Theatre amongst the ruins: The poetics and politics of South African adaptations

Online lecture by Mark Fleishman
Part of Politics and Performance Speakers Series
Friday, 25 March 2021, 16:00-18:00, online (for registration, please send an email to e.m.mazadiego@uva.nl.

Through the conceptual metaphor of the ruin, the lecture explores the ways in which the classical archive has been mobilized and reinvented by two white theatre-makers in South Africa: Athol Fugard’s production of Orestes in 1971 and my own adaptation of Antigone (not quite/quiet) in 2019.

Mark Fleishman is Professor of Theatre in the Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies at the University of Cape Town. He is also a co-artistic director of Magnet Theatre, an independent theatre company established in 1987. Recent publications: Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa: Cape of Flows in the Studies in International Performance series at Palgrave (2015) and two special issues of the South African Theatre Journal on Translation & Performance (2019 & 2020). He is currently principal investigator on the project Re-imagining Tragedy from Africa and the Global South, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.