With the socio-political and even the theatre landscape in South Africa being fraught with questions of identity, ownership, memory and self-representation, I’m often struck by the implications of representing the self, while noting that the ‘self’ is never and can never be fully removed from some sense of a collective. This dissertation is a proliferation of questions and provocations that I hope will begin to sketch out an emergent body of South African performance work, particularly by young, Black female makers that centres materiality and corporeality as a device through which to resist the particularly logocentric and text-centric dramaturgy of the South African TRC proceedings. This dissertation will unfold as a kind of discourse analysis, drawing from a range of materials in an attempt to arrive at a theory of performative disinterment. While I draw from critical theory and performance studies, the core concepts that I return to throughout the dissertation are language, materiality and dramaturgy. These are defined primarily in relationship to each other, and it is this relationship that forms the basis for performative disinterment. Performative disinterment, as I conceive of it, is a productive suspicion of history that plays itself out through performance. It encourages a dramaturgy of materiality to give language to and articulate memory as counterpoint to history. I employ theatre and performance as an analytical tool through which to deconstruct the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission looking specifically at the relationship between memory and the representation thereof in the Commission’s proceedings. I turn to Susan Lori Park’s play Venus and Sara Warner’s analysis of the play, focussing on what Warner calls ‘a drama of disinterment’ as a counterpoint to the dramaturgy of the TRC so as to begin to presence a terrain of performance work that employs ‘mis’-representation as a device for theatrical representation-ability. I conclude with an analysis of A Faint Patch of Light (2018), directed by Qondiswa James and They Look at Me and This is All They Think (2006), directed by Nelisiwe Xaba as contemporary South African performances that resists tropes of spectacle and the dominant gaze.

This study focuses on the erasure of the black woman from the mainstream theatre space of South Africa as a provocation towards the creation of a dramaturgical process that pivots around the notion of 'deliberate incommensurability' as a catalyst for exploration. 'deliberate incommensurability' is a term I have coined myself as it suggests an agency in the black woman as subject and object of study. I suggest the requirement for an autoethnographic inquest in carrying out the research, as the methodology used in the creation of the processes and products of the study was Practice as Research (PaR). The methodology uses the modes of translation and literary studies in order to unpack the myriad ways in which the representation of the black female has effectively been an erasure of her presence. I detail four points of origin for the study drawn primarily from Gayatri C. Spivak and Toni Morrison. In addition, the study interrogates the processes towards creating O Kae? - a performance installation that evaluates the importance of opacity towards the self-representation of the Other in an attempt to discover an alternative aesthetic and creative praxis for myself.

This dissertation questions how it is possible for a child to be considered the dramaturg of a theatrical production specifically catering for early year audiences. The research begins with an investigation of secondary source materials to obtain a working definition of the concepts of child/hood and dramaturg/y in relation to how other artists and art forms have used and presented work to children. The research then incorporates the use of interviews held with professionally trained theatre practitioners involved in producing and promoting Theatre for Early Years (TEY), in order to contextualise the theatre scene for early years in South Africa at present. The majority of the research is then dedicated to analysing, through my own artistic practice, the means by which children participated in the process of developing a TEY production in 2015. Whereby dramaturgy is understood to be a political practice that addresses the inequality of power relations between the audience and the performance, the main outcome of the dissertation addresses the value of including the child as a dramaturg/quasi-dramaturg in the practice of devising theatre for young audiences.

