OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Morris, Gay"

Browsing by Author "Morris, Gay"

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Open Access
Apple girl : ingesting and transforming Apple girl from fairy tale into sculpture and performance
(2013) Joubert, Jill; Alexander, Jane; Morris, Gay
The submission for my Master of Fine Art degree, which is devoted to the interpretation and transformation of the Italian fairy tale, Apple Girl, into performed sculpture, consists of this document as well as a photographic story-book which illustrates the sculpture component. The sculptured tableaux on wheels, conceived through the properties of carved wood and found-objects, also function as miniature puppet theatres. These are wheeled into the performance arena at relevant moments to be animated by myself, with jazz artist, Athalie Crawford, at times accompanying the performance. Thereafter, the audience is invitedto view the constellation of tableaux as an art work, fixed as an arrangement of sculptures to which the performance has given a framework for presentation and interpretation.
Open Access
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.
Open Access
Collaborating in No man's land : an enquiry towards creating an environment for 'equal' collaboration between international partners in an applied theatre project
(2009) Streek, Katy; Morris, Gay
This dissertation is an enquiry towards creating an environment for 'equal' collaboration between international partners in an applied theatre project. As a direct case study, I used my master's fieldwork project, No-man's land, a theatre project involving performers from South Africa and The Netherlands. The problematics of international exchanges in which people, resources and art works are brought together over long distances, generates issues around power, culture and the performing arts which demand attention from project partners. The term 'No Man's Land' isthe metaphor developed throughout this dissertation in order to conceptualise the space of collaboration, as well as the mentality such a collaboration necessitates. The focus here is on international collaboration projects within the field of applied theatre that have the potential to unite artists from different backgrounds to explore issues of mutual interest through theatre processes and performances.
Open Access
Complex associations : facilitator, host and refugee, a 'round-about' way of drama for inclusion
(2013) Hughes, Shannon; Baxter, Veronica; Morris, Gay
This dissertation focuses on the use of drama as a method of fostering inclusion of refugees and asylum seekers living in host communities. It examines two theatrically based studies simultaneously facilitated over a six month period between July and December of 2012 and explores the two programs from the stage of conception to conclusions regarding their effectiveness in tackling issues related to social exclusion, xenophobic sentiment and violence.The study approaches the topic from three social perspectives considering the position of refugee, host and facilitator and parallels these positions in order to highlight relationship structures which both prevent and assist in the fostering of inclusion and/or coexistence. The study further examines how the interactions help to develop the programs and how the use of theatre can bridge societal gaps; with a unique focus on environments where host and refugee find themselves in a non-encounter position due to the potential for violence. The research methodology stems primarily from grounded theory and brings together elements of symbolic interactionism, pedagogy, sociology, psychology and applied theatre. The method looks at increasing and facilitating communication about and between host and refugee through exploration in applied theatre and intends to increase social understanding between the parties by challenging participant’s stereotypes of the other.
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Considering directors and directing in South Africa
(Taylor & Francis, 2006) Morris, Gay
This article attempts to address why this focus issue was pursued by the South African Theatre Journal and will begin to investigate what studying directing in our local context has to offer us. Considering the contributions to this issue, two key themes have been identified and are developed below. The first is couched within modernist and popular conceptions of the director: that person most able to seize the moment, find the truth of a play and fuse play script - and probably playwright's vision - cast and staging to make a coherent theatrical production which resonates with its audience. The emphasis in this conception is on the director's capacities not only as a key textual interpreter but also as a canny manager: that person who can find the resources, financial and infrastructural support, and also artistic or public following to realise a vision. The second theme locates the director in a post-World War II, globalised and post-modern consciousness in which incontrovertible truths seem much harder to identify, nationalist agendas are often controversial, moralities easily contested and local issues reactive or responsive to global trends. In this context, the director's collaborations within artistic communities, openness to many possible interpretations, and engagement with differences of language, culture, or creed are almost inevitable. In an international, capitalist-driven economy, the director has little assured status, but must rather negotiate spaces and places where theatre will both attract an audience and allow the audience its own space within the theatrical event.
Open Access
A critical analysis of the teaching technique role play, with particular reference to educational drama
(1991) Nebe, Warren; Morris, Gay
This study analyses Role Play teaching techniques employed in Educational Drama and examines the possibility that the current practice of Role Play may actually obstruct the personal and collective empowerment of students, thereby limiting the educative potential of drama.
