The Postdramatic Theatre of Athol Fugard and Maishe Maponya: Commitment, Collaboration, and Experiment in Apartheid South Africa

THE POSTDRAMATIC THEATRE OF ATHOL FUGARD AND MAISHE MAPONYA: COMMITMENT, COLLABORATION, AND EXPERIMENT IN APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA BY BELLO SHAMSUDDEEN DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH NOVEMBER 2016 i THE POSTDRAMATIC THEATRE OF ATHOL FUGARD AND MAISHE MAPONYA: COMMITMENT, COLLABORATION AND EXPERIMENT IN APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA. BY BELLO SHAMSUDDEEN BEING A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF ARTS IN FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF ZULULAND, REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA. PROMOTERS DR KHAYA MICHAEL GQIBITHOLE PROF ROB BAUM NOVEMBE 2016 ii APPROVAL PAGE The thesis has been examined and approved as having met the academic requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy in English, Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Zululand, Republic of South Africa. .............................................. ........................................ Doctor Khaya Michael Gqibithole Date ............................................... ........................................ Professor Rob Baum Date iii DECLARATION I hereby declare that this thesis: “The Postdramatic Theatre of Athol Fugard and Maishe Maponya: Commitment, Collaboration, and Experiment in Apartheid South Africa” is the product of my own research, carried out under the supervision of Doctor Khaya M. Gqibithole and Professor Rob Baum, and that it has not been presented elsewhere for the award of a degree or certificate. All sources have been duly acknowledged. ............................................. Bello Shamsuddeen iv DEDICATION Some souls are not meant for this world, their feathers are just too bright; and when they fly away, far and forever gone, the part of you that laments suddenly realises that they deserve a better place, somewhere more blissful and everlasting. I therefore dedicate this work to my father, who is not here to see the flower he nurtured yield great fruits. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS All glory be to God for giving me the health, wisdom, wherewithal, and opportunity to pursue this degree. My immeasurable gratitude goes to Dr Khaya M. Gqibithole and Prof Rob Baum, my supervisors and promoters, for their patient guidance, advice, and critical and painstaking input. Their invaluable contribution and avid critique helped shape this work. The department of English, Unizulu, provided the right space and atmosphere for me to work, and that I duly acknowledge. Prof M.V. Mpepo, Prof Myrtle Hooper and Prof Catherine Addison are worth mentioning here; they opened their doors and listened whenever I came knocking. And to all the well-rounded capable academics in the department I say thank you for the encouragement and support. My loving and devoted mother, Aminatu Bello, gave me all the practical and moral support imaginable. Her constant calls, soothing words of encouragement, and fervent prayers helped sustain me. And to my family and friends I say thank you as well. ‘Dr’ Murtala A. Kwara and Dr Musa A. Jibril were my company, confidantes and support when I needed them most. And to the gatekeeper, Dr Mahmud Abdusalam, who was always ever ready to warmly receive me at Johannesburg, I say thank you. I cannot forget to acknowledge my hosts, ‘Dr’ Magaji Ilu Barde and ‘Dr’ Aminu Rimi, for the roof over my shoulder, and hospitality, during my long stay at Grahamstown. National English Literary Museum (NELM), Grahamstown, deserves a special mention here for providing me with the bulk of the literature for this research – from print and non-print works, to manuscripts, scripted plays and performance notes. Thank you to all to the hospitable librarians there; and to the University of Rhodes for sustaining and managing this important literary hub. Umaru Musa University, Katsina-Nigeria provided the platform for this academic endeavour. Thank you is therefore not adequate, but my gratitude is infinite. I also express my sincere appreciation to those too numerous to mention here. vi ABSTRACT Athol Fugard and Maishe Maponya both used the postdramatic theatre, which was largely anti-elitist, anti-text, experimental and collaborative, at certain point in their literary careers. They rebelled against established conventions, and, in their own ways, produced a type of theatre that suited their context and literary and ideological leanings. The rebellion and transformation of the theatre was not peculiar to them, but was a universal phenomenon at the time this thesis examines. As such, it manifested in works of artists who appropriated the new dramatic techniques to represent their different contexts and emerging socio-political trends. The thesis examines the collaborative process of Fugard, Kani, and Ntshona in view of the critical