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Theatres of migritude: towards a dramaturgy of African futures

The thesis aims to contribute to the genre of black migrant cultural production called migritude, developed largely in African diasporic literary circles and tracing its evolution from the Négritude movement. It will mobilize Shailja Patel's significant work to shape a new migritude that stands in c...

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Main Author: Mwenya, Kabwe Beverly
Other Authors: Fleishman, Mark
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Centre for Theatre Dance and Performance Studies 2023
Subjects:
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access_status_str Open Access
author Mwenya, Kabwe Beverly
author2 Fleishman, Mark
author_browse Fleishman, Mark
Mwenya, Kabwe Beverly
author_facet Fleishman, Mark
Mwenya, Kabwe Beverly
author_sort Mwenya, Kabwe Beverly
collection Thesis
description The thesis aims to contribute to the genre of black migrant cultural production called migritude, developed largely in African diasporic literary circles and tracing its evolution from the Négritude movement. It will mobilize Shailja Patel's significant work to shape a new migritude that stands in continuation and in contestation with the older version of this artistic project. The research question at the heart of the thesis is, what does it mean to have a migrant attitude for theatre and performance making? The thesis explores an approach to thinking about how a relationship between migration and African futurism can be put towards a dramaturgical practice mobilized in the direction of possibility, potential and a more hopeful future. The quest undertaken here is to find out what alternative understandings of African migrancy exist in the spirit of the five case studies, namely Migritude by Shailja Patel, Every Year, Every Day I am Walking by Magnet Theatre, Moj of the Antartctic: An African Odyssey by Mojisola Adebayo, Afrogalactica Deep Space Scrolls by Kapwani Kiwanga and Astronautus Afrikanus, devised by a group of students at Rhodes University under my direction. By analysing each of these performance texts through a different lens, the thesis aims to develop a pliable dramaturgical framework for a migrant attitude which leverages some of the aesthetic features of migritude artistic work as noted by Vanita Reddy (2020). These include defining Africa by movement, linking the concept of migrant with the concept of colonial history and the diasporic refusal of return. Here a migrant attitude also includes Thomas Nail (2015) and Veejay Prashad's (2010) contentions that the migrant is central to a project of social re-imagining, as well as Mark Fleishman's (2015) notion of a dramaturgy of displacement where movement and migration form a core part of both the form and content of the work.
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institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:33:33.643Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2023
publishDateRange 2023
publishDateSort 2023
publisher Centre for Theatre Dance and Performance Studies
publisherStr Centre for Theatre Dance and Performance Studies
record_format dspace
source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/38500 Theatres of migritude: towards a dramaturgy of African futures Mwenya, Kabwe Beverly Fleishman, Mark migritude The thesis aims to contribute to the genre of black migrant cultural production called migritude, developed largely in African diasporic literary circles and tracing its evolution from the Négritude movement. It will mobilize Shailja Patel's significant work to shape a new migritude that stands in continuation and in contestation with the older version of this artistic project. The research question at the heart of the thesis is, what does it mean to have a migrant attitude for theatre and performance making? The thesis explores an approach to thinking about how a relationship between migration and African futurism can be put towards a dramaturgical practice mobilized in the direction of possibility, potential and a more hopeful future. The quest undertaken here is to find out what alternative understandings of African migrancy exist in the spirit of the five case studies, namely Migritude by Shailja Patel, Every Year, Every Day I am Walking by Magnet Theatre, Moj of the Antartctic: An African Odyssey by Mojisola Adebayo, Afrogalactica Deep Space Scrolls by Kapwani Kiwanga and Astronautus Afrikanus, devised by a group of students at Rhodes University under my direction. By analysing each of these performance texts through a different lens, the thesis aims to develop a pliable dramaturgical framework for a migrant attitude which leverages some of the aesthetic features of migritude artistic work as noted by Vanita Reddy (2020). These include defining Africa by movement, linking the concept of migrant with the concept of colonial history and the diasporic refusal of return. Here a migrant attitude also includes Thomas Nail (2015) and Veejay Prashad's (2010) contentions that the migrant is central to a project of social re-imagining, as well as Mark Fleishman's (2015) notion of a dramaturgy of displacement where movement and migration form a core part of both the form and content of the work. 2023-09-11T07:12:49Z 2023-09-11T07:12:49Z 2023 2023-09-11T07:12:41Z Doctoral Thesis Doctoral PhD http://hdl.handle.net/11427/38500 eng application/pdf Centre for Theatre Dance and Performance Studies Faculty of Humanities
spellingShingle migritude
Mwenya, Kabwe Beverly
Theatres of migritude: towards a dramaturgy of African futures
thesis_degree_str Doctoral
title Theatres of migritude: towards a dramaturgy of African futures
title_full Theatres of migritude: towards a dramaturgy of African futures
title_fullStr Theatres of migritude: towards a dramaturgy of African futures
title_full_unstemmed Theatres of migritude: towards a dramaturgy of African futures
title_short Theatres of migritude: towards a dramaturgy of African futures
title_sort theatres of migritude towards a dramaturgy of african futures
topic migritude
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/38500
work_keys_str_mv AT mwenyakabwebeverly theatresofmigritudetowardsadramaturgyofafricanfutures