Open Access
A critical biography of Rosalie van der Gucht : investigating her contribution to education in South Africa with special reference to speech and drama
(1989) Morris, Gay; Haynes, David
This study attempts to explore the ways in which Rosalie Van der Gucht influenced and contributed to Speech and Drama education during the second half of this century in the Cape. The writer takes the view that although Van der Gucht was not particularly original in her work - dramatically, socially or politically - she had an impact which is still felt in the Cape Province and beyond, because of her outstanding qualities as a leader, teacher and play director; effected through her special skills as a communicator. The chosen form is a critical biography, which makes it possible to investigate the impact of Van der Gucht's initiatives within the contemporary context. Given that there are only a handful of books which deal with the theatre of this period in the Cape, and they contain few specific references to Van der Gucht; the chief sources for this topic were unpublished written material, and interviews with Van der Gucht's past students, colleagues, friends and relations. Of special importance were Van der Gucht's unsorted collection of papers (bequeathed to the Human Sciences Research Council), the Little Theatre Press Cutting books and the University of Cape Town Archives. In Chapter One the formative influence of her parents, her education, and her first working years in England prior to the Second World War are traced. The following six chapters cover, decade by decade, the period from 1942 to 1971 when Van der Gucht was at the University of Cape Town, training aspirant Speech and Drama teachers, actors, and students taking general Arts degrees. Her influence upon the teacher and actor training courses, including a scrutiny of curriculum developments, is examined; as is her membership of the South African Guild of Speech Teachers and her foundation and leadership of Theatre for Youth which aimed to reach young people beyond the University. Chapter 8 covers the years after her retirement from the University, when she launched upon a second career as a play director, and attempts to pinpoint the chief characteristics of her directing. Chapter 9 deals with the events leading to her death in 1985 - which shed new light on Van der Gucht as a person. The conclusions drawn from this study pertain to Van der Gucht's quality as a person and teacher. The writer takes the paradoxical view that this woman of British origin and education; was, first and foremost, an educator of the traditional kind found in Africa: an oral educator, who used oral material, verbal communication and social situations to inspire and direct those with whom she worked to greater efforts for the benefit of their society, themselves and the discipline of drama. The study is intended to be a useful historical resource for students of drama and the theatre in South Africa.
Open Access
A critical documentation of Mavis Taylor's teaching of improvisation
(1994) Calburn, Caroline; Morris, Gay
This study documents Mavis Taylor's teaching of Improvisation at the University of Cape Town and provides a critical analysis of the improvisational methods she uses in the training of actors. It places her teaching within the wider field of improvisation understanding the importance of knowledge of 'self for the craft of acting. There is discussion around the role of the imagination and spontaneity in actor-training, and debate is raised regarding the concepts and practice of sensory and emotional memory training. The significance of teaching structure and form as a method for students to manipulate the medium of improvisation is argued, proposing that the creation of alternative meanings and 'realities' is the essence of acting.
Open Access
Development, belonging and change : a study of a community theatre-for-development initiative in KwaZulu-Natal
(2008) Stockil, Emily; Morris, Gay
This dissertation seeks to address issues related to community change within the field of Theatre-for development. It proposes and then investigates various ways in which a community may seek to retain a sense of collective ideology in the light of both positive and negative developmental change, as promulgated by agents outside their community. Chapter one, Introduction, begins by introducing the reader both to the fieldwork project and the community, Khethani township, in which the masters degree filedwork was undertaken. It was this fieldwork which prompted the research enquiry covered by this dissertation, to which the reader is introduced. It delineates the research methodologies of both the fieldwork project and this dissertation, and positions the writer in relation to this study. The initial aim of the fieldwork project was to do a practical enquiry into the methods of workshop theatre and the development of a distinct theatre aesthetic that emerges from a community as a result of workshop theatre practices. Having completed the fieldwork project and having considered the results of the initial fieldwork aims a larger research enquiry developed as to the role of workshop theatre within the broader context of community development and this has now become the focus of this dessertation.
Open Access
Devising dialogue : structuring intercultural encounters through the process of workshop theatre
(2008) Leffler, Elliot; Morris, Gay
This dissertation explores the efficacy of workshop theatre processes in nurturing intercultural dialogue among members of a multicultural group. It investigates two kinds of intercultural dialogue - interpersonal dialogue and intergroup dialogue - which, it is argued, are each catalysed by different theatrical processes. Theatre games and improvisations seem to nurture an interpersonal dialogue, in which cultural differences are transcended as group members recognise each other's common humanity. Theatre research, on the other hand, seems more able to nurture an intergroup dialogue, in which group members acknowledge and contextualise cultural differences. At the same time, this dissertation proposes that it is unethical and ultimately ineffective for a facilitator to deliberately nurture a purely-interpersonal dialogue or a purely-intergroup dialogue. Rather, the group members themselves should determine the nature of the dialogue in which they participate. The dissertation therefore embraces Fred Casmir' s model of third-culture building, which conceptualises the multicultural group as a 'third-culture' that ideally evolves to accomodate the needs of all of its members.
Open Access
Embracing space : reviewing the body-space nexus as a creative tool, inspired by the theories of Rudolph Laban and the Bauhaus movement
(2006) Levin, Ruth; Morris, Gay
My MA in theatre and performance investigates the relationship between the body and space, with a view to using it to generate content and choreography for dance theatre productions. I draw my research from the theories of Rudolph Laban and the Bauhaus movement. Laban's view of space as a living entity governs my investigation. From his theories regarding space and its impact on the movement that the body produces, I have discovered the categories within space, which are useful to combine, in order that they can stimulate content and choreography. The theories of the Bauhaus movement influence my approach to the composition phase of productions.
Open Access
An exploration of the relationship between applied theatre and community building practice, with specific reference to a teenage pregnancy project in Delft
(2006) Sulcas, Gabrielle Reeve; Morris, Gay
In a developing country such as South Africa, the challenge to locate new, effective methods of social development is key. This study argues that applied theatre has the potential to become a powerful medium for the fulfilment of this aim. The development and performance of this kind of theatre, which occurs outside of conventional theatre settings and deals with social issues in a participatory way with its audience, brings people of different genders, ages, races and classes together. In doing so, a community is formed, dynamic and multidimensional in nature. This is a divergence from conventional understandings of community as a single static, objective entity. Community building practice centres around this reconceptualisation of community, providing an orientation to the ways in which people who identify as members of a shared community engage together in the process of community change.
Open Access
Exploring social identity through theatre : an examination of the process of creating Jingle Dreams with youth in the coloured community of Clanwilliam
(2008) De Bruyn, Lavona; Morris, Gay
This dissertation examines the process of creating Jingle Dreams with the youth in Clanwilliam. It aims to ascertain whether the processes of Community Theatre drama create opportunities for the individuals in the identified community to explore a social identity influenced by historical legacy, heritage, memory (or absence thereof) and socio-economic environment. The intention of the dissertation is influenced by the Applied Drama mission to benefit individuals, communities and societies through artistic forms of intervention such as dramatic activities, theatre directing, mediation and discussions. I will examine how the processes and the performative qualities of drama and theatre have the potential to transform individuals and society. Community Theatre creates the space for young people to share and question common experiences of life. This ensures that marginalised voices are heard which has psychological and social benefits for the participants. The dissertation proposes to interrogate how young people revealed their social identity through the narrative structure, dialogue, stereotypes and symbols in Jingle Dreams. I have been strongly motivated by the work of Augusto Boal which was the source of a large part of the dramatic processes. In the research process, the young people belonging to The Community Networking Creative Arts Group were encouraged to find their own forms of artistic, cultural and theatrical expression. During the rehearsal process, the group improvised and developed many scenes which reflected issues such as alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence and intergenerational tension. The narrative of the performance was based both on their stories and on stories from their community. It reflected their circumstances, their struggles, their hopes and their dreams. Theatre devised in community situations reflects concern with the representation of memory, and participants are invited to recognise that autobiographical narratives have social, communitarian and historical significance, as well as personal relevance. Performers drew on their own experiences to devise the scenes. This process often emphasised how the boundaries between truth and fiction are blurred. The lack of a clear distinction between fact and art facilitated the revelation, exploration and contestation of social identity.
Open Access
Facilitating engagement with the challenges facing families in which there may be members with special needs : positing a model for theatrical intervention
(2014) Pupa, Buntu; Morris, Gay
The purpose of the study is to investigate the manner in which performance can facilitate communication amongst family members in dealing with the challenges facing families in which there is a member with ‘special needs’. Special needs range from problems of mental or emotional anguish, care, disability or chronic illnesses. My interest in this study is on how these special needs impact on the functioning of the family and family dynamics. Theatrical representation and audience participation is at the heart of exploring the empowering role of applied theatre to engage family members in expressing their difficulties and discussing their issues together.
Open Access
Mise en scÃ¨ne as a feminine textual body : making meaning in new plays
(2013) Stopford, Clare; Morris, Gay
This study proceeds from research I have conducted through autobiographical writing, into my experiences of directing untried play texts for first performance. The question of ownership of the meaning conveyed by the play in performance, in the negotiated space between the writer and the director, provides the frame for this discussion. Who has the right of ownership over meaning, and in times of dissension about meaning, whose meaning should prevail? Since it is the writer's first opportunity to see his or her play on the stage, it would seem that the ethics of the situation favour the writer. However, if the director's modality is unconscious, intuitive and 'felt' as mine is, the best and most ethical path to follow may be hard to discern by both director and writer. At the same time, the intuitive modality of the director may be destabilized by the presence of the writer. Within this conundrum my focus is on identifying, exploring and considering the director's modality, which I have identified as 'feminine', a term which in this text favours sexual differentiation as a feminist strategy for the re-creation and re-inscription of woman within a male dominated signifying system. Rosi Braidotti's evocation of Cixous' creative writing as a 'feminine textual body' in resistance to woman as 'non-said', and as procreation of woman as a subject, provides the inspiration for the conceptualization of mise en scÃ¨ne as a feminine textual body. Using Green Man Flashing written by Mike Van Graan and directed by me in 2004, and Lara Foot's Reach that I directed in 2007, as case studies, I consider, as well as assess the impact, of my feminine directorial modality on these two performance texts. I am interested in how meaning is made from inside the feminine modality, what meaning is made, and finally, how the feminine modality is affected by the material circumstances in which these two plays were rehearsed. My aim is to extend the feminine modality into the style of it's dissemination by taking the reader into the 'feeling' of the modality in a style of writing that embodies the personal, intimate, intuitive qualities it invokes. I also take a more analytical view, assessing the efficacy of the feminine modality by using the lenses of materialist feminists such as Dolan and Diamond, as well as Irigaray's 'relational alterity'. The outcome of this exploration is that the feminine modality is both a solution and a problem, depending on material circumstances. Its paradoxical nature requires a third space in which it can stabilize, and yet remain accessible to the unconscious.
Open Access
A Museum of Bottled Sentiments: the ‘beautiful pain syndrome’ in twenty-first century Black South African theatre making
(2014) Mahali, Alude; Morris, Gay; Sitas, Ari
This study is about contemporary black theatre makers and theatre making in the 'now moment'; this moment of recovery and gradual transition after the fall of apartheid in South Africa. The 'now moment', for these theatre makers, is characterized by a deliberate journey inward, in a struggle towards self-determination. The 'now moment' is the impulse prompting the 'beautiful pain syndrome', and through performances of uncomfortable attachments and rites of passage, generates and dwells in the syndrome. Uncomfortable attachments are unsettlement and anxiety wrought by the difficulty of the 'now moment'. These manifest in the work of Black South African-based contemporary theatre makers, Mandla Mbothwe, Awelani Moyo, Mamela Nyamza and Asanda Phewa, within the duality of the 'beautiful pain syndrome'. The 'beautiful pain syndrome' is a cultural dis-ease revealed by the individual theatre makers through the aesthetic interpretation, or beautiful consideration of inherently painful material – a condition or predicament that best contains and yet attempts to unpack this shifting impulse of the 'now' moment. The works around which this study revolves, namely Mbothwe's Ingcwaba lendoda lise cankwe ndlela (the grave of the man is next to the road) (2009), Moyo's Huroyi Hwang – De/Re Composition (2007), Nyamza's Hatched (2009) and Phewa's A Face Like Mine (2008) are rites of passage works, representing a passage or transition from one phase of life to another, which occurs on multiple levels. Through guiding thinking tools, which include intuition, my own positioning, observation and comparative and cultural performance analysis, the four selected works are described, probed and, interrogated; with their purposes and poetics investigated and articulated in different ways. The study does not complete the assignment of unpacking the four works but continues to wonder and worry at them, while investigating a particular aesthetic of dis-ease through the artistic assemblage of symbolic categories. These rites of passage works reflect or echo the transitions in the country's shifting identity, along with the identities of the individuals who inhabit it.
Open Access
Own-made in the (post-)new South Africa : a study of theatre originating from selected townships in the vicinity of Cape Town
(2010) Morris, Gay; Jacklin, Heather
This thesis sets out to develop a framework for the analysis and description of theatre practices evident in selected Cape Town townships during the past six years. Building an account which is both aesthetic and sociological and informed by political intentions; which considers the whole - the gestalt - and which adopts a located orientation; the study sets out to elucidate the theatre's connections to its locality and local culture, its particular organizational and aesthetic character, its idiosyncrasies and performance strengths, its concerns, and its struggle for distinction within the field of theatre in Cape Town.
