong embodiedthefaith of liberals both black and white that social and political progress could come through creative multi-racial collaborationin the culturalfield. King Kong was an overwhelming success, and South Africa has seen nothinglike it before or since. When the show travelled to London, however, its muted politics and unfamiliaar comedic style severely reduced its appeal. The black musicians and cast members wenttheir separate ways, with stars Miriam Makeba,the four membes of the Manhattan Brothers, and severalof the musicians remaining in veda Critical Arts Vol 4. No 3 1987 15 future of black popular drama lay in the black urban communities themselves. In the early 1960s he set out on his own and Produced, wrote, composed, and directed Manana, TheJazzProphet( 1963) and Sikaio (1964); musical melodramas that were milestonesin populartheatre for the African mass audience. Though he spoke ofreaching an international audience with an African musical theatre modelled after Broadway, Kente achieved unprecedented commercial success with shows performed in English but rooted in local black city culture. He Unlike West African counterparts such as Nigeria’s Herbert Oqunde, however, Kente presented his shows in English; the language of international show- business, black unity, and resistance to the cultural implications of apartheid. Virtually all township playwrights write in English, although it would be possible to use one or another of the major African languagesorthe polyglot street dialects of the township. While African vernaculars are frequently intermixed with English in performance,thelatteris regarded as an essential weaponin the struggle againstculturalisolation, parochialism, andstate control of the channels ofintergroup andinternational communication. Artistically, Kente and other black commercial playwright/directors like Sam Mhangwane and Boykie Mohlammehavecreated a uniquestyle ofpresentation that smoothly integrates music, dance, and social drama in a characteristically visible and energetic manner. To achieve this, Kente created regular ensembles and provided them with rigorousprofessional training. Acting and episode are melodramatic, with powerful emotions expressed physically, almost acro- batically, in the rhythmical blend of farce and pathos, song, dance, and mime that is the essenceof theatricality in the African tradition. This is a theatre ofself-realization, where Africans go to see themselves and their environment presented larger than life on stage. While the excitement is generated here,as in all popular theatre, by the tension between realism and rhetoric, audiences demand complete, recognizable authenticity. To establish psychic distane from epidosdes too painfully real, Africans often laugh at moments where white audiences wouldsit aghast, silent with shock of shame. Yet so completeis the involvementofboth actors and spectators that characters often seem to interact as much with the audience as with each other. Psychic distance shortens, and the frameof enactmentdissolves as it pushes againstthe groundofreality with increasing force.*4 Rhetorical awareness is maintained, while theatre comes to depend not on the voluntary suspensionofdisbelief but on the continuity between drama andlived experience, Politically, Kente has been forced to walk a tightrope betweenirrelevance and censorship.His strategy has been to concentrate on the African townships; the reality ofsuffering and conflict, the need for personal morality andsacrifice, for a Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3. 1987 17 permanentexile. Black South African performers have always seen in overseas toursameansofcombatting the culturalisolation,financial hardship, and professional frustration to which apartheid condemns them. Unfortunately, the prospect of appearing in London or New York often creates unrealistic expectations, and real successis often elusive. Taken outofits social context, black South African performance often loses its communicative impact and expressive points of reference. Overseas performances cannot have the direct sense of connection with the daily concerns and experiences of their audiences, from which the creative vitality and fundamental purpose of popular theatre derive. Though overseas performances hav e frequently had a majorartistic as well as political impact in Europe and America,they can be injuriousto black populartheatrein South Africaitself. Backin South Africa, the Sharpeville Massacre, Separate Amenities provisions of the Group Areaslegislation, the banningof the African National Congress, and the general atmosphere of racial polarization put a temporary halt to ventures in multi-racial cultural collaboration. Yet Kiing Kong had shown what could be done, and gave African performers a chance in international showbusiness. It also deprived the black townships of many of their most outstandingtalents, and reinforced the orientation towards