Remembering You Like Something I'd Forgotten: Memory, Identity and Form in Current South African Theatre-making

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Notes

1. Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), p. 30.

2. Louise Buchler, Remembering You Like Something I'd Forgotten (Pietermaritzburg: Unpublished play script, 2007).

3. Catherine Hall, ‘“Turning a Blind Eye”: Memories of Empire’, in Memory, ed. by P. Fara and K. Patterson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 27–46 (p. 30).

4. Christopher Balme, Decolonizing the Stage: Theatrical Syncretism and Post-colonial Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999).

5. Richard Schechner, ‘Intercultural Performance: An Introduction’, Drama Review, 26.2 (Summer 1982/83), 3–4.

6. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).

7. Loren Kruger, The Drama of South Africa (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 191.

8. Ibid., p. 214.

9. Dwight Conquergood, ‘Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research’, The Drama Review, 46.2 (Summer 2002), 145–56 (p. 146).

10. Ibid., p. 151.

11. Gail S. Goodman and Annika Melinder, ‘The Development of Autobiographical Memory: A New Model’, in Everyday Memory, ed. by Svein Magnussen and Tore Helstrup (Hove: Psychology Press, 2007), pp. 111–34.

12. Alan Baddeley, Your Memory: A User's Guide (New York: Firefly Books, 2004); Memory, ed. by Patricia Fara and Karalyn Patterson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Svein Magnussen, Tor Endestad, Asher Koriat and Tore Helstrup. ‘What Do People Believe about Memory and How Do They Talk about Memory?’ in Everyday Memory, ed. by Svein Magnussen and Tore Helstrup (Hove: Psychology Press, 2007), pp. 5–26.

13. Baddeley, Your Memory; Gail S Goodman, Svein Magnussen, Jan Andersson, Tor Endestad, Lene Lokken and Agnes Cathrine Moestue, ‘Memory Illusions and False Memories in the Real World’, in Everyday Memory, pp. 157–82; Juliet Mitchell, ‘Memory and Psychoanalysis’, in Memory, pp. 95–112.

14. Phillippe Denis, with input from Cynthia Hlabisa, Busi Magwaza, Nokhaya Makiwane, Carol Mitchell and Elizabeth Towell, ‘Sharing Family Stories in Times of AIDS’, Soul Beat Africa, http://www.comminit.com/en/node/216622.

15. Irin Africa website, ‘Memory Boxes to Help Say Goodbye’, http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=46926.

16. J. Carsten, ‘Introduction: Ghosts of Memory’, in Ghosts of Memory: Essays on Remembrance and Relatedness, ed. by J. Carsten (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), pp. 1–35.

17. Goodman and Melinder, ‘The Development of Autobiographical Memory’.

18. In Baddeley, Your Memory, p. 39.

19. In Magnussen et al., ‘What do People Believe’, p. 10.

20. Ibid., p. 11.

21. Amy Shuman, Other People's Stories: Entitlement Claims and the Critique of Empathy (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005), p. 6.

22. Ibid., p. 59.

23. Philip Auslander, Presence and Resistance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994).

24. Shuman, Other People's Stories, p. 19.

25. ‘Simunye’was the slogan for SABC Television Channel One. See Greig Coetzee's play Happy Natives (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2004 ) for the satiric breaking of stereotypes set up during apartheid, such as the racist Afrikaner, the rural spear-wielding Zulu, the avaricious Indian, etc. See also the plays of Gibsen Kente, who epitomised Township Theatre, which presented stereotypes such as the drunken priest, the rowdy shebeen queen, the long-suffering struggling hero, the innocent but sexy maiden, etc.

26. WeaverHughes Ensemble had previously worked in South Africa and wished to develop their contacts in South Africa in relation to both theatre-making and community outreach. This project also had a community outreach aspect carried out in Mphopomeni Township, but analysis of this project cannot be included in the scope of this article. Originally it was planned to take the production to London and to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, but the world financial recession meant that funding could not be found.

27. Buchler, Remembering You Like Something I'd Forgotten, p. 4.

28. Michael Lambeck, ‘The Cares of Alice Alder: Recuperating Kinship and History in Switzerland’, in Ghosts of Memory, pp. 218–40, (p. 220).

29. Ibid., p. 21.

30. Buchler, Remembering You Like Something I'd Forgotten. p. 14.

31. Ibid., p. 6.

32. Ibid., p. 9.

33. Ibid., p. 15.

34. J. Carsten, ‘Connections and Disconnections of Memory and Kinship in Narratives of Adoption Reunions in Scotland’, in Ghosts of Memory, pp. 83–103 (p. 84).

35. Buchler, Remembering You Like Something I'd Forgotten, p. 11.

36. Ibid., p. 8.

37. The most well-known example of this influence is seen in Woza Albert (Mbongeni Ngema, Percy Mtwa and Barney Simon [London: Methuen, 2003]), but it can also be seen in the work of Andrew Buckland, amongst many others.

38. Phil Jones, Drama as Therapy: Theatre as Living (London: Routledge, 1996); Richard Schechner, Performance Theory (New York: Routledge, 1988); Augusto Boal, The Rainbow of Desire (London: Routledge, 1995).

39. Jones, Drama as Therapy.

40. Mark Fleishman, ‘Physical Images in the South African Theatre’, in Theatre and Change in South Africa, ed. by Geoff Davis and Anne Fuchs (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 173–82.

41. In May 2008 there was an eruption of violence towards African foreigners (mainly Mozambicans, Zimbabweans, Nigerians and Somalians) in various cities in South Africa. Xenophobic attacks started in Alexandra Township near Johannesburg and spread to other townships in the Gauteng area as well as to Durban and Cape Town. The violence resulted in a number of deaths, the most notorious being that of the ‘burning man’ whose picture was displayed internationally, and also in the creation of refugee camps to provide protected areas for vulnerable foreigners.

42. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 4.

43. Michael Wilson, Storytelling and Theatre (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 122.

44. Since the election of figures such as Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema to positions of power, South Africans experience a sense of loss of trust in high-profile government figures. This is in sharp contrast to the esteem felt for Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu as iconic figures of moral leadership.

45. Nadia Davids, At Her Feet (Cape Town: Oshun Books, 2005).

46. The titles translate as Through Dreams They Speak; Harvesting Dreams; and The Grave of the Man Lies Beside the Road. These plays are as yet unpublished.

47. Lara Foot Newton, Tshepang (London: Oberon Books, 2005).