This thesis is titled Lost Lesotho Princess/Landlord Ears. It consists of an original play
of the same name based upon the life-story of the author’s paternal grandmother and an
accompanying essay titled “Lost Lesotho Princess/Landlord Ears: Visibility, Invisibility,
Roots and Liminality in the African Diaspora.” The play falls under the following
theatrical categories: African Diaspora drama, black theatre, western Canadian black
theatre, realism, the memory play and to some extent, contemporary existentialism. The
essay is a discussion by the author regarding the dramatic, social and political context of
the play. The following themes are highlighted: history — pertaining to a collective black
history and individual histories and (her)stories, regarding and respecting ones’ elders as
a link to history and Africa, and notions of commonality and difference within the
African Diaspora with attention paid to myths and narratives about what it means to be
‘dark-skinned’ or ‘light-skinned’ in various black communities around the world. The
methods of investigation were: a study of the drama and literature of the African
Diaspora, the dramatic literature of other post-colonial societies and marginalized groups,
one-on-one interviews with Rose Landers, whose experiences are represented by Carrie,
the main character in Lost Lesotho Princess/Landlord Ears and field research at JazzArt -
a dance-theatre company in Cape Town, South Africa. The view-point the play lends
itself to and the conclusions drawn by the essay are: that black people and black
communities need agency and healing, that being of mixed race does not have to equal
psychological confusion and that mixed communities, families and cultures have been
and will continue to be relevant to the universal black experience and the artistic
representation of the African Diaspora. The importance of writing as a form of healing,
resolution and revolution for members of the African Diaspora and the importance of
authorship of ones’ own history is highlighted.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/4130 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Landers, Marion Rose |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds