Browsing by Author "Loots, Lliane Jennifer."

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Articulating pain and surviving trauma: interrogating the representations of extreme gender violence in two contemporary South African plays by Lara Foot and Phyllis Klotz.
(2019) Mtshali, Nompumelelo.; Loots, Lliane Jennifer.
The high rape statistics in South Africa has launched diverse research enquiries to interrogate extreme gender-based violence particularly child rape and corrective rape. The findings from broad research studies for example by Rachel Jewkes, Hetty Rose-Junius and Loveday Penn Kekana (2005) point to poverty as a cultural legacy of colonialism and power imbalances between genders as some of the most significant symptoms of gender-based violence. Lara Foot and Phyllis Klotz as South African playwrights, directors and activists have used real-life rape cases to create plays that heighten awareness on rape through horrific fictionalised stories. This half-dissertation applies a literary and performative analysis on these plays namely, Tshepang (2005) and Chapter 2 Section 9 (2016), as postcolonial feminist theatrical texts that engage critical scholarly and performance discourse on gender-based violence in South Africa.
"Boys to men": negotiating hegemonic masculinity by using dance as a mechanism to explore the performativity of boyhood into manhood within (KwaZulu-Natal) Hilton College Grade 11 (2012, 2013,2014 and 2015) dramatic art learners
(2015) Cox, Joslyn Ann.; Loots, Lliane Jennifer.
This dissertation will explore the performativity of gender and sexuality amongst adolescent males (16 to 18 years of age) from within the context of the subject specificity of the Dramatic Arts classroom at Hilton College (KZN), with a primary focus on dance. This will be done through interrogating and examining the way in which dance performance practices (as a site of high school learning and education) can function as a transgressive space in which young adolescent South African men are given the opportunity to engage and critically consider and/or reconsider their own masculinities as social/cultural constructions. Hilton College is a private all-boys full-time boarding school, accommodating boys from Grade 8 to Grade 12. Most of the pupils are from economically privileged backgrounds; however, there are some who attend the school through scholarships and/or sponsorship. This is a qualitative research project, and the process of working with my Grade 11 Dramatic Arts students at Hilton College and their creation of choreography for performance will serve as the case study. In my personal experience of the rehearsal process for FUNK in past years I was inspired to investigate the boys’ personal involvement and the underlying issues around their constructions/ideas of masculinity that were evidenced in the rehearsal process. One of the intentions of the project was that through the boys’ involvement in this process they may be offered the opportunity to (re)consider their often narrow and excluding ideas of masculinity, within the context of their own educational and deeply paternalistic schooling environment. The project is participatory action research, as I was involved in observing and engaging with the pupils as they worked through the creation of the piece. It is also ethnographic as I am immersed in the culture of the school. I know the pupils well and it is a safe environment for them to be honest about their opinions and experiences. The participants in the study are the 13 boys in the 2014 Drama class at Hilton College. The class is mixed race, of mixed academic ability and the students are between the ages of 16 and 18.The case study entailed a number of one-on-one interviews with the pupils at the end of the project, as well as various discussions which occurred throughout their involvement. The interviews included questions around Hilton College, the participants’ masculinity, sport at the school, Drama, Arts and Culture and their involvement in FUNK 2014. This research interrogates the assumptions and stereotypes that are to be found in the context of a private all-boys boarding school around dance in particular, and how this affects the way in which the boys’ own masculinity is perceived. One of the intentions in this research study was that the students’ involvement in a mediated dance performance might change their perceptions around dance and themselves as dancing active young men through their exposure to this FUNK project.
Choreographies of identity, self and the ‘African’ dancing body in negotiating contemporary dancing histories and practices in KwaZulu-Natal post 1994 : a case study of Flatfoot Dance Company.
(2018) Loots, Lliane Jennifer.; Olsen, Kathryn Rita.