foreign recognition at the expense of a populartheatre for black communities. King Kong andits multi-racial production company, United Artists, did however help to ignite the flameof populartheatre in the townships. Gibson Kente, a former teacher at the Jan Hofmeyr School and composer and arrangerof jazz vocals for such stars ar Miriam Makeba, becameinterested in musical theatre while a member of United Artists. He soonrealized that the ET 1987 16 Critical Arts Vol 4. No 3 family loyalty, community solidarity, and self-assistance. Still, the contradiction inherentin portraying the consequences of apartheid without directly indicting the system has created problems for Kente and for the younger generation of playwrights who cameafter. The new playwrights and their young audiences seek to confrontpolitical issues directly, which means challenging the System. The realistic portrayal of their conditions oflife is an important formal value for Africans, and in the bitter political climate of the past decade, nothing has seemed more real than the government’s unrelenting reinforcement of white supremacy and black dehumanization. Having created a mass audience for theatre, Kente found himself pushed by the surging Black Consciousness Movement, and even bythe local success of Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi is Dead, to offer a more critical examination ofpolitical conditions and how they affect people’s lives. During the 1970s, Kente produceda seriesof plays, How Long, IBelieve, Too Late,» and La Duma, which gave stronger representation to the intolerable conditions of black urban life, and to youthful voices calling for immediate change. While these plays do express militant black political aspirations, they conclude by validating the moderate reformism ofan older generation ofAfrican community leaders who urge the governmentto reverse its course before it’s Too Late. This lack of resolution and political commitment betrays Kente’s contradictory position, in which commercial success has given him some investment in political moderation, while his continued popularity depends uponhisability to express the pressing demands of the urban African community. His very command of a mass black audience compounds the problem. Kente was harassed andjailed for attempting to film How Long in 1976, while Workshop "71's far more radical but university-based Survival was allowed to tour the United States. When Survival finally began to attract large audiences in the townships in 1978, it was promptly banned. Other plays in popular ‘township’ style that deal directly with political oppression and commanda large popular following, such as Reverend Magina’s Give Us This Day (1974) and Khayalethu Mghayisa’s Confused Mhiaba (1974) have also been ruthlessly banned. Today the townships produce literally hundreds of hastily assembled dramatizations of black experience by struggling young playwrights. Kente has had an enormous impact simply by creating a new popular theatre with the potential to transform black political and cultural self-consciousness. The existence of such a theatre,with its fully realized indigenous aesthetic standards and presentationalstyle, has provided the foundationsforan explicitly political theatre with mass appeal. Participation in theatre allows black people to express their creative potency and to achieve some mastery over their lives; to communicate their agony,resilience, andsocial vision wheninstitutionalmeans are denied them. 18 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 In the townships unfortunately, government censorship and by now even the theatrical conventions Kente established limit the rangeof artistic and political expression available to new playwrights and directors. The Black Consciousness Movement,on theother hand,still inspires playwrights to attempt to create a new dramatistic tradition that relates past experience and local resources to present challenges. The most important such attempt during the 1970s was called ‘Workshop 71”. Workshop 71 beganin 1971 as an attempt by Witwatersrand University English literature teacher Robert “Mshengu” Maclaren to get both black and white playwrights and actors to join him in creating a broadly South African theatre “out of a composite culture ofall South Africans, at a time when thereis not a meeting of cultures but a confrontation ofcultures”. Unfortunately neither the political, professional, nor aesthetic context for such a meeting existed at the time, and the withdrawalofblack directors like Sam Mhangwaneleft Workshop 71 an entirely university-based experiment. Undaunted, Maclaren and a multiracial group of young actors followed Fugard’s lead and began creating new plays out of a blend of township drama and Western improvisational ‘workshop’techniques. Like the township playwrights, Workshop 71 struggled “to depict a new reality through the transformation of existing performance traditions.