Women's Activist Theatre in Jamaica and South Africa : Gender, Race, and Performance Space / Nicosia M. Shakes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shakes, Nicosia M., author.

Series:

NWSA / UIP First Book Prize Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Feminist theater.

Theater and society.

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white) ;

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Urbana, Illinois : University of Illinois Press, [2023]

Summary:

"In this book, Nicosia Shakes analyzes how African and African-descended women forge feminism through theatre activism. By studying the practice of four theatre organizations-The Mothertongue Project and The Olive Tree Theatre Company in South Africa, and Sistren Theatre Collective and the Memory, Urban Violence and Performance (MUVAP) Project in Jamaica-Shakes examines how they engage in discourse and activism that transgress interlocking systems of racial, gender, sexual, and economic domination. Specifically, Shakes looks at how performances expose and transgress uniform notions of womanhood that do not properly acknowledge socioeconomic, sexual, and racial differences; sociopolitical and cultural rationales for gender-based discrimination, which do not engage with women's subjectivities; and the special manifestations of oppressive gender forms, for example, as evident in how women's bodies are sexually and racially interpreted as they negotiate public spaces. In particular, this analysis shows that performace space is as critical to these organizations' activism as the content of the production. Most of the performances are staged in public spaces or spaces not normally considered theatrical, and in these public performances, performers call attention to issues normally considered private, such as sexual violence, and raise questions about how women's bodies are interpreted and the place within societies. As we see throughout the book, theatre's political and pedagogical role becomes centrally entangled with an ethical grappling of the histories and geographies of oppression and resistance, the identities and connections forged between movements of people in the context of colonial and settler colonial histories, and the nuances of the lived realities that these bring forth, including in the conceptualizations of womanism, feminism, and motherism"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Intro

Cover

Title

Copyright

Contents

Acknowledgments

A Note on Terms and Concepts

Introduction: Race, Gender, Space

1 "Mek Wi Choose fi Wiself": Performing a Discourse of Justice in A Slice of Reality

2 "The Wound Is Still There": Walk: South Africa and the Ontological Violence of Rape

3 "Mi a go try release yu": Mourning, Memory, and Violence in A Vigil for Roxie

4 Alternative Spaces: Black Self-Making, Space-Making, and the Work of Olive Tree Theatre

Coda: Performing Activism across Space and Time

Notes

References

Index

Back Cover.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780252054754

025205475X

OCLC:

1371653682