This thesis, through a series of case studies of my dance work with FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY (post 1994), offers an interrogation of both my internal and external processes of decolonising entrenched paradigms of training, writing/researching and making dance and attempting to re-imagine an inclusive dance practice in South Africa. I use the conceptual framework of ‘decolonisation’, in part, because it is the key political and pedagogical terminology being used in South African within current student protest movements such as ‘#Fees Must Fall’ and within the 2016 (onwards) South African debates around recurriculation of higher learning institutions. I further, use the frame of decolonising as it offers me personally, pedagogically and politically an opportunity to look deeply at what this might mean in action and in practice for my own dance teaching and dance making in South Africa – post 1994. This is an autoethnographic study of a 24-year temporal space in my own engagement with dance and is set against the larger geo-political, social and cultural fights of South Africa. The personal narratives offer a microcosm of larger issues and focus a lens on how arts (and dance in particular) have been, are, and become, a tipping point in the enactment of lived – and significantly – embodied democracy (a term I go on to explain) in South Africa. Section One of this thesis is an investigation – through my community-based dance education work with FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY – into a proposed methodology and praxis for a decolonised pedagogy. Section Two turns away from an explicit discussion around pedagogy and moves to an examination of my choreographic practices with FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY post 1994. In Section Two, I reflect on my own on-going work as a professional choreographer and attempt to bring together my own multiple identities as researcher, teacher and choreographer as I begin to interrogate, through this academic text and the writing and reflective process, my own artistic process as a dance maker, dance educator, and a choreographer in South Africa. I do not isolate methodology in a chapter of its own in this thesis. Given the feminist and autoethnogaphic nature of this study, I have opted instead to allow the methodology to inform and be articulated in each chapter as it reveals process and practice.This thesis is also made up significantly, though not exclusively, of collecting together, re-considering, re-writing and re-focusing a selection of my previously published articles that have spanned 23 years as an academic scholar interrogating my research within the paradigm of Praxis Led Research. This act of re-visiting dance practice, writing and pedagogy is also part of the autoethnographic nature of interrogating and re-interrogating identities of self and of the ‘African’ dancing body. This is all effected in a negotiation of contemporary dancing histories and practices in KwaZulu-Natal post 1994 through my case study of FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY.
"Cleansing the actor" : an appropriated acting methodology utilising the performance theories of Jerzy Grotowski in a South African context - a case study of The Cleansing.
(2013) Moulder, Brandon Michael.; Loots, Lliane Jennifer.
This dissertation focuses on my key research question, “How Grotowski’s performance theories and actor training could be adapted for use in developing my own appropriated acting methodology in post-apartheid South Africa”. I have found that there is a gap in the Grotowskian research field in South Africa for a documented rehearsal process and production that examines how Grotowski’s performance theories/actor training around Poor Theatre (1957-1969), Paratheatre (1970-1975) and Theatre of Sources (1976-1982) can be appropriated and adapted to create a working acting methodology. This documented rehearsal process is provided in this dissertation in the form of two case studies that detail the two phases of my theatre project The Cleansing (2011/2013), providing narratives of what the two productions looked like as well as a detailed analysis of each phases Grotowskian appropriated acting methodology. The Cleansing (2011/2013) is a culmination of my research and knowledge gathered during my university years towards creating a Grotowskian inspired production; the research and rehearsal process conducted during both productions provides valuable information that will aid future scholars in understanding and developing their own acting methodology using the theories of Jerzy Grotowski. I frame these two case studies amongst an analysis of Athol Fugard’s Orestes (1971) and Mbongeni Ngema, Percy Mtwa and Barney Simon’s Woza Albert! (1983) as a means to demonstrate the adaptability of Grotowski’s performance theories/actor training in apartheid South Africa. Then further framing it in post-apartheid South Africa through an analysis of Fana Tshabalala’s Indumba (2013). I conclude by offering insight into the further development of my appropriated acting methodology. I propose the development of further exercises and the evolution of the process, so as to keep it relevant to the times and build a repertoire of exercises that could aid future performers and young theatre makers.
"Cleansing the actor" : an appropriated acting methodology utilising the performance theories of Jerzy Grotowski in a South African context- a case study of the cleansing (2011/2013).
(2013) Moulder, Brandon Michael.; Loots, Lliane Jennifer.
