South African theater: ideology and rebellion
1986; Indiana University Press; Volume: 17; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1527-2044
Autores Tópico(s)Theatre and Performance Studies
ResumoIn few countries of the industrialized world can the relationships between theater and society be more clearly traced than they can in South Africa: from the earliest religious enactments of the Zulu and the Basotho' and the comic performance mounted by shipwrecked Portuguese mariners in Natal in 1635,6 to the broad display of theatrical endeavors-black, brown, and white; state-funded and state-harassed; loyalist, escapist, critical, and confrontational-which constitutes the South African theater of the past twenty years. And yet, if one turns to the entertainment pages of any edition of Johannesburg's Citizen or the Cape Times or the Natal Mercury, one finds little overt evidence of either the range or the social immediacy of much contemporary South African theater. What one does find are theater and cabaret listings which uncannily resemble those in London's Sunday Telegraph or the New York Times-fewer offerings, certainly, but much the same sort of thing: The Little Shop of Horrors, an Alan Aykbourne or Neil Simon comedy, an Agatha Christie revival, and a Performing Arts Council production of Aida or The School for Scandal. The impression given is that urban South Africa is culturally little more than a far-flung suburb of London or New York, a Sevenoaks or Scarsdale in the veld. What, of course, such newspapers have largely neglected to reflect is
Referência(s)