Theatre and Apartheid Flashcards

Workshop Theatre

• Created not written: Emphasizes process over script.

• Involves research, improvisation, scripting, music creation, rehearsal, and performance.

• Relates to Serpent Players of New Brighton, with John Kani, Winston Ntshona, and Athol Fugard.

• Performance over Literature: More about life than literature.

• Structure: Draws on oral traditional art forms.

• Performance Style: Generic to townships, non-naturalistic, musical, physical, larger than life.

• Ironic comic vision, episodic, documents personal, political, cultural, and national history.

• Group written, performance-based, various forms, collective subject, ensemble work, grotesque parody.

Athol Fugard as Humanist

• Deals with immediate social and political problems, drawing on experiences of black African actors.

• Black theatre is by and for Africans, emerging strongly in the 1960s and 1970s, introducing the Serpent Players.

• Plays address oppressive and degrading laws of South Africa affecting black and sometimes white people.

• Aims to make audiences feel shame and guilt for inhumanity.

Principal Apartheid Laws

• Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949): Prohibited marriage between people of different races.

• Immorality Act (1950): Criminalized sexual relations between people of different races.

• Population Registration Act (1950): Formalized racial classification with identity cards.

• Suppression of Communism Act (1950): Banned the South African Communist Party.

• Riotous Assemblies Act (1956): Prohibited disorderly gatherings.

• Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act (1951): Allowed demolition of black shack land slums.

• Unlawful Organisations Act (1960): Outlawed organizations threatening to the government.

• Sabotage Act (1962), General Law Amendment Act (1966), Terrorism Act (1967), Internal Security Act (1976).

• Group Areas Act (1950): Partitioned the country into different areas for different racial groups.

• Bantu Authorities Act (1951): Created separate government structures for blacks.

• Native Building Workers Act & Native Services Levy (1951): Forced white employers to fund black worker housing.

• Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (1953): Segregated public amenities.

• Bantu Education Act (1953): Separate education system for African students.

• Bantu Urban Areas Act (1954): Curtailed black migration to cities.

• Mines and Work Act (1956): Formalized racial discrimination in employment.

• Promotion of Black Self-Government Act (1958): Created nominally independent "homelands."

Native Delegate Systems

• Replaced by schemes for "self–governing Bantu units" with administrative powers decentralized to each unit aspiring to autonomy.

• National units: North-Sotho, South-Sotho, Tswana, Zulu, Swazi, Xhosa, Tsonga, and Venda.

Black Homeland Citizenship Act (1970)

• Changed blacks' status from South African citizens to citizens of autonomous territories (Bantustans).

• Aim: To make whites the demographic majority by having Bantustans choose "independence".

• Homelands that chose autonomy: Transkei (1976), Bophuthatswana (1977), Venda (1979), and Ciskei (1981).

• Afrikaans Medium Decree (1974): Required equal use of Afrikaans and English in high schools outside homelands.

Serpent Players

• Founded in 1963 with Fugard's help by black residents of New Brighton, including John Kani and Winston Ntshona.

• Acted cautiously due to legal restrictions.

• Named after their first performance location in a former zoo snake pit.

• Focused on creating plays based on personal experiences.

The Island - Starting Points

• Story taken from prisoners’ experiences smuggled to Fugard.

• Workshop sessions began with Fugard using a large blanket.

The Island- Acting Style

• Very physical, spontaneous, mime.

• Actor-centered, enhances meaning.

• Multiple uses for props to emphasize hardship; intimacy.

• Evokes empathy; simple to follow, aided by physicality & subtle storytelling.

The Island-Staging

• Bare, minimalist cell setting representing isolation from the world.

• Not specific to show universality.

• Emptiness signifying meaninglessness/existential philosophy.

• Simple and functional props (nails, can, medallion) act as a connection to the real world.

Playwright’s Intention (Themes)

• Convey meaning on inequality and inhumanity.

• Individual vs. state/Art vs. Illusion/History vs. Legends.

• Apartheid, Human Dignity, Survival, Justice, Prejudice, Brotherhood.

Vocal and Physical Demands

• Performers require vocal flexibility, agility, rapid maneuvers, and endurance.

Grotowski’s basic theory

• Actor is paramount, using all physical and mental powers.

• Includes gesture, mime, grouping, visual metaphor.

• Aims for fusion of meaning and movement.

• Envisages ‘poor theatre’ stripped of inessentials.

• Eliminated everything not required by theatre, leaving the actor and the audience.

EXISTENTIALISM

• Considered quality of existence, not reason for existence.

• Each individual is responsible for making himself what he is.

The Myth of Sisyphus

• Sisyphus was punished to an eternity of pushing a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down.

• Realized the absurdity of life's tasks; achieved victory, imagined as happy and heroic.

John Woodruff in conversation with John Kani

• Passion for storytelling led to meeting Athol Fugard.

• Inspired by Sophocles and Shakespeare as storytellers.

• Collaboration with Fugard and Ntshona on Sizwe Banzi is Dead and The Island, born out of a passion for truth.

• Created a new genre of protest theatre.