*” Without propsor written scripts, Workshop 71 gave popular black theatre a new direction; one which integrated African and Western expressive styles and structure and connected their traditions to social reality and experience. In addition to plays aboutblackcity life, Workshop 71 took up the concern for African historical culture. Credo Mutwa’s uNosilimela (1973) is an African romance modelled on Zulu folk narrative and mimetic dramatization.°* Its protagonist is a young princess doomed by magic andspiritual fate to wander through time, reliving the tragic history of her people. Her sufferings are intended to restore respect for traditional values among urban Africans. The revaluation of the past in the terms of the present is intended both to reduce black self-alienation and provide a cultural framework for the regeneration of South African society as a whole. The playis less effective, however,in its presentation of contemporary realities, and the neo-traditional, fantastic elements ofstaging provedtoo innovative for township audiencesin 1973. Black audiences will not accept representationsoftradition unless they are linked by authentic experience to the currentrealities of black South Africanlife. Workshop 71 tried again with actor James Mthoba’s uHlanga (The Reed,1975)a review of African history and the performer’s ownlife presented in the form of an improvised folk narrative composed of episodes discontinuous in time. Mthoba attemptsto relate historical culture to black self-respect, identity, and autonomyofwill. As he putit himself: ““wH/angadirectly states to all of us that aa Critical Arts Vol 4No 3 1987 19 no manis withouthis peculiar indestructable form ofculture even ifthere maybe external forces seeking to eradicate it”.°? Perhaps the most accurate and dramatically satisfying recreation of African history and independentculture to date is Xhosa playwright Fatima Dike’s The Sacrifice ofKreli. Based on original research by producer Rob Amato,the play recounts the efforts of the Gcaleka Xhosa chief Kreli to revitalize his peopleafter their final defeat by Cape Colonial forces in 1878. Hidden with his followers in a canyon far from his former domain, Kreli sends his personal divinerinto the nether world ofthe ancestors to learn what course of action he should take. Beset by defeatism and threats of desertion amonghis men, Kreli uses his diviner’s miraculous return from the landof the dead to rally his people to return to their traditions, reclaim their children from the foster care of the neighbouring Bomvana, and renew their resistance to dispossession and nationaldisintegration. In the hands of Cape Town’s Sechaba Theatre Company,the story of Kreli became a commentary on the nature and challenge of African leadership relevant to contemporary efforts at national regeneration. The sets were almost painfully stark, the costumes authentic to the time and place. The presence of invisible non-humanactors, from the agonies of the great sarificial ox to the uncanny scent of spirits on the wind, was communicated entirely by the muscular subtlety, facial gestures, and audible imagery created by the actors in movement and voice. They had a quality Elizabethan actors must have had, performing Macbeth in the light of afternoon; they brought their night with them. The Sacrifice of Kreli was performed in Xhosa in the Cape, where this language is dominant, and in a mixture of English and Xhosa for audiences elsewhere. Fatima Dike regards African English not as a compromise but as a poetic mediuminits own right, capable to expressing the beauty and rhythm of Xhosaspeech to an international audience. Thoughthe play was more successful in small towns than in large cities, it remains a model for the effective mobilization of historical culture in the modern context. Theseplays were notoriginally staged in the townships,butin a ‘fringe circuit’ of small multiracial theatres. Operated first in the shadow of apartheid, they have flourished since the government eased regulations against racially-mixed audiences and casts in 1977. The Market Theatre complex and Witwatersrand University theatres in Johannesburg and the People’s Space (until its closure in )and Baxter Theatres in Cape Town have becomecentresfor thepolitical 19 and stylistic development of South African drama. Amongtheplays recently produced in both cities is Matsemela Manaka’s Egoli, which evokes the daily degradations suffered by Johannesburg’s migrant mineworkers. Like traditional African drama, Egoli is composed of discontinuous, improvi- sational narrative episodes; but also employsflashbacks, drama sequences, and other non-naturalistic techniques in order to break down the physical barriers between actors and audience.This approach derives from that of Workshop 20 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3. 1987 71, and like the latter, it must struggle to win the attention of the popular township audience. Egoli has been performedforracially mixed audiencesin the ‘white’ cities, in Germany, and in the United Kingdom, as well as in black townships throughout South Africa. Under South African social and political conditions, there is a natural temptation for innovative artists to seek recognition and support overseas. Once there, unfortunately, their work and the awarenessthey seek to create can only have an indirect impact on South Africa. Maishe Maponya’s Hungry Earth has been staged in London as well as in Soweto. It takes its title from the soil which swallows the bodies of African workers, who die in such numbers from mine andindustrial accidents and the thousand other unnatural shocks the flesh of black South Africansis heir to. Here, episodes of workinglife are linked by songs, chants, and monologues on political topics. Naturalistic sound and mimeare used and actors switch roles from sceneto scene,often talking to the audiencedirectly in order to destroy the rhetorical, illusory frame of the drama and jolt the audience into.critical appraisal of the action.®! Maponya and Manaka explicitly reject the aesthetic criteria and critical standards of Western theatre, regarding them as irrelevant and counter- productive to African performance communication. While they also rightly reject the commercialism and political myopia of Gibson Kente, they havebuilt upon the audience expectationshe created, transforming popular consciousness HECATE A Women's Interdisciplinary Journal AUSTRALIA'S LEADING OURNAL OF SOCIALIST AND WOMEN'S LIBERATION IDEAS. Vol. X,No, | (1984): Problems of CPA Organisaiioa of Women in World Wer i; The Couner-Meil and Women; Freud's Sease of Humour; Aboriginal Women; ‘Disarmament Feminism’; . Ruth First. Vol. X, No. 2 (1984): Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness and its Trial; K.S. Pnchard and the Construction of the Author; Femecrats; Women and Work; Frida Kahlo. Stories and Poems also in each issue. HECATE Po Bon99, St. Lucis, Brisbane 4067, Australia SUBSCRIPTIONS: Inst: A910; US$15; UKZ6 Indiv: A965; US$8; UK£2 oe ae Critical Arts Vol 4No 3 1987 2] by the heightening and intensifying of black experience on thestage. This has been accomplished by the application oftraditional African expressive principles to the construction of drama in performance. Interconnection explains the continuing reliance on music and dance as well as physical ane verbal expression. Visibility guides the improvisational energy andintuition o the actors’ raucous, intensely physical style, and explains the acknowledged influence of Polish drama theorist Jerzy Grotowski on Manaka.® Through the layering of mutually resonantbut disjunct, sometimes non-naturalistic episodes, imagery, rather than narrative, provides the plays with their structural a Efficacy is the ultimateartistic goal, achieved by the permeability of the frame o dramatic action, the physical involvementof the audience in the progress of the performance, and the practical effect on the consciousness of everyone present. What these young playwrights are trying to do is to create what Richard Schechnercalls “‘actuals’’.®* An actual is simply the idea of art as an event: something consequential happens for both actors and spectators here and now, leading to a change of consciousnessfor the participants. The play hasa quality of having-been-lived, while the performance has the quality of living now. The actors address the audiencenotas a collection of money-paying strangers, or forced participants in a show of solidarity, but as a community, even as a congregation, in order to create a sense of collective participation and transformation.*> Experimental techniques take time to filter into the main- stream of township theatre and to gain acceptance among an audience accustomed to Kente. Yet Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and Survival, applying someofthe traditional principles of African theatricality, ultimately attracted large black audiences, and there is no question that black theatre prospers in the face of apartheid. The need to formulate and interpret shared experience understressis, after all, the mother of cultural invention. The South African political economy has even inspired spontaneous theatre among black miners, industrial workers, and urban squatters. In 1978, the womenofthe famous Crossroads squatter camp near Cape Towncreated their ownplay, Jmfoduso, dramatizing the efforts of the police to tear down the camp and deport its residents to the homelands; and the women’s own successful resistance. After performing for their neighbours, the women took their production on tour to other black communities and ultimately to the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. Another exampleis I/anga (The Sun), a workers’ play that developed outof the efforts of union lawyer Halton Cheadle to defend 55 Zulu foundrymenarrested for strikingillegally in 1980. For purposesoftheir defence, Cheadle had them act out the events of the strike, an exercise that led to the elaboration ofthese roles into full-scale play.