This dissertation focuses on my key research question, “How Grotowski’s performance theories and actor training could be adapted for use in developing my own appropriated acting methodology in post-apartheid South Africa”. I have found that there is a gap in the Grotowskian research field in South Africa for a documented rehearsal process and production that examines how Grotowski’s performance theories/actor training around Poor Theatre (1957-1969), Paratheatre (1970-1975) and Theatre of Sources (1976-1982) can be appropriated and adapted to create a working acting methodology. This documented rehearsal process is provided in this dissertation in the form of two case studies that detail the two phases of my theatre project The Cleansing (2011/2013), providing narratives of what the two productions looked like as well as a detailed analysis of each phases Grotowskian appropriated acting methodology. The Cleansing (2011/2013) is a culmination of my research and knowledge gathered during my university years towards creating a Grotowskian inspired production; the research and rehearsal process conducted during both productions provides valuable information that will aid future scholars in understanding and developing their own acting methodology using the theories of Jerzy Grotowski. I frame these two case studies amongst an analysis of Athol Fugard’s Orestes (1971) and Mbongeni Ngema, Percy Mtwa and Barney Simon’s Woza Albert! (1983) as a means to demonstrate the adaptability of Grotowski’s performance theories/actor training in apartheid South Africa. Then further framing it in post-apartheid South Africa through an analysis of Fana Tshabalala’s Indumba (2013). I conclude by offering insight into the further development of my appropriated acting methodology. I propose the development of further exercises and the evolution of the process, so as to keep it relevant to the times and build a repertoire of exercises that could aid future performers and young theatre makers.
The emergence of intercultural dialogues : children, disability and dance in KwaZulu-Natal : case studies of three dance projects held at The Playhouse Company (1997-1999)
(2001) Samuel, Gerard Manley.; Loots, Lliane Jennifer.
This thesis examines the emerging intercultural dialogues around disability, performance dance and children in the multicultural context of KwaZulu-Natal. It focuses on creative dance (or modem educational dance), as it has emerged in KwaZulu-Natal schools post-1994. The intervention of the arts and a holistic approach to education is examined by appropriating Rudolf Laban (1948), Smith-Autard (1992) and other guiding principles for dance education. The thesis presents an analysis of how creative dance has come to influence notions of contemporary performance dance. This has provided a framework to argue in favour of dance making by untrained (sic) dance teachers and children with and without disabilities. The period under investigation post-1994 coincided with fundamental transformations within the South African cultural landscape, including the following: restructuring of performing arts council, the merging of former separate education departments and the strengthening of disability consciousness within human rights culture. These topics are briefly discussed. The transformation of the arts at The Playhouse Company in KwaZulu-Natal contributed to changes within dance development programmes. These dance development works addressed previously marginalized communities, including the disabled. The potential shifts to mainstream notions of performance dance by children with disabilities have provided an opportunity to theorise the practice of dance in special education and its relation to performance dance in the multicultural KwaZulu-Natal setting. Chapter one begins by firstly problematising disability, which it argues is an occurrence constructed by medical, social, political, historical, cultural and gender identities. Chapter one goes onto explore the changing concepts of dance for children with disabilities by offering a critique of existing notions of performance dance for children with disabilities. Distinctions between social dance. performance dance, dance therapy and educational dance are clarified and the practice of children's dance is contextualised. Chapter two argues that 'disability' within a context of multiculturalism in South Africa could be seen as a culture in and of itself. It does this by accessing the critical writings of Schechner (1991), Pavis (1992), Brustein (1991) and others. Definitions of 'culture' are problematised and the debates: high art vs culture, fusion, multi-, intra-, and inter-culturalism in the South African context are explored. Chapter three looks at three specific dance projects, which emanated from The Playhouse Company. The case studies explore how children between the ages of 8 - 18, who are defined as disabled, have engaged with dance and have had little or no interaction with the performing arts particularly as performers. It critiques and evaluates these projects in order to make conclusions around the following: the need for training of dancers and choreographers with disabilities and to underscore the role of the media in the disabled's plea for access to the performing arts. The idea of integrated 'enablers'(children and adults) with disabled children in the same performance dance work was innovative. Such inclusion and re-dress, as also expressed by The White Paper 6 on Special Education are supported by this thesis. Many children and their teachers have, through these creative movement and dance projects, begun to challenge notions of disability and of performance dance within the 'mainstream' performing dance environment as they emerge as potential artists in their own space. The thesis concludes by offering suggestions for how dance by those defined as 'disabled' is understood, critiqued and reported by reviewers and researchers of dance. It is hoped that these suggestions would strengthen the wider acceptance of notions of dance that emerge from a range of previously marginalised groups.
