Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-86). / This dissertation seeks to address issues related to community change within the field of Theatre-for development. It proposes and then investigates various ways in which a community may seek to retain a sense of collective ideology in the light of both positive and negative developmental change, as promulgated by agents outside their community. Chapter one, Introduction, begins by introducing the reader both to the fieldwork project and the community, Khethani township, in which the masters degree filedwork was undertaken. It was this fieldwork which prompted the research enquiry covered by this dissertation, to which the reader is introduced. It delineates the research methodologies of both the fieldwork project and this dissertation, and positions the writer in relation to this study. The initial aim of the fieldwork project was to do a practical enquiry into the methods of workshop theatre and the development of a distinct theatre aesthetic that emerges from a community as a result of workshop theatre practices. Having completed the fieldwork project and having considered the results of the initial fieldwork aims a larger research enquiry developed as to the role of workshop theatre within the broader context of community development and this has now become the focus of this dessertation.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-66). / This study is a theoretical explication of an idea of a theatre called Theatre of the Contact Zone. Its main feature is the collaboration between the playwright and the director in the transformation of dramatic texts into performance texts. Within the pragmatics of this theatre the playwright's initial task is to provide a working script. It is only a foundation, the basis, without which the director has nothing to begin coordinating the collaborative process of theatre making. The writing of the script continues through out rehearsals. The final script is compiled after the production incorporating changes made in the course of its transformation into a performance, as well as insights gained through watching the production. The first experiment was through a play called An African Syzygy which I wrote and was directed by Sanjin Muftic (a fellow postgraduate student whose orientation in theatre studies is directing).

Includes the performance script of the play. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-93). / The aim of this explication is to set my practical theatre research, and the production Dolos in particular, in a theoretical framework and performance historical context. Since the central theme of Dolos is the construction of reality and the consequent attachment to aspects of the self, my study draws on the ideas proposed by Phenomenology and Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy.According to these two philosophical systems, the concept of reality is subjective and relative. This leads me to question the functioning of meaning-making in artistic practice. Metaphor is explored as a vehicle for the meaning-making process and for the creation of resonant experience in theatre and performance. The production style of Dolos is one that I have defined as Visual Theatre, a theatre of puppets, objects, visual and theatrical images. Visual Theatre is examined in the context of theatre as an artistic medium; it is then contextualised in terms of its 20th development through the Century; and definitions are offered of the major elements at play within Visual Theatre. A series of interviews conducted with five creator/ directors from four South African companies working in the general terrain of Visual Theatre is used to contextualise current practice in South Africa and to locate my own work. The interviews are used to establish trends of thought around the object/puppet and its relationship in theatre to constructed reality. The views of these practitioners on their own creative process as well as my observations about their practical work are used as examples throughout.

Includes abstract. / Inludes bibliographical references (leaves 56-61). / This paper is an explication of my thesis production Ouma, which was presented in December 2008 towards the fulfilment of the degree Masters of Arts in Theatre and Performance (Theatre Making) at the University of Cape Town. The explication focuses largely on what happens when the myth structuring the identity of an individual changes. How does the individual go about re-narrating identity within the context of the new myth? And how might the creation of performance contribute tothe re-narrating? The first section, Myth of the Selfexamines the concept of 'myth' and 'the Self and how they intersect and influence each other. I demonstrate how myths and the Self intersect and how, through the telling of stories, we create understanding or meaning. The second section, Myth of the Old; Myth of the New, considers the myth of the old South Africa, the myth of the new South Africa, and the different strategies of self-narration that occur in the one and in the other. The third section, Rupture, proposes that there is a powerful impact on individual identities when a political myth is rupture. In conclusion I indicate where the continuation of this investigation may lead.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 32-34). / Emerging directly from three devised performances conducted as practical research projects in the exploration of my thesis, the production supported by this explication titled Afrocartography: Traces of Places and all points in between, (Afrocartography) is located within a series of works that explore an Afropolitan subject position. Towards the goal of articulating a theatrical form, style and aesthetic of this so called Afropolitan experience, the first section of this paper serves to locate the term Afropolitan within a personal contextual frame from which the paper progresses.

