Song as a Register for Black Feminist Theatre-Making Aesthetic

This article looks at the play, Dipina tsa Monyanyako, which was made with a group of domestic workers in South Africa. The article explores how song is used as a strategy to locate ways of creating and making in South Africa. Song therefore registers a historical way of imagining and how marginalised groups; women have written themselves into history. The production is a creative conversation where song is used to express care and anger in everyday life. Current approaches to knowledge production are inadequate in capturing song, poetics, and interpreting the forms of performances black women engage. The article makes a case for song as a form of black feminist theatre-making aesthetic. Using Dipina tsa Monyanyako, I argue that songs, silence, sighs have important methodological implications for arts-based processes and research. In post-apartheid South Africa, performances are characterized by constant aesthetic reinvention. From precolonial expressions of life to protest theatre, performance aesthetics have been a way of revealing everyday life and struggles. For black women, theatre becomes the meeting place of the expression of their lives and a space of reflection and analysis of those lives, even though, historically, the presence of black women in theatre has been minimal. The creation of Dipina tsa Monyanyako allowed for the emergence of women as empowered subjects, and song became a portal for collective transformation.

The Play of Law in Modern British Theatre

The Play of Law in Modern British Theatre investigates the place and purpose of law in a range of modern dramatic settings and writings. Each chapter, which focusses on a particular area of law and the work of a particular playwright, illustrates the important role of theatre in articulating legal and political issues to a modern audience. The encompassing aspiration of The Play of Law in Modern British Theatre introduces the reader to a variety of genres in modern dramatic writing. From the ‘state of the nation’ plays of the 1980s and 1990s, to ‘verbatim’ and modern historical drama, to the calculated violence of ‘in-yer-face’, and associated expressions of radical and feminist theatre. Amongst those playwrights whose work is considered are David Hare, Richard Norton-Taylor, Caryl Churchill, Howard Brenton, Mike Bartlett, Sarah Kane, Bryony Lavery and Evan Placey. Along the way the reader is introduced to an equally wide range of areas of political and legal debate; from constitutional reform, to the present state of international law, to a variety of familiar controversies in associated areas of law, society, and gender.

The Dilemma of Motherhood and Domesticity in Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn

This paper is a study of feminist theatre as a rejection of masculine superiority in theatre and social life. It examines a modern play that depicts the role of women as mothers and the conflicts defining the status of motherhood. It investigates thematic trends and objectives of feminist theatre, a theatre that started with the birth of second-wave feminism. It analyzes the reflection of women’s social and political lives as represented by this theatre. To meet that end, it examines Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn (2013) that depicts issues of unsettled identities, women empowerment, and the dilemma of motherhood. The study explores the way this Play represents an imaginary space where women can play a revolutionary role by questioning their domesticity and careers. The Play is written by a feminist playwright, has an all-woman cast, and is produced by a woman director. Rapture, Blister, Burn, meanwhile, portrays the possible ways whereby the new era showcases an acceptable resolution for the unsolved dilemma of domesticity and motherhood. This paper correspondingly interrogates the theatrical depictions of the women characters, who come up with limited life choices and are trapped in the socially constructed dilemmas of domestic lives and the way they combat the social restrictions.