A feminist postructuralist examination around the utilisation of the body as a contested site of struggle for meaning in contemporary theatre dance in South Africa.
(2000) Castelyn, Sarahleigh.; Loots, Lliane Jennifer.
Using a framework of feminism and poststructuralism, this thesis aims to interrogate the utilisation of the body as a contested site of struggle for meaning in contemporary theatre dance in South Africa. "Both feminism, as a politics, and dance, as a cultural practice, share a concern for the body" (Brown, 1983: 198). A feminist analysis of dance can offer a tool to interrogate the dominant discourses of gender and race that surround and permeate both the female and male body in contemporary theatre dance. The body is not a neutral site onto which cultural codes and conventions are inscribed, as the dancer's body is always marked in the physical sense of gender and race. This thesis aims to decode the body and examine how the discourses of gender and race are embodied by the moving body on stage - specifically in the South African (KwaZulu-Natal) context. By a feminist appropriation of the poststructural endeavour, this research will look at how the body, as discourse, can be interrogated to examine how the interconnected discourses of gender and race surround and permeate the moving body. The utilisation of a poststructural paradigm will aid in the examination of how the dominant discourses of gender and race are hegemonically imposed onto the body. Poststructuralism also offers an understanding that there exist counter-discourses that have the ability to resist the dominant discourses of gender and race. This notion becomes important to the study of contemporary theatre dance as an art form. This thesis will examine how South African (Durban-based) contemporary theatre dance choreographers explore the body's potential to be subversive in performance. The thesis will focus on the body's ability to interrogate the discourses that operate in its surroundings and permeate its lived reality.
Gender dynamics and the role of participatory/development theatre in a post-apartheid South Africa: the example of DramAidE.
(1997) Young-Jahangeer, Miranda.; Loots, Lliane Jennifer.
Participatory education (Friere 1972) and by extension participatory drama/theatre (Boal 1979, Mda 1993) has been regarded as particularly appropriate for oppressed communities, since participatory theatre for development - which involves the active participation of both spectator and actor - encourages disempowered communities and individuals to view change as possible (Mda 1993). However, taking DramAidE (Drama in AIDS Education) as a case study this dissertation argues that in a post- apartheid South Africa the tendency with development/ participatory theatre has been to marginalise questions of gender in the focus on race without an awareness that it is the interconnections between race/ class and gender oppressions which characterise a society (Davis 1984). This coupled with the fact that theatre for development has a tendency, if not effectively facilitated, to allow for the reinforcement of dominant [patriarchal] values (Kerr 1995) makes an awareness of gender dynamics in participatory theatre projects particularly relevant.
Interrogating the creative dance methodologies of Jacques Le Coq, Steven Paxton and Lloyd Newson and how they impact on my own contemporary choreographic practices – with specific reference to Em(brace) choreographed in 2015 and re-worked in 2016 (KZN, South Africa).
(2018) Zondi, Thembelani Percival.; Loots, Lliane Jennifer.
This half dissertation offers an autoethnographical (and hence, personal) study of the performance and dance/physical theatre training methodologies developed by France’s Jacques Le Coq, USA’s Steve Paxton and Britain’s Lloyd Newson and how they impact on my own growing South African dance practices as choreographer, specifically in the work Emb(race), created in 2015 and re-worked for Jomba! Fringe in 2016. This study focuses on interrogating ideas around training and developing performers for readiness in dance performance. As researcher, I also draw upon theoretical and socio/political ideas around constructions of masculinities and how they may relate to black male identities in the context of South Africa, as these were the themes I worked with in my dance work Emb(race) (2015/6).
Interrogating the synthesis of African traditional rituals and spirituality in contemporary South African dance: critical reflections on the dance work of Vincent Mantsoe, Moeketsi Koena, and my own work.
(2020) Mtshali, Mduduzi.; Loots, Lliane Jennifer.