debates about identity, politics, role play, and Fugard’s claim to primary authorship of Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island. Collaboration is not a fixed term or practice. It depends largely on the play, play-making situation, and intention. It also changes even with the same artists involved in the collaboration. The devising process that led to The Coat, for example, differed from that of Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island. Even the collaborative process of Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island differs despite that the plays were produced around the same time. Fugard’s collaboration with the Circle Players (late 1950s) also differs from his collaboration with the Serpent Players (1960s) and that with Kani and Ntshona (early 1970s). Collaboration meant different things at different times for Fugard. He seems to have ridden on the coattails of black actors, although he successfully toured the plays around the world. Maponya’s idea of collaboration differs from that of Fugard. Although Maponya did not officially collaborate with actors, he used them as conduits into their lived experiences (The Hungry Earth) and professions (Umongikazi). This play-making technique is in many ways collaborative and similar to Fugard’s collaborative pattern during his work with the Circle Players in the production of No-Good Friday and Nongogo. Maponya lifts up the black artist but suffers the consequences. Fugard and Maponya used the actors in different capacities and utilised fairly similar, but different, collaborative techniques. They both utilised experimental, improvisational, and workshop-based methods differently, and at different times. The white South African playwright Fugard prepared the ground for radical experimentation with form and content in South Africa. Fugard enjoys a place of honour in the South African (and more generally African) canon. His reputation as a great writer, creative collaborator and director, and as a person who was able to create a unique theatre that blended African and Western forms of performance, has been acknowledged globally. His work with black actors, notably John Kani and Winston Ntshona, enabled this feat. He adopted a multidimensional approach to art, retained his literary leaning and identity, collaborated, and assisted in training and directing of black actors, and so contributed in his own equally potent way to the struggle against apartheid through the theatre. He promoted a belief in “the personal is political” through plays to be examined herein. The Coat (1966), Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972) and The Island (1973) are selected because they are Fugard’s most political plays and because they were devised in collaboration with actors. The Hungry Earth (1979), Gangsters (1984) and Jika (1986) also pass the litmus test because they are Maponya’s most radical indictment of the apartheid regime and because they were also devised through experiments with actors who provided material and acting. In contrast to most writing on Fugard and Maponya, which are anchored to either a literary interpretation of the plays or performance discourse, this study offers a literary and performative analysis of the selected plays, demonstrating that this must be done together. This thesis also offers a comparative analysis of the selected plays. Maponya is a black artist and bitter playwright of the Struggle. His works are multifaceted, open to differing interpretations and are fairly universal and timeless because of their concern with general themes such as capitalism, subversion and containment; so also for their relation vii with more universal works, and their demonstration that the local and immediate experiences can have global legs. His concern with Black Consciousness and resistance however confined his status to a black ideologue. Maponya’s dramas nonetheless resist the accustomed standard of categorisation as plays by a black South African dramatist. The sharp cataloguing between white and black and major and minor playwright begins to fall apart when comparing Fugard and Maponya in terms of theatre practice and experiences. The reception of Maponya’s plays – both at home and abroad – reveals that he was an equally theatrically-aware and successful artist of the struggle, although he cannot be evenly matched with Fugard in terms of literary craft and outreach. This reductionism has also affected Fugard, who many regard as a liberal white writer. His colour was a handicap and a saving grace since it allowed him to work with black actors despite the laws banning interracial relations. The discourse of commitment in the plays to be examined – as well as in the dramatists’ practice of theatre – is centred on the relation between intention, context and text. The study examines the artists’ contribution(s) to the struggle; and how effective that contribution is,

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