This monograph is a welcome addition to African performance scholarship by way of its precise readings of performances in context. Patrick J. Ebewo skilfully draws from a comprehensive body of research focusing on black writing and praxis in Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland. Ebewo writes poignantly and with a deep understanding of the complexities of the intersecting terrain. In his foreword, Kennedy Chinyowa characterizes the work as having a ‘refreshing sense of newness’ (p. x) and his judgement well describes the significance of this monograph in post-apartheid South African and decolonizing African contexts. If borrowed research paradigms from the global North and the ethnicity of those in powerful positions have dampened the epistemological influence of black African writers, directors and scholars, Ebewo's monograph embodies departures from such paradigms. For instance, Ebewo avoids the systematization and harmonization of themes into one singular trajectory that is central to positivism. Instead, this volume generates a plurality of observations and meanings that signal new epistemic directions. Ebewo's tendency to traverse past and present is another strategy that departs from the clear historiographic-versus-contemporary delineations found in positivist scholarship.
The thirteen-chapter structure frames a critical engagement with the work of southern African dramatists Zakes Mda, Masitha Hoeane, Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom and Bonisile Nxumalo; performance as ritual in Swaziland; theatre for development in Lesotho and Botswana; performance poetry in South Africa; a discussion of Loyiso Gola's late-night news as parody; and analyses of the South African sociopolitical context from multiple positions, including the ‘performance’ of Mandela's reign at the dawn of democracy, and anticipations for the future. Putting such forms in dialogue with one another in one volume de-emphasizes colonial conceptions of bordered states and pure theatrical forms and elicits illuminating relations between dramatists, themes and contexts. For example, in chapter 8, the crudity of Grootboom's Relativity: Township Stories (2009) as a mirror to the punitive conditions of South African townships is tempered through Ebewo's earlier analysis connecting employee-ranking systems in Botswana mining operations with low worker morale (pp. 93–4). Since mining has also historically figured in the lives of men from the townships, Ebewo's depiction of the male mining experience in Botswana informs the structural brokenness of townships in Grootboom's South Africa. Ebewo's selection, therefore, supports the reader's cognizance of contexts so that they can more deeply penetrate his readings of performances.
Chapters fluidly interweave multiple temporal dimensions, such as his description of Mda's The Hill (1980) in its premiere performance in Lesotho (p. 104), followed by an illustration of the everyday realities for Mda's characters who are described as real people in the contemporary moment, such as: ‘The miners who survive their mine ordeals usually experience short-lived happiness through being defrauded of their possessions by the Maseru prostitutes’ (p. 107). Ebewo's use of the present tense when describing Mda's characters, written and first performed in 1980, is then put in dialogue with his discussion of Lesotho-based contemporary issues of food insecurity (p. 108). The resulting emphasis on relationality between characters and contexts across time reflects Ruch and Anyanwu's (African Philosophy: An Introduction to the Main Philosophical Trends in Contemporary Africa, 1981, p. 87) view of the African conceptualization of the self: ‘The order of the world and that of the self are identical. What happens to the world happens to the self.’ Oftentimes, Ebewo's analysis thus realizes features echoing African epistemologies.
Centrally, this monograph highlights the inseparability of readings of performance and their southern African sociopolitical, cultural and historical contexts. The detail of Ebewo's readings alongside nuanced contextual analyses suggests a wide readership: from undergraduate students to early-career researchers of southern African drama, theatre and performance, theatre for development and applied theatre. In chapter 9, Ebewo synthesizes theatre-for-development examples, claiming, ‘For those who view theatre and drama as merely “playthings,” our discussion has hopefully served as a pragmatic awakening’ (p. 160). This statement reveals an interest in communicating the greater imperatives and impacts of drama, theatre and performance in southern Africa. However, to suggest a singular trajectory for the volume would be to undermine the epistemic directions signalled by Ebewo. Readers can be best placed navigating this volume considering the interdependence between chapters and parts as a structural feature that parallels the relationality between performance and contexts, pointing to multiple accumulative interpretations.