Depois de três décadas convivendo com o teatro de Santa Catarina, podemos dizer que o meu hedonismo em discutir o que se escreve para o teatro em terras barriga-verdes, encontra-se cada vez mais incitado; motivado por uma célere gama de emergentes escritores dramáticos que surgiram ao longo desse período e que merecem aqui as nossas mais altas considerações e uma análise mais acurada desses textos como gênero e traços estilísticos. Para que pudéssemos analisar A Novadora Dramaturgia Barriga-Verde, partimos para o estudo de 136 peças teatrais em que foram consultados 34 dramaturgos e num processo de afunilamento estético e estilístico, chegamos a seleção de 05 textos teatrais, sendo que estes serão os objetos de estudo e pesquisa em nossa Tese de Doutorado. Queremos com a análise destes 05 textos teatrais selecionados, discutir a relevância desta dramaturgia, se a mesma é importante para o teatro catarinense e brasileiro, e saber se ela existe de fato, e que, se comprovarmos, ela possa ser objeto de estudo e comparações com outros escritos através de teorias literárias que possam justificar a importância dessa literatura dramática. Queremos com a nossa Tese de Doutorado difundir a dramaturgia barriga-verde para que essa literatura dramática possa ser reconhecida inicialmente em solo catarinense e num patamar maior; um reconhecimento nacional. Simultaneamente, visamos traçar caminhos de intercâmbio entre os fazedores da literatura dramática e futuras encenações; visto que a maioria desses textos teatrais acabam adormecidos nas gavetas de nossos escritores. / After three decades close to Santa Catarina´s theater, we could say that our hedonism about discussing what we write to theater in those lands, is motivated by a swift range of new dramatic writers that came up during this period and deserve our best consideration and a good analysis of these texts on the point of view of the genus and the style. To analyze the The New Santa Catarina´s Dramaturgy, we began studyng 136 theater plays and consulting 34 play writers in a process of choice in which, considering the aesthetics and the style, we chose 05 theater plays that wil be object of study and research of our doctorate thesis. We wish, with the analysis of those 05 selected texts, to discuss, no only the importance of our dramaturgy to the state of Santa Catarina and to all The Brazilian theater, but also, we want to discuss if this dramaturgy indeed exists, and if we conffirm it exists, if it is in fact important to our theater, we want to find out if it can be studied and compared to others dramaturgies, Considering literary, that could prove the importance of our texts. At last, we wish, whit this doctorate thesis, to spread Santa Catarina´s Dramaturgy, in order to make it known, not only on it native land, but also in whole Brazil. At the same time, we want to make an interchange between playwriters and future productions, once most of the time, those texts remain asleep in writer´s drawers.

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Depois de três décadas convivendo com o teatro de Santa Catarina, podemos dizer que o meu hedonismo em discutir o que se escreve para o teatro em terras barriga-verdes, encontra-se cada vez mais incitado; motivado por uma célere gama de emergentes escritores dramáticos que surgiram ao longo desse período e que merecem aqui as nossas mais altas considerações e uma análise mais acurada desses textos como gênero e traços estilísticos. Para que pudéssemos analisar A Novadora Dramaturgia Barriga-Verde, partimos para o estudo de 136 peças teatrais em que foram consultados 34 dramaturgos e num processo de afunilamento estético e estilístico, chegamos a seleção de 05 textos teatrais, sendo que estes serão os objetos de estudo e pesquisa em nossa Tese de Doutorado. Queremos com a análise destes 05 textos teatrais selecionados, discutir a relevância desta dramaturgia, se a mesma é importante para o teatro catarinense e brasileiro, e saber se ela existe de fato, e que, se comprovarmos, ela possa ser objeto de estudo e comparações com outros escritos através de teorias literárias que possam justificar a importância dessa literatura dramática. Queremos com a nossa Tese de Doutorado difundir a dramaturgia barriga-verde para que essa literatura dramática possa ser reconhecida inicialmente em solo catarinense e num patamar maior; um reconhecimento nacional. Simultaneamente, visamos traçar caminhos de intercâmbio entre os fazedores da literatura dramática e futuras encenações; visto que a maioria desses textos teatrais acabam adormecidos nas gavetas de nossos escritores. / After three decades close to Santa Catarina´s theater, we could say that our hedonism about discussing what we write to theater in those lands, is motivated by a swift range of new dramatic writers that came up during this period and deserve our best consideration and a good analysis of these texts on the point of view of the genus and the style. To analyze the The New Santa Catarina´s Dramaturgy, we began studyng 136 theater plays and consulting 34 play writers in a process of choice in which, considering the aesthetics and the style, we chose 05 theater plays that wil be object of study and research of our doctorate thesis. We wish, with the analysis of those 05 selected texts, to discuss, no only the importance of our dramaturgy to the state of Santa Catarina and to all The Brazilian theater, but also, we want to discuss if this dramaturgy indeed exists, and if we conffirm it exists, if it is in fact important to our theater, we want to find out if it can be studied and compared to others dramaturgies, Considering literary, that could prove the importance of our texts. At last, we wish, whit this doctorate thesis, to spread Santa Catarina´s Dramaturgy, in order to make it known, not only on it native land, but also in whole Brazil. At the same time, we want to make an interchange between playwriters and future productions, once most of the time, those texts remain asleep in writer´s drawers.

