Remembering the home you never knew. Rural traces in contemporary urban township performances
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 14960992 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gay Morris (University of Cape Town, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 236-246 |
| Publication date | 2014-11-03 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | South African Theatre Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1013-7548 • E-ISSN: 2163-7660 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10137548.2014.968451 |
| OpenAlex | W4249851773 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 6 |
Life in the black townships surrounding Cape Town is very hard, but in spite of day-to-day difficulties, theatre is practised prolifically by the youths who, born and raised in a post-apartheid world, have spent all their lives in the urban township. In spite of, or possibly because of, today's harsh urban conditions, the plays by these youths are haunted by ideologies, characters and cultural traditions attached to older generations living in rural conditions with which the young have very limited lived connection. This article examines why this might be so and also why the youths find such ‘old-fashioned’ ideas worth embedding in their plays. Impelled by African scholars' theories concerning how individuals nurture selfhood in the shiftless everyday of contemporary African cities, and drawing upon Marvin Carlson's concept of haunting, and Pierre Bourdieu's proposition that we make meaning by positing oppositions, the article investigates how and why the youths dialogue with these oppositional attitudes and states. Two plays, developed in Cape Town's townships and performed in 2007, are discussed as exemplary instances
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Cape · Everyday life · Ideology · Nature versus nurture · Political science · Politics · Proposition · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Theatre and Performance Studies
| Citations per year | 0.09 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2015 - 2015 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |