Browsing by Author "Hyland, Geoffrey"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Breaking heterosoc, making a queerworld: using a queer directorial aesthetic to re-envision Hedda Gabler
    (2011) Rademeyer, Philip; Hyland, Geoffrey
    This essay explicates the queering of a seminal realist text, Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, by means of a queer directorial aesthetic. Using queer theory, the heterosexual matrix (built on a rigid gender binary) and the nuclear family are posited as the crux of heteronormativity, which is the assumption and expectation that subjects are heterosexual.
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    Chosi Ntsomi! making a Xhosa theatre identity by adapting Nongenile Masithathu Zenani's folktale about a rite of passage for Xhosa girls
    (2012) Tshazibane, Mfundo; Morris, Gay; Hyland, Geoffrey
    Inspired by the performativity of Xhosa cultural belief systems, my study aims to develop dignified theatrical roles for African women. This essay explores the potential of perceptions of Xhosa cultural women, configured in oral storytelling, as a means towards developing a base for Nguni theatre. This explication speaks to the capacities of African women models in re-shaping an ancient storytelling tradition for the development of South African theatre. The focus is on the recordings of a late matriarch, Nongenile Masithathu Zenani's storytelling sessions in Xhosa and the possibilities these present for a post-apartheid and postcolonial South African theatre stage. This research traces the boundaries set by the Xhosa culture, first on women, and secondly on performance. It unlocks the meaning and the significance of traditional song and dance, space, audience and stage properties, and the actual and potential uses of each of these aspects in making an Nguni classical theatre. The explication develops a vocabulary for theatrical performance derived from a rural South African perspective and explored in an urban setting. It establishes commonalities between the stories - narrated and performed - and the audience, concerning issues pertaining to (Xhosa) womanhood in post-apartheid South Africa.
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    An exploration towards a theatre praxis : the director as facilitator, looking through the lens of constructivism and multiple intelligences
    (2010) Bruce, Catharina; Hyland, Geoffrey
    As South African theatre artists we are both challenged and enriched by a diversity ofcultures, languages and traditions amongst both our practitioners and audiences. We are at the same time presented with a social environment that contains entrenched inequalities and divisions, profound trauma and unclear expectations. This affects us not only in the kind of theatre we create in response, but also in how we create theatre. Our rehearsal spaces and stages, like South African educational institutions, are concerned as much with integration and building communication bridges as with production.What I hope to glimpse at least, through this exploration, is a basis for practice that enhances the ability of an ensemble, no matter the degree of diversity, to actively participate in the process of interrogating the essence of a text or theme. I maintain that this collective process will develop open and authentic communication within the group,and that it will vitalize and enhance the impact of the resulting production by allowing the individual participants to make the concept, and its expression, their own.
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    House of shadows as text and performance : structural and conceptual considerations of/for the contemporary musical play
    (2005) Fick, David; Weare, Chris; Hyland, Geoffrey
    This paper is an explication of my thesis production House of Shadows, which was presented in November 2004 towards the fulfilment of the degree of Master of Arts in Theatre and Performance (Theatre Making) at the University of Cape Town. The explication focuses largely on the structural and conceptual processes in the creation of a new musical. As a theatre-maker, my research was driven by a need to {re)consider the musical as a compelling art form. The first chapter considers the contemporary South African theatrical landscape, creating the context in which House of Shadows was created. I have also discussed aspects of the play that make it distinctively South African, despite the American roots of the musical as a popular form of theatre. In the second chapter, House of Shadows is examined within the context of the (contemporary) musical play. The aspects of the musical play that found expression in the text and performance of House of Shadows are given individual attention. These include: the book, the score, the design and the direction. A significant focus is placed on the way these individual elements are integrated to form a unified and unique whole. The third chapter proposes a conceptual framework for reading musicals by examining the validity of the musical as festive theatre. The four key structural elements - display, contest, celebration and ceremony - and the objectivecommunal renewal - of festive theatre are discussed in the context of House of Shadows. This chapter concludes with an opinion of using this framework for analysing musical texts and performances.
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    Theatre : the art of human being : locating the cultural value of theatre in the Age of Broadcast Media and a retrospective paper on the process leading towards the 2000 performance Involving Eternity
    (2000) Torres, Thain N J; Hyland, Geoffrey
    This essay is concerned with the position of theatre as cultural commerce in the postmodern milieu of electronic broadcast media. It is the partial fulfillment of an MA degree in Theatre Making as studied from a performer's perspective. The other part of my final project was comprised by the 2000 performance of a play entitled Involving Eternity, a video of which is available through the Drama Department of the University of Cape Town. Thus the essay is a research document and ideological treatise supporting and grounding my recent work as a theatre maker and actor. I begin by examining the position of theatre in relationship to popular culture and the newly emerging aesthetics of the electronic era. The dynamics that separate the theatre from new forms of popular culture are strongly defined and examined. It is my position that the theatre cannot compete on the same front as technological media and I set out the reasons why I believe this to be so. The gulf existing between live performance and Media culture constitutes a political and ideological gap in the climate of the emerging technocracy and so I go on to examine these two field in closer detail. My analysis of broadcast media is focused on how these new aesthetic modes can be said to be reforming social perceptions about reality and representation. I draw from the theories of Jean Baudrillard and Phillip Auslander to present the critical position, which post modern discourse offers regarding these notions. Ultimately I foreground the notion of simulation in contemporary aesthetics and the erosion of the phenomenological space. My analysis of performance focuses on the emergence ofthe new ideologies of actor training ideology. These systems are best characterized by the work of the Odin Teatret and Jerzy Grotowski . My theory is that this work has created a framework in which the Theatre can return to contemporary culture by providing a counter discourse to the technological. A technology of the self. Lastly by way of example I illustrate how this theoretical position influenced the practical work on my play Involving Eternity.