This part dissertation explores the synthesis of selected, black (AmaZulu and Sotho) South African traditional rituals and spirituality, and the way they are negotiated and manifest in selected contemporary South African dance. This will be effected by reflecting firstly, on an examination and analysis of the dance work of South Africa’s Vincent Sekwati Mantsoe (KonKoriti- JOMBA! 2016) and Moeketsi Koena (Point of View-New Dance 2004). Both these choreographers enjoy both national and international reputations for their unique (and differing) fusion of South African cultural traditional practice and contemporary dance practice. I then move on to investigate how both Mantsoe and Koena have influenced and informed my own rehearsal style and choreographic processes, particularly with reference to the creation of Alive Kids (2016/17) - a dance performance work I created in 2016 and then re-worked in 2017 for the JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Festival at the KZN Gallery (August 2017). I will offer a detailed self-reflection and autoethnographic interrogation of my own rehearsal and creative process which describes and analyses, how-in this work-I began to push my own understanding of traditional Black South African culture and its links to ritual, spirituality- and contemporary identity. Finally I offer an autoethnographic study within what Timothy Rice refers to as “subject centred research” (2017:139). In investigating my own praxis and the influences and connections to South African dance makers such as Mantsoe and Koena, I have interrogated my own multifaceted Black identity as a dance maker and choreographer and how my traversing cultural and traditional practices engages with the growing lexicon of critical dance making in South Africa.
Postcolonial feminisms speaking through an 'accented' cinema : the construction of Indian women in the films of Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta.
(2004) Moodley, Subeshini.; Loots, Lliane Jennifer.
This thesis proposes that the merging of the theories of ‘accented’ cinema and postcolonial feminisms allows for the establishment of a theoretical framework for the analysis of (what will be argued for) an emerging postcolonial feminist film practice. In An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001), Hamid Naficy argues that even though the experiences of diaspora and exile differ from one person to the next, films produced by diasporic filmmakers exhibit similarities at various levels. These similarities, he says, arise as a result of a tension between a very distinct connection to the native country and the need to conform to the host society in which these filmmakers now live. Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta are women filmmakers of the Indian diaspora whose films depict Indian women – in comparison with their popular cinematic construction - in unconventional and controversial ways. These characters, at some crucial point in the films, transgress their oppressive nationalist representation through the reclaiming of their bodies and sexual identities. This similarity of construction in Nair and Mehta’s female protagonists, as a result, facilitates a filtering of postcolonial feminisms throughout the narrative of their films. Even though the postcolonial feminist writings of Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1991, 1994, 1997) and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1990, 1994, 1996, 1999) do not relate directly to the study of film or cinematic practices, their works, specifically those regarding the construction, maintenance and perpetuation of nation and nationalism in postcolonial narratives, serve as a specifically gender-focused appropriation of Naficy’s theories. Mohanty and Spivak’s arguments surrounding the use of text and, particularly, narrative as tools for the representation and empowerment of Third world women, women of colour and subaltern women, work toward illustrating how postcolonial feminisms articulate through a specific moment of ‘accented’ filmmaking: that of women filmmakers of the Indian diaspora.
Representing the 'ouens' : an investigation into the construction of performed identities on stage in KwaZulu-Natal, in the works of Quincy Fynn (Walking like an African, 2004) and Kaseran Pillay (My cousin brother, 2003).
(2006) Munsamy, Verne R.; Loots, Lliane Jennifer.
'The core of the theatre is an encounter. The [character) who makes an act of self revelation is, so to speak, one who establishes contact with himself. That is to say, an extreme confrontation, sincere, disciplined, precise and total - not merely a confrontation with his thoughts, but one involving his whole being from instinct and his unconscious right up to his most lucid state'. (Jerzy Grotowski, in Catron, 2000:19) This dissertation investigates the construction of the marginalised self, an identity, and the impact that context, pre and post-apartheid South Africa, may have on that constructed masculine identity. This examination of the self is mediated through the medium of theatre. It is this 'encounter', which theatre offers, that becomes an important instrument through which the self, society and social issues may be examined and critiqued; and it is through this critique that change may be sparked and brought about. This investigation of the self, the construction of a masculine identity, is looked at through the writings of, amongst others, Stuart Hall (1996 (a) & 1996 (b); 1997), Lawrence Grossberg (1996), Judith Butler (1993, 1999), Robert Connell (1987; 2002) and Robert Morrell (1998, 2001(a) & 2001 (b)). Further discussions around the construction of identity and its relationship to context (a multicultural and multiracial context) is examined via the writings of Richard Schechner (1991) and Patrice Pavis (1992). The theatrical forms of self-standing monologues and stand-up comedy are useful forms through which 'protest' against the status quo may be engaged. These forms are utilised by Quincy Fynn (self-standing monologues) and Kaseran Pillay (stand-up comedy); and it is through their performance works Walking like an African (2004) and My Cousin brother (2003), respectively, that this dissertation looks at their challenges to hegemonic forms of masculinity.
