South African performance and archives of memory

251 Pages·2013·1.94 MB·English

by  Yvette Hutchison

South African performance and archives of memory
theatre
·
theory practice
· ·
performance
series editors
MARIA M. DELGADO
MAGGIE B. GALE
PETER LICHTENFELS
advisory board
MICHAEL BILLINGTON
SANDRA HEBRON
MARK RAVENHILL
JANELLE REINELT
PETER SELLARS
JOANNE TOMPKINS
This series will offer a space for those people who practise theatre to have a dialogue with
those who think and write about it.
The series has a flexible format that refocuses the analysis and documentation of
performance. It provides, presents and represents material which is written by those who
make or create performance history, and offers access to theatre documents, different
methodologies and approaches to the art of making theatre.
The books in the series are aimed at students, scholars, practitioners and theatre-visiting
readers. They encourage reassessments of periods, companies and figures in twentieth-
century and twenty-first-century theatre history, and provoke and take up discussions of
cultural strategies and legacies that recognise the heterogeneity of performance studies.
The series editors, with the advisory board, aim to publish innovative challenging and
exploratory texts from practitioners, theorists and critics.
also available
The Paris Jigsaw: Internationalism and the city’s stages
DAVID BRADBY AND MARIA M. DELGADO (EDS)
Theatre in crisis? Performance manifestos for a new century
MARIA M. DELGADO AND CARIDAD SVICH (EDS)
World stages, local audiences: Essays on performance, place, and politics
PETER DICKINSON
Performing presence: Between the live and the simulated
GABRIELLA GIANNACHI AND NICK KAYE
Performance in a time of terror: Critical mimesis and the age of uncertainty
JENNY HUGHES
Jean Genet and the politics of theatre: Spaces of revolution
CARL LAVERY
Not magic but work: An ethnographic account of a rehearsal process
GAY MCAULEY
‘Love me or kill me’: Sarah Kane and the theatre of extremes
GRAHAM SAUNDERS
Trans-global readings: Crossing theatrical boundaries
CARIDAD SVICH
Negotiating cultures: Eugenio Barba and the intercultural debate
IAN WATSON (ED.)
South African
performance and archives
of memory
YVETTE HUTCHISON
Manchester University Press
Manchester and New York
distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan
Copyright © Yvette Hutchison 2013
The right of Yvette Hutchison to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published by Manchester University Press
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and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
ISBN 978 0 7190 8373 0 hardback
First published 2013
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
CONTENTS
Contents
List of illustrations vii
Acknowledgements ix
Note on terminology xi
Introduction 1
1 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s reconfiguring
of the past: remembering and forgetting 22
2 Dramatising the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: the
role of theatre practitioners in exploring the past 54
3 Staging a nation: the Voortrekker Monument and Freedom
Park 91
4 Performing the African Renaissance and the ‘rainbow nation’ 133
5 Post-apartheid repertoires of memory 170
Select bibliography 203
Index 229

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
3.1 Elements of Freedom Park [with kind permission of
Freedom Park]. 127
3.2 Detailed map of S’khumbuto [with kind permission of
Freedom Park]. 128
4.1 TSS 1 Manuscript, from Ahmed Baba Institute, catalogue
no. AB, 2/7/07 [accessed via the South Africa–Mali Project,
the Timbuktu Manuscripts Project and Iziko Museums of
Cape Town]. 151
5.1 Company members of Magnet and Jazzart Theatre in Cargo
(2007) [photograph taken by Garth Stead, compliments
of Jazzart Dance Theatre, in collaboration with Magnet
Theatre Company]. 193
5.2 Leverne Botha in Cargo (2007) [photograph taken by
Garth Stead, compliments of Jazzart Dance Theatre, in
collaboration with Magnet Theatre Company]. 199

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are many people to be acknowledged for their role in this research
project. First, the Leverhulme Trust for funding the project Performing
Memory: Theatricalising Identity in Contemporary South Africa, which
made the research for the monograph possible. Then the staff at all the
archives and museums at which I have done research, thank you for help
with accessing material. In particular I’d like to thank Esther Esmyol of
Iziko for her help with the Timbuktu Manuscript Project, and Estelle
Pretorius and Sandra Rhode for their help with accessing primary mate-
rial on the Voortrekker Monument and history. All the artists who made
themselves available for interview and generously shared their work
with me. Kim Walker and Peter Lichtenfells at Manchester University
Press for their advice and support through the project.
And finally my husband Mike for patiently helping me with the
archives, going with me to exhibitions, and quietly keeping me calm and
focused when I felt overwhelmed by the task at hand; and my sister Nola
for keeping me sane in the hours of writing . . . Thank you!