A CENTURY OF SOUTH AFRICAN THEATRE

273pp., paperback, New York, 2023

Loren Kruger on the impact of theatre and other performances - pageants, concerts, sketches, workshops, and performance art - over the last hundred years, including African responses to pro-British pageants celebrating white Union in 1910, through anti-apartheid testimonial theatre by Athol Fugard, Maishe Maponya, Gcina Mhlophe, and many others, up to the present dramatization of HIV/AIDS, corruption, inequality and gender and state violence..

.“This book has done justice to the history of South African theatre and more specifically the history of performance and playwriting by African and women theatre makers. While Kruger gives the colonial/apartheid theatre its place and context in history, she deliberately foregrounds the subaltern. As an analyst, Kruger is privileged to have a working knowledge of isiZulu, which she uses to her advantage to view plays, collect data and make informed opinions on African performances. She straddles both the insider and outsider positions making her historical account balanced. This book is an excellent resource for all drama/theatre/performance departments offering an academic major in (South) African theatre or any cultural analyst with an interest in theatre studies.” Samuel Ravengai, Associate Professor, Head of the Wits School of the Arts, University of the Witwatersrand

Loren Kruger is Professor of English, Comparative Literature, Theater and Performance Studies and African Studies at the University of Chicago, USA. Her publications include Imagining the Edgy City: Writing, performing and building Johannesburg (2013) and The Drama of South Africa: Plays, pageants and publics since 1910 (1999).