Shifting spaces in the 'new South Africa' : site-specific performance as an intercultural exploration of sites, using as examples Jay Pather's Cityscapes, Durban (2002) and Home, Durban (2003)
(2006) Craighead, Clare Leslie.; Loots, Lliane Jennifer.
This dissertation aims to investigate an extended notion of site within site-specific dance theatre. Using multiple theoretical frameworks, which include second wave feminism and its recognition of the body as a site of/for struggle (Goldberg, 1987) in conjunction with site-specific performance theory (Kaye, 2000; Kwon, 2004), Foucault's (1979) notion of 'biopower' and cultural studies, this dissertation seeks to engage site-specific dance theatre as a mode of social and cultural production. Multiculturalism (Schechner, 1988/1991) and interculturalism (Bharucha, 1996; Schechner, 1991) in performance theory and practice, are also engaged to solidify debates around performance as instances of cultural production. These frameworks are engaged in relation to the contemporary production of site-specific dance theatre in Durban, South Africa. Local dance practitioner and academic Jay Pather's site-specific/installation works CityScapes, Durban (2002) and Home, Durban (2003) are used as case-studies for interrogation and investigation in relation to the chosen theoretical discourses. CityScapes and Home provide two instances of site-specific dance theatre that have emerged from within post-apartheid South Africa. The two works are engaged in close relation to the post-apartheid South African context, and its promotion of a 'rainbow nation' in the 'New South Africa'. CityScapes provides a platform to engage ideas of access to and ownership of dance forms and the spaces which they occupy - prompting critical questioning around the impact of South Africa's historical segregations and their influence upon contemporary (South African) society/societies. Similarly, Home provides a platform to engage notions of 'homespaces' as these relate to access to and ownership of private and public spaces, and how this impacts cultural inter(re)actions in post-apartheid South Africa. Both case-studies provide instances of critical performance practice, which allows for meaningful theoretical inter(re)action in relation to the two chosen performance works. In this light, this dissertation also provides an instance of much needed academic enquiry into the local, South African contemporary dance-scape.
Writing black sisters : interrogating the construction by selected black female playwrights of performed black female identities in contemporary post-apartheid South African theatre.
(2012) Malimba, Noxolo Anele.; Loots, Lliane Jennifer.