® The strikers demanded exactrecreation of statements and events from each other, debating each enactment until consensus was reached. No one was allowed to embroiderhis reconstruction to show himselfor others in 22 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 a better or worse light then they deserved. Eventually, with the help of Johannesburg’s multiracial Junction Avenue Theatre Company,these reenact- ments were adapted to courtroom procedure and actually performed for the magistrate during thetrial, Thestrikers lost the case, but //anga emerged asareal piece of theatre, performed for co-workers at the Metal and Allied Workers Unionhall. Hlanga achieves an almostseamless, yet reflexive continuity with experience, as the characters play themselves before an audience who identify directly with the action and are drawnrapidly into participation in the play. Characters address the audience directly, and actors perform among the audience as a means of encouraging their engagement and response. The natural evolution of Ilanga from a legal strategy to a vehicle of collective consciousness demonstrates the social vitality of theatre in South Africa andits importance in contemporary cultural reintegration. Through videotape reproduction,J/anga has been seen by thousandsofindustrial workers throughout the country. The Junction Avenue Theatre Company begancreating ‘workshop’plays, ones that could be made and performed by working people themselves, in 1979.67 After Ilanga, the companycreated Dikhitsheneng(In the Kitchen), a play about domestic servants performed for audiences of maids and their employers in suburban church halls.® - In Durban, two members of the company organized the Dunlop Play for members of the Metal and Allied Workers Union at a Dunlop tyre plant, Performanceswereheld at the factoryitself in the period betweenshifts. At the Start, each actor introduced himself to the. audience, identified his job, and mimedits action with appropriate sound effects. Written scripts provided an overall structure, but each actor preparedhis part through improvisation with the participation of the other workers. Techniques of mimesis and reenactment drawn from traditional storytelling provided both expressive resources and a senseofcultural familiarity for the participants. Though specific scenes emerged withoutdifficulty, an overall play structure and plotline were hardto establish. Ultimately, the directors settled on the idea of one worker’s career experience as anarrative threat, and made extensiveuseofillustrative tableaux which were not plot oriented.*° A second workshopcreated songs, which not only enhanced the emotional force of the performances, but drew the cast together at the start of each creative session andlead themeasily into reengagementwith the material and the task at hand.”Thetraditionalpart structure of“call and response”’ wasused, and at the actual performances, audiences joined in spontaneously on the chorus, and actorsfrequently improvised new lyrics. Some spectators even followedthe cast onto the stage for a brief impromptu song and dance. The actors often spoke directly to members ofthe audience, andtheir responses were incorporated into the performance. Someofthese exchanges became a permanentpart ofthe play, VNCIIE e Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 23 i i -audi interaction and which was thus constantly rewritten through actor-audience int remained a perpetual work-in-progress. Many of the songs euttived the play itself and have become part of Durban’s black urban folklore.’ As an event, the Dunlop Play had a number of practical effects. Workshop participants gained a new sense ofself-confidence and self-worth, and sha becameleaders and were elected shop stewardsat the next union election. ew social networks were created among workers,and resistance toa stiffened. A canteen boycott occurred in the weeks following the play’s performances. A cultural group involving workers from all sections of the plant and other factories as well has been formed, and many of its members area plays and workingcollectively on them in a continuing effort to raise worker consciousness.” : Activists in the South African liberation movement. have largely eu or mistrusted theatre as a medium forthe raising of political see ose who do recognizeits potential often argue that aesthetic and political goa s - mutually exclusive, and that playwrights ought to avoid artful metaphor ay My dramatic structure, which coneal rather than intensify the message. experience of South African theatre suggests, however, that culturaleT qualities of performance and emotional expression are as importantas social authenticity and ideological content in reaching the popular audience. cultural traditions of black theatre in South Africa demonstrate ae is et simply