Izwi labagcini: investigating the relationship between homosexuality and ubungoma through the scripting of ritual theatre.

Abstract

The following study was carried out as an investigation of the relationship between queerness and ubungoma. I used playwriting as an aspect of creative research to inquire on the phenomenon of spirituality influencing sexuality in the African paradigm (Ramsay 2002; Smith and Dean 2009). My own journey as a queer man called to ubungoma was incorporated in this autoethnographic study (Holman Jones 2007; Custer 2014). During a three-month process, I composed a play titled Izwi LabaGcini [Word of the Keepers], which was developed under a Critical Friends Protocol of six participants, that met for three feedback sessions between December 2021 and February 2022 (Costa and Kallick 1993; Appleby 1998; Constantino 2010). The Protocol provided critical feedback not only on Izwi LabaGcini as a dramatic text, but also as an artefact that interrogates the relationship between queerness and ubungoma. The data for this study was generated through zoom recordings of the Critical Friends Protocol, and the Reflexive Journal I kept as a means to interrogate my creative writing methods throughout the scripting of Izwi LabaGcini (Sutherland 2007; Ortlipp 2008). The theories informing this study were that of Afrocentricity (Molefe 1988), Decoloniality (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2015), and Ritual Theatre (Soyinka 1976). I have also employed Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa’s writings on ubungoma, as a seminal frame of reference, in discussing ubungoma as a phenomenon of exploration (2003). The findings of this qualitative inquiry contribute to discourse pertaining to African sexualities in the context of a continent where LGBTQIA+ rights continue to be a struggle we contend with (Patton 2002; Golafshani 2003; Chilisa and Preece 2005). Izwi LabaGcini resulted as a contribution to knowledge around the interlinks between queerness and ubungoma (Dean and Smith 2009); and it has further contributed to South African theatre and literature in what I have coined The Absurd Ritual - a theatre that observes black queer life in the context of African spiritualities.