<p> This dissertation addresses the concept of the <i> experimental</i> in contemporary dance and performance. In it I argue that, although the word is used in very different ways in traditional artistic and scientific practices, a number of contemporary dance artists utilize experimental practices in their work that produce useful knowledge that is recognizable and transmittable beyond the walls of the theater or gallery. I have written about artists whose embodied work has been described as experimental, whose innovations and explorations have produced paradigmatic shifts in dance practice and new ways of knowing, both about and through bodies.</p><p> Using theories of embodied experience from performance studies, dance studies, phenomenology and enactive perception, I argue for shifting our attention beyond textual and visual models of understanding performance to a broader palette of sensory modes and ways that attendees and makers both enact them. I propose that by doing so we broaden the possibilities for understanding the effects of performance and gain much richer tools for creating, using and analyzing our experiences of performance. I make these arguments as a maker of performance and as one who attends, reads and writes about performances. </p><p> The final chapter is a reflection in language of my own experimental performance project <i>Performance Research Experiment #2</i> which was/is a <i>Practice-as-Research</i> performance project that engaged and embodied ideas and practices of scientific experimentation to specifically explore ways that artistic practice and scientific practice may inform or interrupt each other. By extension the project tried to think, and move, through different ways that we know what we know.</p>

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<p> For the purposes of this thesis, I begin with an overview of theatre for social change in the introduction and then focus on the literature review as a way to introduce authors, ideas, theory and knowledge as background for the reader. This includes anecdotal accounts, reasoning for research and methodologies for carrying out research. I look at feminist theory, community-based theatre, education for liberation and decolonizing knowledge as a basis for my continuing ideas and theories. My emphasis is how to use expressive arts theatre as a way to connect people through dialogue in communities. One of the many ways is implementing curriculum through public school venues. I use theatre techniques that have been used successfully in a variety of global communities that help aide in focusing on certain issues a community is experiencing. I conducted a Women's Theatre Workshop that consisted of an intergenerational community of women whom embarked on a journey engaging in profound material exploring issues that women face. We found that this work was powerful in a variety of ways for them, some highlighting emotional abuse, oppression and double standards as well as theatre being a tool for non-traditional therapeutic use. </p><p> <i>Keywords:</i> praxis, theatre, education, freedom, decolonizing, feminist, theatre for social change</p>

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This artistic research dissertation employs the principles and practices of contact improvisation in a literary performative to describe and demonstrate this somatic form’s potential as a complex system of embodied knowing. For strategic and thematic purposes, chapters in this dissertation are referred to as Streams. The First Stream motivates the methodological approaches and emergent strategies employed in the researcher’s simultaneous practices of teaching, researching and writing about contact improvisation. The Second Stream is offered as an oral testimony of the researcher’s attempt to find practical solutions for the increasing complexity apparent in her work environment during the last two decades. It is written primarily as a first-person narrative with references by other somatic and contact improvisation practitioners embedded in the body of the narrative and presented as personal subconscious/collective unconscious interjections. The Third Stream uses a locally-emergent artistic research strategy termed Secondary Primacy to critically and creatively engage with existing literature. The observations of theorists and practitioners from the researcher’s own context (theatre and drama), as well as from a diversity of interrelated disciplines (including psychology, sociology, evolutionary biology, quantum physics, pedagogy and visual art) are presented in an autonomous authorial voice employing the performative strategy of what if. This strategy serves to demonstrate the researcher’s experience of the link between personal subconscious and collective unconscious motivations for action and exposes the transdisciplinary ground upon which many of the ideas and observations voiced in other Streams, in particular about contact improvisation as a complex system of embodied knowing, are implicitly dependent. The Fourth Stream discusses contact improvisation as a complex system foregrounding the particular characteristics of nonlinearity, paradox, emergence and additional capacity introduced in the Second and Third Streams. The Fifth Stream demonstrates convergences and overlaps between contemporary theories about agency, embodiment and transformation as they may apply to educators in tertiary educational performing arts contexts. This discussion is interspersed with accounts of the researcher’s own attempts – through her performing arts educational practice - to understand agency and transformation as workable elements. The Sixth Stream is offered as a personal philosophy of action. The implicit values and strategies of the researcher that were exposed in previous Streams are here distilled and presented as affirmations and Actions motivating the sustained use, by the researcher within her localized educational context, of contact improvisation as a foundational somatic approach for performers. In keeping with the positioning of this dissertation as artistic research, the literary framing devices of a Foreword and Afterword are used to draw a reader’s attention to the practicebased nature of the subject under discussion. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie artistieke navorsingsverhandeling gebruik die beginsels en praktyke van kontakimprovisasie in ‘n literêre performatief om hierdie somatiese vorm se potensiaal as ‘n komplekse sisteem van verpersoonlikte kundigheid te beskryf en te demonstreer. Vir strategiese en tematiese doeleindes word daar in hierdie verhandeling na hoofstukke as Strome verwys. Die Eerste Stroom motiveer die metodologiese benaderinge en voortspruitende strategieë wat aangewend word in die navorser se gelyktydige onderrig van, en navorsing en skrywe oor, kontakimprovisasie. Die Tweede Stroom word aangebied as ‘n mondelinge betuiging van die navorser se poging om praktiese oplossings te vind vir die toenemende kompleksiteit in haar omgewing oor die laaste twee dekades. Hierdie Stroom word primêr as ‘n eerste persoon narratief aangebied met behulp van verwysings deur ander somatiese en kontakimprovisasie praktisyns wat in die narratief geanker en aangebied word as persoonlike onbewustelike/kollektiewe onbewuste tussenwerpsels. In die Derde Stroom word ‘n plaaslik ontwikkelde artistieke navorsingstrategie, naamlik Sekondêre Voorrang, gebruik om die konvensionele literatuurstudie op kreatiewe wyse te herinterpreteer. Die waarnemings van teoretici en praktisyns uit die navorsers se eie studieveld (teater en drama), sowel as uit ‘n verskeidenheid van interafhanklike studievelde (onder andere psigologie, sosiologie, evolusionêre biologie, kwantum fisika, pedagogie en visuele kuns) word aangebied as ‘n outonome outeursbedoelde stem en maak gebruik van ‘n performatiewe what if. Díe strategie dien as ‘n metode om die navorsers se ervaring van die implisiete afhanklikhied tussen persoonlike onderbewussyn en kollektiewe onbewustheid motiverings vir aksie te demonstreer, en die transdisiplinêre grond van idees en waarnemings, in die besonder oor kontakimprovisasie as ‘n komplekse sisteem van verpersoonlikte kennis, te ontgin en bloot te lê. In die Vierde Stroom word kontakimprovisasie as ‘n komplekse sisteem bespreek en die eienskappe van nie-liniariteit, paradoks, ontluiking en addisionele kapasiteit wat in die Tweede en Derde Strome bespreek is, is verder op die voorgrond geplaas. Die Vyfde Stroom toon die sameloop en ooreenkomste aan tussen teorieë oor tussenkoms, verpersoonliking en transformasie soos van toepassing mag wees op opvoeders in ‘n tersiêre opvoedkundige performance konteks. Hierdie bespreking is afgewissel met vertellings van die navorser se eie pogings - deur haar uitvoerende kunste opvoedkundige praktyk – om agentskap en transformasie as werkbare elemente te verstaan. Die Sesde Stroom word aangebied as ‘n persoonlike filosofie van handeling. Die implisiete waardes en strategieë van die navorser, soos bloot gelê in die vorige Strome, word hier gesuiwer en aangebied as bekragtiging en Aksies vir die volgehoue gebruik, deur die navorser in haar eie gelokaliseerde opvoedkundige konteks, van kontakimprovisasie as ‘n grondleggende somatieke benadering vir performers. As deel van hierdie verhandeling se posisionering as artistieke navorsing word ‘n Voorwoord en Slotwoord gebruik om die leser se aandag te vestig op die verpersoonlikte aard van die onderwerp onder bespreking.