the powerof the tale but the fresh and artful nature ofthe telling tha turns performance into transformation. The relevance, effectiveness, and unity of this theatre depend upon whether i can be popularin the best sense: arising out of the community thatit ewes ane organic to thelives, concerns, and aspirationsof those who perform a supp critical interpretation of political realities that can © it. As such it can provide expressed in no other popular forum. In articulating issues of common concer with historical resonance and emotionalforce, this theatre of urgency ie a voice to the voiceless and a sense of psychic community to the self-alienated. tis this urgency which,reinforced by culturalvitality, gives black theatre aane Africa's and potency, and makesit a force to be reckoned with in South continuing humancrisis. REFERENCES CITED Adams, Charles. 1974. The Ethnography of Basotho Evaluative Behavior in the Cognitive Domain Lipapali (Games), Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, Indiana. Bloom, Sida as Pat Williams. 1961. King Kong, An African Jazz Operaz, London: Collins. Brink, James. 1980. Kote Tion, unpub. Ph.D. thesis, Indiana. Bryant AT. 1949. The Zulu People: As They Were Before the Whiteman Came, Pietermaritzburg: ; Shuter and Shooter. Clegg, Jonathan. 1975. Dance and Society in Africa South ofthe Sahara, unpub. B.A. Honours thesis, Witwatersrand. 1977. Personal communication. : . ; / . . all). Cope, Trevor. 1968. Izibongo: Zulu Praise poetry, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Coplan, David. 1985. In Township Tonight! South Africa's Black City Music and Theatre, London and New York: Longman. Etherton, Michael. 1982, The Development ofAfrican Drama. New York: Africana. Finnegan, Ruth. 1970. Oral Literature in Africa, Oxford: Clarendon Press. i“. Anthony. 1976, ‘The Characteristics of Traditienal Drama.’ Yale/Theatre 8, 1, Guma, § M. 1967. The Form, Content and Technique of Traditional Literature in Southern Sotho, Pretoria: J L van Schalk. Gunner, Elizabeth. 1979. ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience. Women as Composers and Performers of Izibongo, Zulu Praise Poetry’, Research in African Literatures, 10, 2. Gwala, Pascal. 1972. Black Review. Durban. 1973a. ‘Towards a National Theatre’. Sourk African Outlook (August). 1973b. Black Review. Durban. 1975/6, Black Review. Durban. Kavanagh, Robert Mshengu, ed. 1981. South African People’s Plays, London: Heinemann. Kidd, Ross and Nat Colletta, eds, 1980. Traditionalfor Development: Indigenous Structures andFolk Media in Non-formal Education. Berlin: G.F.1.D. Kirby, P R. 1973. ‘The Musical Practices of the Native Races of South Africa’, I Schapera,ed., The Bantu-Speaking Tribes of South Africa. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Krige, Eileen. 1957 (1936). The Social System of the Amazulu, London: Longman. Kunene, Daniel P, 1972. “Metaphor and Symbolism in the Heroic Poetry of Southern Africa’, R Dorson,ed., African Folklore, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Larlham, P F. 1981, Black Performance in South Africa, unpub, Ph.D. thesis, New York University. Lestrade, G P. 1937. ‘Traditional Literature’, I. Schapera, ed., The Bantu-Speaking Tribes ofSouth Africa, London Routledge and Kegan Paul. Mafeje, A. 1967. ‘The Role ofthe Bard ina Contemporary African Community’, Journal ofAfrican Languages 6, 3. McNamara,J K. 1980. ‘Brothers and Workmates: Home Friend Networksin the SocialLife of Black Migrant Workers in a Gold Mine Hostel’, P Mayer, ed., Black Workers in an Industrial Society, London: Oxford University Press. Mitchell, J Clyde. 1956. The Kalela Dance. Manchester: Rhodes-Livingstone Paper Number12. Mshengu.1976, ‘South Africa: Where MyelingangiStill Limps’, Yale/Theatre 8, 1, (Fall) Ngubane, Jordan. 1951. ‘Traditional Zulu Verbal ARt’, Drum, (July/Auagust). Rycroft, David. 1975. ‘A Royal Account of Music in Zulu Life, with Translation, Annotation, and Musical Transcription’, Bulletin of S.0.A.S., University of London, xxxvii, part 2. Schechner, Richard. 1977. Essays on Performance Theory, 1970-1976, New York: Drama Book Specialists. : Scheub, Harold. 1975. The Xhosa Ntsomi, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1984. *A review of African Oral Traditions and Literature’, Paper presented to the African Studies Association, Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, October 25-28. Steadman, Ian. 1980. ‘Critical Responses to Contemporary South African Theatre’, CriticalArts 1, 3, (October). 1981, ‘Editorial: Culture and Context: Notes on Performance in South Africa’, Critical ARts 2, 1, (July). Tomaselli, Keyan. 19809, ‘South African Theatre: Text and Context’, English in Africa, 8, 1,(March). 1981. ‘The Semiotics of Alternative Theatre in South Africa’, Critical Arts 2,1, (July). von Kotze, Astrid. 1984. ‘Workshop Plays as Worker Education’, South African Labour Bulletin, 9,8. (July). Wainwright, AS T. 1979. The Praises of Xhosa Mineworkers, unpub. M.A. thesis, UNISA. White, Landeg. 