In this paper I endeavor to chart the trajectory through my Practice as Research process into, and later development of, what eventually became a performance and literary work entitled Jesus Thesis and Other Critical Fabulations. The paper details in the first part, Modes of Disidentification, the practices of three black, interdisciplinary artists: Todd Gray, Sethembile Msezane and Athi-Patra Ruga operating at different intersections of black identity and how their practices exemplify different possibilities for disidentification in creative practice. Using the framework of queer cultural theorist José Esteban Muñoz' Disidentifications (1984) as a theoretical base, I endeavor to explore the different techniques that these artists use in response, retaliation and, possibly, congruence to the politics of representation . In order to elucidate and experiment with these techniques I employ a Practice as 1 Research methodology that I unpack in the second half of the paper, Biomythography, critical fabulation and disidentification in Practice. In Biomythography, critical fabulation and disidentification in practice I engage the performance works I created during my masters in Theatre and Performance, namely Jesus Thesis and Other Critical Fabulations and icarus descent and illustrate how the theory of disidentification can be performed utilizing the techniques of biomythography (Lorde, 1982) and critical fabulation (Hartman, 2008) that gesture towards a complication of rigid identity theory. Underpinning this research is the desire to explore artistic techniques that complicate rigid, categorical identity theory and practices in the hope that these techniques can serve towards alternatives to and liberation from the social, categorical identity model inherited in Southern Africa through the colonial systems of identity based categorization.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 27-33). / The premise of this research is that the creation of a disordered space will have a positive effect on the stimulation of a physical response to spoken language. In a disordered space, vocal delivery is foregrounded as physical activity and has a re-patterning effect on the vocal landscapes of young actors. A disordered space co-opts elements from the vocal art forms of the popular phenomenon of the Spoken Word Movement. Disordered spaces act as an intervention on the traditional notions of western theatre voice practice. Chapter 1: The term 'disordered spaces' is explored as an imaginative mental space, feeding off the energetic impulses created by anti-establishment notions of chaos and anarchy. The language based forms of the Spoken Word Movement invite new responses to stimuli that force a repatterning of vocal responses in the actor, with an emphasis on the visceral quality of speech. Chapter 2: I outline in further detail the specific vocal elements of the Spoken Word Movement that contribute to the creation of disordered spaces. The four main strands that influence this movement are Rap Music, Dub Poetry, Slam Poetry and Freestyle. Rhythmic qualities of dialect are examined as a means of re-patterning responses to text. There is an exploration of the paralinguistic elements of speech through the concept of beat-boxing. The status of the individual performer is reconsidered in terms of the ownership of material that occurs within the movement. Chapter 3: Vocal landscapes are analysed as a socio-linguistic reality that is affected by changes in dialect. The dialect of the Spoken Word Movement is classified as non-standard dialect, which is slang based. It is concluded that it is the flexibility of a young actor's vocal landscape that leads to the success of the co-option of vocal elements from the Spoken Word Movement. I propose ways of using this material as inspiration for an intervention on the traditional notions of western theatre voice.

This research explores the notion of the ntsomi; the oral storytelling custom of amaXhosa, by identifying ten elements listed by various writers as unique to African oral storytelling and weaving these elements into poetics which assist us in tracing how they are used to stage and facilitate conversations around sustainability in the production Xhalanga Blues. The unique African oral storytelling poetics include; contextually, sensitive storytelling; etiological formula usage; deviation or ring composition; an opening formula; orature in the form of narrative proverbs; personal metaphors; riddles and songs; analogous explanations; personification; image-repertoire; extensive use of long speeches or monologues and survival construct. The research further explores the challenges of using these poetics as I try to make sense of my experiences, the visibility of black theatre-makers and self-representation. The research essay is presented as an autoethnographic narrative that hopes to archive my experience, develop a shared understanding of the challenges facing emerging theatre-makers, clarify my values as a theatre maker and centre storytelling as a systemised approach for imagining a dramaturgy of sustainability.

As a moment of slipping in, turning away and recovering from; the thinking for this project is focused on understanding through and from within culture. With this the paper begins to weave itself through a guided journey of my own personal accounts and the theorists that align and/or challenge such accounts. It moves between investigating my relationship with my father, to interrogating the ways in which men have spoken specific violence's into existence. This thesis does not look to be the reason of, nor the answer to, the way in which men ‘act'; but it does employ a keen eye into understanding the way in which meanings are produced. The paper then embeds itself in interrogating each of these instances through four different performances that were created by Mlondi Dubazane. These performances should be understood as thinking through and with/in representation and the different mediums that representing takes shape. It is vital to understand that even in its attempt at the poetics, the paper expresses itself through, within, around and beside language. This is but the first attempt of finding a language in speaking about my own maleness, a maleness that is not universal, a maleness that is moving forward in advance of nowhere, a maleness that seeks to dare touch on the untouchable. This, then serves as a written explication of research that seeks to engage the meanings and limitations of contemporary Black south african cultural identity (and in particular, the gendered dimensions of this experience) through the careful and nuanced crafting of public performances that draw on both public and intimate experiences.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-60). / This thesis questions how and why certain South African performers habitually and unconsciously shift accent in the performance context. I refer to this vocal action as habitual, unconscious accent-based speech adaptation. This examination is made considering that contemporary voice training at the Drama Department of the University of Cape Town (UCT), where the author locates, does not designate any accent as a criterion for performance. Whilst I do not contend habitual, unconscious accent-based speech adaptation to be language-specific this research is English-based. Habitual, unconscious accent-based speech adaptation highlights three primary concerns: the first I term an 'ossification' of sound producing vocal inflexibility; the second is potential class-based exclusion from the performance context; and the third concern is a need for critical awareness in training and performance, evidenced by the preceding concerns. Despite accent-based speech adaptation paradoxically demonstrating the voice's flexibility, when accent-based speech adaptation happens unconsciously and habitually the real flexibility of the voice is negated producing detachment from the performer's own vocal identity or 'vocal schizophrenia' (Rodenburg, 2001: 81).