Shakespeare’s Richard III is the most often performed history play within the western dramatic canon, yet at the end of the seventeenth century it was considered virtually unplayable. The extensive textual alteration undertaken by comedian Colley Cibber in 1700 revived interest in the rarely performed play, and actor David Garrick’s adoption of Cibber’s text in 1744 ensured the work’s popular survival. Regular performance and textual revision throughout the eighteenth century positioned Cibber’s adaptation as one of the most well-known works on the London stages, and by the time Henry Irving permanently restored Shakespeare’s text to the popular repertoire in 1877, Cibber’s adaptation had served as a conduit to restoring Richard III from its “virtually unplayable” position to its lost Elizabethan fame. The adaptive development of Richard III from unplayable to indispensable can be tracked dramaturgically, from Shakespeare’s Quarto (1597) and Folio (1623) to Cibber’s version, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century performative adaptations, and twentieth century film realisations. Through parallel-text analysis of the prompt-scripts of some of the most notorious, iconic, and effective adaptations of the play, this study examines in a practical sense the dramaturgical drive present throughout the play’s varied life-span: often changing, but nevertheless a constant product. The negative stigma attached to adaptation – characterised in Cibber’s words as “tampering” – is examined throughout the performative history of Richard III. Chapter one considers theoretical perspectives on adaptation studies, and adopts Gérard Genette’s evocative “transtextuality” discourse to quantify conclusions to emerge from parallel comparison of texts. Chapter two analyses Cibber’s process of “re-visioning” Shakespeare’s play; Chapter three examines the impact of performative adaptation on six different stage editions of Richard III. Chapter four addresses the transitional process of developing a stage-bound text on film through the screenplay format, and Chapter five demonstrates the use of cinematic visualisation on the text. Finally, Chapter six tracks the impact of adaptation on the survival and perpetuation of texts over successive generations and throughout varied cultures and contexts. Through analysis of fourteen different performance editions, prompt-books, film texts, and unpublished manuscripts, this dissertation considers the validity of “tampering” on the adaptive process.

Shakespeare’s Richard III is the most often performed history play within the western dramatic canon, yet at the end of the seventeenth century it was considered virtually unplayable. The extensive textual alteration undertaken by comedian Colley Cibber in 1700 revived interest in the rarely performed play, and actor David Garrick’s adoption of Cibber’s text in 1744 ensured the work’s popular survival. Regular performance and textual revision throughout the eighteenth century positioned Cibber’s adaptation as one of the most well-known works on the London stages, and by the time Henry Irving permanently restored Shakespeare’s text to the popular repertoire in 1877, Cibber’s adaptation had served as a conduit to restoring Richard III from its “virtually unplayable” position to its lost Elizabethan fame. The adaptive development of Richard III from unplayable to indispensable can be tracked dramaturgically, from Shakespeare’s Quarto (1597) and Folio (1623) to Cibber’s version, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century performative adaptations, and twentieth century film realisations. Through parallel-text analysis of the prompt-scripts of some of the most notorious, iconic, and effective adaptations of the play, this study examines in a practical sense the dramaturgical drive present throughout the play’s varied life-span: often changing, but nevertheless a constant product. The negative stigma attached to adaptation – characterised in Cibber’s words as “tampering” – is examined throughout the performative history of Richard III. Chapter one considers theoretical perspectives on adaptation studies, and adopts Gérard Genette’s evocative “transtextuality” discourse to quantify conclusions to emerge from parallel comparison of texts. Chapter two analyses Cibber’s process of “re-visioning” Shakespeare’s play; Chapter three examines the impact of performative adaptation on six different stage editions of Richard III. Chapter four addresses the transitional process of developing a stage-bound text on film through the screenplay format, and Chapter five demonstrates the use of cinematic visualisation on the text. Finally, Chapter six tracks the impact of adaptation on the survival and perpetuation of texts over successive generations and throughout varied cultures and contexts. Through analysis of fourteen different performance editions, prompt-books, film texts, and unpublished manuscripts, this dissertation considers the validity of “tampering” on the adaptive process.