Theatre is a political space which often reflects the social, political and personal conditions and consciousness of our society. It is also a place that allows for the speaking of private stories; a space that proffers the construction, re-construction, articulation and re-articulation of identities. Coloured, Indian and Bantu (1) identities were all defined ‘black’ within the simplistic categorisation of the complex, problematic apartheid (2) system that perceived individuals as either ‘black' (3) or ‘white’. As much as the apartheid system is one wherein the notion of ‘black’ shifted, it remained a system in which ‘black’ was often constructed as a homogeneous category of identity. In its zenith during the late 1940s, apartheid’s ‘blacks’ referred to the Bantu populace. Coloured and Indian identities were therein recognised as not ‘white’, and so were inadvertently considered ‘black’; perhaps just not ‘black enough’. Coloured and Indian identities were therefore located as vague and marginalised identities in a system that while on the one hand did not impose the same fierce oppression as inflicted on the Bantu, was also one which on the other hand excluded these groups from enjoying the benefits of being privileged whites. Then came the 1980s which saw a shift in the make-up of black/ness where apartheid ideology was concerned. With the birth of the invidious tricameral system which came to govern South African society until the emergence of a democratic nation in 1994, ‘black’ was now broken down and defined into its constituent parts: Bantu, Coloured and Indian. Although this system seemingly regarded each of these race groups, in that each was now named and thus acknowledged as opposed to simply being defined as the homogeneous category of ‘black’, it was nonetheless a system that separated and consequently gave rise to unequal power relations not only between ‘black’ and ‘white’, but now also within these three distinct black/nesses existing within ‘black’. Navigating the most historically marginalised of identities – the black female – this dissertation examines the construction of black South African female identities in the respective post-1994-produced play texts by six black South African female playwrights: Motshabi Tyelele’s Shwele Bawo (In Homann, 2009), Bongi Ndaba’s unpublished play text Shaken (see appendix A), Lueen Conning-Ndlovu’s A Coloured Place (In Perkins, 1999), Rehane Abrahams’ What the water gave me (In Fourie, 2006), Krijay Govender’s Women in Brown (In Chetty, 2002) and Muthal Naidoo’s Flight from the Mahabarath (In Perkins, 1999). This dissertation will in part engage character analyses of Bantu, Coloured and Indian female identities as articulated across the six play texts. Each category of black/ness will be explored in its own chapter, where the characters relevant to that particular black/ness shall be examined. This separation of chapters into these categories is by way of highlighting that endless differences in black/ness exist within the label ‘black’. While this particular separation of chapters is a perpetuation of apartheid discourse, as was the reality within South Africa’s history, and particularly from the emergence of the tricameral system onwards, the final chapter of this dissertation will be an attempt to dissolve these racial categories of black/ness as implemented by and within the legislation of the apartheid legacy. In a post-apartheid South Africa, it is not only Bantu women who are ‘black’, as Coloured and Indian women now claim ‘black’. This dissertation highlights the need to look at difference within similarity and multiplicity in the myriad black South African female identities that comprise the landscape of our contemporary, current and critical post-1994 theatre context, rather than to speak of a ‘typical’ black South African female identity. (1) This term will be italicised throughout this dissertation, by way of acknowledging its dual meaning. Within South Africa‟s historical context, „Bantu‟ was used as a derogatory term. The land set apart for black Africans during apartheid, known as Bantustans, affirms the disparaging nature of this term. Similarly, the belittling connotations of the term are noted in the system of Bantu education; a system specifically designed to fit the black African populace for their marginal role within apartheid society. For the purposes of this dissertation, the term „Bantu‟ will be used firstly, as a way to distinguish between the three categories of black/ness under exploration, where the term will be used to refer to black African South African identity, and secondly and most importantly, the term will be used as a reclaiming of black African South African identity from its historical derisive connotations. It is also important to note here, that within the isiZulu language, the term simply means „people‟. (2) During apartheid, there was a simplification of the term „black‟. This dissertation recognises that the apartheid stratifications of Bantu, Coloured and Indian, under the „logic‟ of grouping „like‟ together (that is, apartheid‟s „black‟ group), was in itself a false logic, because it did not acknowledge that there exists within each specific racial stratification, different cultural groupings and languages. For example, this dissertation could have expanded the discussion on Bantu identity by examining Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho etc identities, the discussion on Coloured identities could have included analyses of Javanese, Malay, Cape etc identities and the discussion on Indian identity could have explored different cultural groupings within Hindu, Muslim, Tamil etc. It is understood that in a post-apartheid context, there exists endless differences and multiplicities within the black identities of Bantu, Coloured and Indian. This dissertation therefore offers a terrain in which these myriad black/nesses are explored as fluid and contested. (3) Throughout this dissertation, the racial categorisations of „black‟ and „white‟ are in lower case „B‟ and „W‟ respectively, for the political demotion of these terms in a post-apartheid context. This is by way of politically challenging the essentialist thinking that underpinned the racial segregation and inequality primarily embodied by these terms during apartheid. The terms „Bantu‟, „Coloured‟ and „Indian‟ shall be in capital „B‟, „C‟ and „I‟ respectively. This is for the purpose of drawing attention to the categories of black/ness in a post-1994 context, whereby each is acknowledged and visible individually, as opposed to being articulated as part of the false logic of a homogeneous black/ness.