Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

As director and designer, we adopt the broadest possible definition of the arts to accommodate literary, visual, and performing media that are intertwined in theatre-making. As South African academics and professional practitioners, we are obliged to prioritize the project of transformation and invest in the capacity of our discipline to commit to decolonization. We probe mechanisms in theatre (as a medium of encounter and exchange) that may activate the understanding of, and participation in, debates that address the inequities of an imperial legacy. We anchor our discussion in the staging of a condensed version of Antony and Cleopatra as a schools touring production, with the entangled ideological and pedagogical issues this project implied. This ninety-minute performance, followed by a question and answer session, provides scope to focus on issues of participatory inclusion, accessibility and relevance. We propose that the ensemble, as a model of collective action, performs a message in excess of simply facilitating the goal of making a set-work clearer to learners as a primary target audience. Communicating through voice and image, the ensemble produces an animated treatment of narrative that might otherwise be perceived as alienating and archaic. The ensemble, as a unit, corresponds with the concept of a cohesive egalitarian community capable of collective action. This social form has political and cultural purchase in Southern Africa, where the concept of Ubuntu articulates notions of being and belonging. Communicating this concept is crucial to creating robust, contemporary theatre that contests and re-imagines narratives from a critically informed position.