The work of the British theatre company Blast Theory explores intermedial dramaturgies that this thesis claims can be categorized as radical because they present a generative characteristic. Intermediality, understood here as the impact of analogue and digital technologies in theatrical performance, establishes complex relationships between physical and virtual spaces, structures that create a rich polyphony of multiple temporal orchestrations, and narratives that present a multiplicity of performative arrangements. Intermedial performance, as a performative and experiential event, encompasses a triad of performative interactions between performers, spectators and the media itself executed at and concentrated on the moment of the performance encounter. This research argues that this encounter displays a generative character – a moment at which all the attending performance variables come together in a constant process of performative re-activation thus generating the intermedial performance event. Within this descriptive parameter, this research claims that recent performance conceptualizations fail to account for the work of Blast Theory. Contemporary performance and liveness debates focus principally on the ontology of performance. So, notwithstanding their differences, performance theorists such as Lavender (2002), Fischer-Lichte (2008), and Schechner (2003), and presentness/presence theorists such as Phelan (1993) and Power (2008) all agree that performance is an ontological, ephemeral, and fleeting event. While there are many valid points in these diverse approaches, they only offer a partial account of the specificities of the work of Blast Theory and, by extent, the intermedial performance event. This thesis therefore relocates the terms of the debate on a constructivist epistemological basis. In this way, the thesis proposes that an intermedial performance event must be understood beyond the ontological approach by specifically interrogating the conditions of intelligibility; that is, its operative and intelligible architecture of attending elements and the participating subject. The key hypothesis shared is that in introducing a constructivist reading of epistemology, as described by Alfred Whitehead and Gilles Deleuze, a new account of intermediality in performance emerges as a radical dramaturgy, incorporating generative aspects, and with this, a unique type of intermedial performance subjectivity is enabled.

This thesis details the search for dramaturgical methodologies of adaptation with the additional component of a creative project used to put those methodologies into practice. In particular, my research has been focused on the methodologies available for transforming static or descriptive moments of literature into compelling works of drama. My discussion on this process begins by tracing the scholarly developments in the field of adaptation studies, which have led away from what Linda Hutcheon calls “fidelity criticism” and have opened up a new vein of praxis-based research in recent years. Specifically, I trace the path to a four-step formula for the development of theory first suggested by Edward Said and later tailored to the process of adaptation by Linda Hutcheon. The formula itself advocates the balance of research and creativity, which has been an ideal framework for this thesis document. The second chapter of this thesis focuses on an application of this formula for a dramatic adaptation of Voltaire’s notorious novella Candide, or All for the Best, which presents the particular problematic of a densely philosophical novella. Candide also furnishes an interesting case study for the four-step formula as it presents both a rich historical context and a complicated narrative structure. The third and final chapter details the specific dramaturgical choices made in working with the formula to create a new adaptation entitled Survival of the Optimistic, and the implications these choices create for the adaptation process as a whole. The adaptation itself follows at the end of this thesis document.