This thesis examines the work of David Bowie and its main theme is identity construction. Bowie was the first male pop star to project a succession of personae and his vocal styles, stage performances, lyrical method and videos are analysed in the light of his redefinitions of himself for public consumption. Bowie's guiding aesthetic was that of collage and his indebtedness to a variety of extra-musical sources, most significantly from literature and the theatre, is discussed. The theses eschews traditional narrative approaches which have been used to discuss individuals within pop, and deals with its subject matter thematically. The thesis describes the context in which Bowie's work is set and discusses the commercial constraints on his art, the relationship between the work and pop ideology, and the struggle between his public and private selves. The interaction between iconography and fandom is shown as playing a crucial role in determining his importance, and this analysis draws on my findings from correspondence with Bowie fans. Bowie's protean art has demanded a multi-disciplinary analytical approach and the thesis discusses the usefulness of musicology, semiotics, subcultural theory and Postmodernist thinking. The thesis suggests a way of explaining individuals in pop through a theoretical equilibrium between text and context.

published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

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Any consideration of the theme of ‘house and home’ leads into discussion on three different levels of discourse. First of all, houses have biographical and historical significance; they are, after all, real places in which real lives are lived. Secondly, home is an ideologically loaded noun, a bastion of value which is inextricably entwined with the notion of the pure woman. Thirdly, in literature, houses are metaphorical places. This thesis is primarily a study of those metaphorical places. It explores representations of ‘house’ and ‘home’ in late Victorian women's poetry. However, it also takes account of the biographical, historical and ideological significance of the house, looking at factors which may have helped to shape each poet's representations of ‘house and home’. The house occupies an ambiguous position in the poetry of the later Victorian period. It is variously imagined as a haunted house, a ruin, an empty house of echoes, and a prison of isolation and despair. At times, the house is a recognisable domestic place (the private house), at others, it is turned into a place of art or poetry, a new aesthetic ‘home’ for the female imagination. In some poems the house is a focus for nostalgia and homesickness. Yet it is also often a place which must be left behind. What unites the poets I have studied is the fact that the houses they inhabit in their work are never entirely their own and they are rarely entirely at home in them. Home is less roomy as a concept. It tends to carry religious or ideological connotations and is usually represented as a place of duty and responsibility. It also comes to mean the final resting place: the grave. Thus house and home, which are not identical terms, are freighted with different meanings. It is the mismatch of these two terms, the tension between them, which I explore in this thesis.

This thesis is a study of the boria, a popular form of Malay theatrical entertainment. In it I attempt to distinguish significant elements in the boria and analyse them in the context of modern Malaysia. Central to the study is a description and analysis of the boria as a drama form today, with particular concentration on characters, stories, songs and music, together with the mechanics of performance. An attempt is made by considering the themes, performers and audience, to investigate boria in the society where it is best developed, that is, in the Malay society of Penang. This involves setting the boria in its historical, political and socio-cultural context. It further requires placing it in the wider perspectives of Malaysian national policies for cultural development and the scholarly study of the performing arts of South-East Asia.