Open Access
Playing for keeps : an examination of arepp : Theatre for Life's applied theatre pedagogy with regards to adolescent sexuality
(2008) Bilbrough, Gordon; Morris, Gay
This dissertation examines the particular method developed by arepp: Theatre for Life, a South African Non Governmental Organisation, in its work of providing sexuality and social problem solving life-skills education for adolescents, towards the development of self-efficacy in school-going youth, by means of dramatic presentations. The research is broadly located in the fields of applied theatre, experiential learning and participatory action research. Social cognitive and self-efficacy theory underpin the educational goals, whilst phenomenology, the 'eventness' of theatre, narrative and diegesis are key to the conceptual framework within which arepp: Theatre for Life's use of theatre is examined. The arepp: Theatre for Life archive, including the organisation's internal monitoring and evaluation system, provide the primary data source for this investigation, which focuses on one arepp: Theatre for Life production, Look Before You Leap: Hangin' in 2007, for specific inverstigation and the provision evidence. arepp: Theatre for Life's applied theatre pedagogy combines the concepts of observational learning through a theatre show with the processes of experiential learning through a facilitated discussion to develop self-efficacy with regard to adolescent sexuality.
Open Access
Subalternity and the negotiation of a theatre identity : performing the postcolony alternative Zimbabwean theatre
(2011) Ravengai, Samuel; Morris, Gay; Garuba, Harry
The present study investigates the field of theatre practice that I have chosen to call alternative Zimbabwean theatre through a detailed study of four plays and reference to several others all first performed and written between 1980 and 1996. The study interrogates the interweaving and juxtaposition of divergent performance forms and styles on stage created by the contact between western dramatic theatre, indigenous theatre and cultural performances. This contact results in the formation of a third space for theatre which is a creative area of ambivalence, sameness, difference, conflict, struggle, mocking and celebration. The study specifically scrutinises this intersecting area as it obtains in alternative theatre and examines the forces at work in producing the nature and identity of syncretic theatre. Between 1980 and 1996, the nature and identity of alternative theatre changed significantly. This thesis investigates these changes, movements, shifts, conflicts and appropriations and the context within which they took place.
Open Access
Theatrical bodies and madness: a case study of a theatre playground in a South African forensic psychiatric hospital
(2021) Sutherland, Alexandra; Morris, Gay
This study analyses, over a three-year period, a theatre programme with forensic psychiatric patients and staff at Fort England psychiatric hospital in Grahamstown/Makhanda, South Africa. Framed as a ‘theatrical playground', programme sessions were structured around theatre games, improvisation and devised theatre processes that culminated in playmaking at the end of each session. Participation in the group was voluntary and constructed to allow involvement in theatrical play on its own terms, set apart from the therapeutic and rehabilitation agendas that govern the institution. By means of a conceptually-driven critical analysis of the empirical practice, the study explores the ethical tensions and possibilities of locating all participants as political actors with agency to develop the stories, characters, and images they choose for themselves. It juxtaposes the democratic principles of the theatre space with the oppression and control of psychiatry when viewed as a Total Institution. I draw on the work of Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman in order to conceptualise a history and critique of psychiatry, and to contextualise how colonial psychiatry developed in South Africa. I compare manifestations of power and control that are part of forensic psychiatric practices with the political possibilities of different resistant theatre spaces, such as the work of the Olimpias artist collective and the Madness Hotel (Vitor Pordeus). I show how these examples, and the theatre project researched here, approach all participants as authors and makers of and on the world. I deploy a Vygotskian lens to discern how participants collectively create a Zone of Proximal Development, which explains the profound shifts in learning and skills observed in participants considered as low functioning or beyond treatment or rehabilitation. The study analyses three aspects of the practice: video documentation of selected workshops and performances; interviews with patient and staff participants; and my reflective practitioner field notes - in order to build the case for the radically humanising effect of the theatre playground. My analysis of key moments in the theatre practice highlights the ways in which patient-participants perform ‘a head taller' than clinical staff's expectations, when offered opportunities to experiment with relationships by means of embodied practices in a creative process set apart from the therapeutic gaze. Reflective and critical analysis of the practice reveals three types of experience in particular: first, hope as an overall affect that aligns with a recovery approach to mental health; secondly, how participation is experienced as humanising by disrupting and playing with institutionalised roles and bodies; and finally, how permission to play with the roles, narratives, and the power structures of psychiatry as an institution, reoriented participants as political actors in relation to the forensic hospital and the wider world. These experiences challenge the stigma and positioning of forensic psychiatric patients as incapable, outside of culture and humanity, and reposition them as legitimate knowers and creators.