Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 34-37). / This explication is an investigation into comedy as a medium for constructing strategic subjectivities and the potential holds for diffusing experiences of difference in contemporary South African contexts. Our culture is on that encounters difference and often experiences these moments as threatening. Comedy creates the opportunity for engagement with other subjective experiences, however, this potential is in my opinion, mostly wasted and performances tend instead to support the dominant social discourse. By examining the nature of subjectivity and identity within a postmodern, technologically connected culture, the active agency of the audience is kindled by the performer. The strategies of this encounter are discussed in relation to Lawrence Mintz's theories of the licensed spokesperson and the negative exemplar.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 60-63). / My research has been preoccupied with the playing of memory with reference to narratives of loss. This loss has been represented by a loss of language, place and family, resulting in the playing of unnerving memory fragments. The primary driving force of this loss has been the notion of a disrupted or uprooted childhood. The subject of this enquiry is black girlhood; in particular, the relationships between black girls/women. Consequently a large part of 'piecing together a girlhood' involves engaging with what Quashie (2004) calls the 'girlfriend aesthetic'. Quashie's 'girlfriend aesthetic' offers a methodology for re-membering by providing a reflective surface; you see in the experience of the girlfriend other something that triggers or incites your own memory that aids you in working towards completion of self. This explication traces my interest in this subject matter as a direct result of feeling that black girlhood as a topic is under-represented, explores my development of a viable creative methodology for this kind of work, interrogates the meaning of 'site' in this context, maps out the origin of nostalgia and how it affects the afficted in relation to lost 'site', unpacks the girlfriend aesthetic as a practice and reveals how the nostalgic searcher's obsession with the irrecoverability of the past manifests in corporeal ways. Whether or not completion of self is possible, what is discovered is theatre's ability to aid in coping with a feeling of placelessness or atopia. Although nostalgia may indicate a fixation with the past, it can be a valuable and restorative way of emancipating oneself from it.

This study is an exploration of the articulation of my artistic voice or performance signature. It employs two methodologies, autoethnography and Practice as Research to investigate the practice of my artistic creations as a solo dance-maker. It utilises concepts such as the Batammaliba’s anatomical and metaphorical approach to architecture, Sankofa and decoloniality to frame the investigation. My first solo work, Satisfaction Index, is a point of departure for this analysis. The study then proceeds to engage with works created during the pursuit of this master’s degree over the past two years. In the discovery of my work, DNA and ritual feature to further construct the artistic voice or performance signature that I seek for the articulation of my rebranding as a soloist.

Self/Scape is an autoethnographic sonic exploration of searching, belonging, and praying through sound as well as exploring the socio-cultural conditions and the lived experiences of a globalized Latino. Following the framework of Practice as Research (PaR), Miguel has been creating and theorizing about and through this piece during his two-year degree. This piece is the culmination of Miguel’s research at UCT in which a theatrical production is transformed into a curated space that is made to coexist with(in) a digital soundscape. That is to say that this piece has been created to be experienced through the use of headphones and QR codes. Each QR code will be specifically placed in relation to the content of the code which documents the journey of self-discovery through a multitude of spaces around the world from Los Angeles to Cape Town.

Includes bibliographical references / This doctoral project investigates the use of theatre practice to engage across the'victim'/'perpetrator' binary in the Kashmir valley; a binary that is framed in this project as a tripartite division between Civil Society, Militants/Ex-Militants, and the Indian Armed Forces. Using Primo Levi's (1988) concept of "grey zones" to investigate how narratives from these spaces might be given theatrical form, this thesis utilised six concepts to frame the aesthetic, pedagogic, and ethical principles of a practice-based-research undertaking: Immersive Theatre, Documentary Theatre, devised theatre workshops, affect, situational ethics, and performance auto-ethnography. With one Kashmiri theatre company operating as my central collaborator, the first two phases consisted of devised theatre workshops and performances with Civil Society and Ex-Militants in Kashmir. Exploring instances from these projects through thick description, critical analyses, and auto-ethnographic writing, the grey zones of Civil Society in Kashmir are situated as being within acts of aggression that occur between civilians who are differently privileged, while it is Ex-militants who are discovered as occupying a liminal space when studying narratives of militancy in the region. By contrasting these two phases of practice-based research with the third phase of 'failed' attempts to engage with the Indian Armed Forces, this thesis postulates that the grey zones within the experience of government soldiers might only be accessed by making theatre with cadets at military academies. By drawing out the parallels and disjunctures between the manifestations of the three phases of theatre practice, this project offers outcomes that contribute to scholarship around theatrical interventions in times and places of war. The concluding outcomes are framed by one question: if an outside theatre maker were to create one performance piece that contains cross-community narratives from Kashmir, what ethical, pedagogical, and aesthetic considerations might arise as a result. Amongst the strategies that are put forward to answer this question, there are three outcomes that are particularly significant: a re-articulation of grey zones as existing both between and within each of the three groups; the proposal of a process-based spectatorship when utilising novelty in form and content; a re-framing of the discussion around affect and effect by considering artists' intention and spectators' response vis-à-vis a theatrical creation.

Includes bibliographical references. / The present study investigates the field of theatre practice that I have chosen to call alternative Zimbabwean theatre through a detailed study of four plays and reference to several others all first performed and written between 1980 and 1996. The study interrogates the interweaving and juxtaposition of divergent performance forms and styles on stage created by the contact between western dramatic theatre, indigenous theatre and cultural performances. This contact results in the formation of a third space for theatre which is a creative area of ambivalence, sameness, difference, conflict, struggle, mocking and celebration. The study specifically scrutinises this intersecting area as it obtains in alternative theatre and examines the forces at work in producing the nature and identity of syncretic theatre. Between 1980 and 1996, the nature and identity of alternative theatre changed significantly. This thesis investigates these changes, movements, shifts, conflicts and appropriations and the context within which they took place.

The research investigates experiments with the socio-political functions of public art interventions and suggests that these actions are temporary ruptures which create ‘invisible insurrections' in a context of hyper-surveillance. The paper draws from Hakim Bey's poetic anarchy, “Temporary Autonomous Zones”, and uses his theories to think through the potentially explosive overlaps between public space, live performance, and insurrection. By first locating a history of Worker's Culture in the South African context, the research locates itself within a particular context of class struggle. Reading Augusto Boal, and his Invisible Theatre, the research calls in Theatre of the Oppressed methodologies in an attempt to find a more suitable language, both abstract and concrete, to articulate the need for building solidarity. The study is also interested in the demarcations between theatre, performance art, and live art, and how to sit comfortably between these practice as research methods. To this end, through Mark Fleishman, the research proposes “dwelling” as a mode of performance for the public live art space especially in relation to revealing what is not visible in marginalised terrains. Here, the paper thinks through the possibility of reappropriating invisibility in the system as a cloak for haunting. Themes discussed in the research include insurrection as opposed to revolution; the scope of cultural work in general and the possibility of an emergent worker's culture in the present; the possibility of liberated zones inside the matrix as it is currently mapped; memory-being-made in relation to the archive; in/visibility in connection to ghostlikeness and haunting; collective precarity in system; and the importance of passing moments of ‘seeing each other' to building solidarity in our search for more human ways of being together.

African American and white women (N = 39) were interviewed about reproductive rewards and risks regarding genetics information and technologies. Analysis of their talk reflected several important themes. Emergent “reward” themes included the would-be parents' reproductive decision-making, preparation, and prevention. “Risk” themes, which were more predominant than reward themes, included genetic information as stress producing, “child-designing” as a likely outcome, and the creation of a superior race as probable. Findings are discussed within a Problematic Integration Theory framework.

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