Drama for a New South Africa

DAVID GRAVER earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Cornell University in 1987. Since then he has taught drama at Loyola University of Chicago, Stanford University, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago. He is author of The Aesthetics of Disturbance and numerous articles on twentieth-century drama and performance. He has been studying, teaching, and writing on South African drama since 1988. In 1997, he began a law degree at the University of Chicago.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionSophiatown (1986) by Junction Avenue Theater CompanyHorn of Sorrow (1988) by Nicholas EllenbogenAnd the Girls in their Sunday Dresses (1988) by Zakes MdaMooi Street Moves (1992) by Paul SlabolepszyPurdah (1993) by Ismail MahomedCrossing (1994) by Reza de WetIpi Zombi? (1998) by Brett BaileyGlossary

"Graver presents seven plays from the years when apartheid was falling apart. At that time, both the public and playwrights began noticing previously neglected social problems such as the oppression of black women, depicted in the plays in Kathy A. Perkins's anthology Black South African Women (CH, Sep'99). Graver casts his net wider and begins with Junction Avenue Theatre Company's Sophiatown (1988), a play treating one of apartheid's most odious evils, forced relocation. The plays that follow treat such subjects as abuse of women, poaching, and mindless bureaucracy. Particularly moving are Paul Slabolepszy's Mooi Street and Other Moves, about strangers in the big city who lose each other just when they begin to accept each other as fellow humans; Reza De Wert's Crossing, which reminded this reviewer of an Ingmar Bergman movie and is a haunting drama about ordinary people who are trying to bring some semblance of order to a chaotic world, though with mixed results; and Brett Bailey's Ipi Zombi, a powerful portrayal of how fear of witchcraft can overtake a community, overpowering both the victims and the aggressors. Recommended for libraries collecting in theater arts and studies, as well as in African literature and culture.June 2000"—B. K. Beynen, Des Moines Area Community College