1982. ‘Power and the Praise Poem’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 9, 1, (October). Willett, John, ed. and trans. 1964. Brecht On Theatre, New York: Hill and Wang. Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 25 Critical Arts Vol 4. No 3 1987 _ 24 38 39 41 43 44 46 47 48 49 30 51 52 53 54 35 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 Steadman 1980, op cit. pp46-7. Lestrade, ep cit, p299. Wainright, A T. 1979: The Praises of Xhosa Mineworkers. A Thesis, UNISA. Coplan, op cit, pp17-21. Scheub 1984, op cit. pls. Schechner, R. 1977: Essays on Performance theory, 1970-1976. Drama Book Specialists, New York, p43. Ibid. p76. Finnegan, R. 1970: Oral Literature in Africa. Clarendon Press, Oxford, p142. Cope, op cit, p28. Mafeje, A. 1967: “The Role of the Bard ina Contemporary African Community”, Journal of African Languages, Vol 6 No 3, pp194: 221. Wainwright, op cit, pp164-165. Krige, op cit, p336, Rycroft, D. 1975. Krige, op cit, Clegg, J. 1975: Dance and Society in Africa South of the Sahara. BA Hons Thesis, Unive. Blom, H and Williams, P. 1961: King Kong, An African Jazz Opera. Collins, London. Brink, J. 1980: Kote Tion. Ph.D. Thesis, Indiana University, p67. Kavanagh, opcit, pp85-124. Mshengu,op cit, p47. Etherton, M. 1932: The Development of African Drama, Africana, New York, p58. Ibid. pp53-55. Quoted in Gwala, 1975/6: Black Review, Durban, p194. sali PF. 1981: Black Performancein South Africa. Ph.D Thesis, New York University, pl73. Ibid. pp176-7. Ibid. p175. Schechner,op cit. p8. Ibid, p19. Ibid. p89. Tomaselli 1981, op cit. eee A. 1984: “Workshop Plays as Worker Education”, SA Labour Bulletin, Vol9 No ' » p93. Ibid. p95. Ibid. pp97-101. Ibid. p98. Ibid. pp106-107. Ibid. pp108-111. NOTES ADN REFERENCES | 2 3 4 5 6 7 8g 9 10 ll 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 : . Tomaselli, K G. 1980: South African Theatre: Text and Context, English in Africa, Vol8 No 1, psl. Mshengu, 1976: South Africa: Where Mvelingangi Still Limps, Yale/Theatre, Vol 8 No 1. Tomaselli, op cit. p51. Tomaselli, K G. 1981: "The Semiotics of Alternative Theatre in South Africa”, Critical Arts, Vol 2 No I, p17. Cape Times, 27 September 1979. Steadman, I. 1981: “Editorial: Culture and Context: Nots on Performancein South Africa”, Critical Arts, Vol 2 No 1. Tomaselli, op cit. p17. Steadman, op cit. pT. Steadman,I. 1980: “Critical responses to Contemporary South African Theatre”, Critical Arts, Vol | No 3, p42. Gwakam O, 1972:L Black REview, Durban, p210. Kidd , R and Colletta, N. (eds.) 1980: Tradition for Development: Indigenous Structures and folk Media in Non-Formal Education, GFID, Berlin. Ibid, p599. Thid, pp616-620. Willett, J. (ed.) 1964: Brecht on Theatre. Hill and Wang, New York, p108. Steadman 1981, op cit, p2. Gwala, P. 1973a: “‘Towards a National Theatre”, SA Qutfook (August), p133. Gwala, P. 1973b in Black Review, p105,. Gwala, 1973a, op cit. p133. Graham-White, A. 1976: ‘The Characateristics of Traditional Drama”, Yale/Theatare, Vol8 No1, p22. Bryant, A T. 1949: The Zulu People: As They Were befroe the Whiteman Came. Shuter adn Shooter, Pietermaritzburg, pp517-518. Kirby, PR. 1937: “The Musical Practices ofthe Native Paces ofSouth Africa’. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, p286. Scheub, op cit. p71. Krige, E. 1957. T he Social System of the Amazulu. Longman, London. Adams, C. 1974: The Ethnography of Basotho Evaluative Behaviour in the Cognitive Domain Lipapali (Games), Ph.D. Thesis, Indiana. Scheub,op cit. p136. Lestrade, G P. 1037: Traditional Literature in Schapera, op cit, pp294-295. Coplan, D. 1985: In Township Tonight! South Africa’s Black City Music and Theatre. Longman, New York. McNamara, J K. 1980; “Brothers adn Workmates: Home Friend Networksin the Sociallife of Black Migrant Workers in a Gold Mine Hostel”, in Mayer, P. (ed.): Black Workersin an Industrial Society. Oxford, London, p334. Mitchell, 1956: The Kalela Dance. Rhodes-Livingstone Paper No 12. Kunene,D P, 1972: “Metaphor and Symbolism in the Heroic poetry of Southern Africa”, in Dorson, R. (ed.): African Folklore. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Cope, T. 1968: /zibongo: Zulu Praise Poetry. Clarendon Press, Oxford, p38. Guma, S M. 1967: The Form, Content, and Technique of Traditional Literature in Southern Sotho. Van Schaik, Pretoria, p160. Scheub, opcit. p3. Neubane,J. 1951: “Traditional Zulu Verbal Art”, Drum (July/August) Clegg, J. 1977: Personal communication. 1979: “Songs of Innocence and Experience: Women as Composers and Gunner, E. Performers of/zibongo Zulu Praise Poetry”, Research in African Literatures, Vol 10 No 2, p244. Scheub, H. 1984: “A Review of African oral Traditions and Literature”. Paper presented to the Afncan Studies Association Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, Octrober 25-28. 26 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 27