Abstract

Contemporary theatre in South Africa has a history of hegemonically framing narratives that prevalence cisheteronormative stories. These narratives exacerbate the already existing acts of violence resulting from systems that place queerness against the backdrop of marginality. Inquiries in queer histories, identities, and sexualities arouse questions of belongingness, emphasising perspectives and tensions that many queer people in South Africa grapple with due to inherited systems of silencing. This article applies a dialogic framework between Diana Taylor’s The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (2003) and Judith Butler’s Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2009) to explore the process of queering contemporary theatre and performers in South Africa. In this article, I explore how the work of Koleka Putuma, with specific reference to No Easter Sunday for Queers (2019), participates in the act of carving out a space of belongingness through embodied modes of re-membering and re-memorying through theatre and performance. The orientation of Putuma’s work guides this paper to ask: in what ways does South African queer theatre confront systems of power, violence, and dominance that silence queer people in contemporary South Africa?

摘要

南非当代戏剧有着霸权框架叙事的历史，这些叙事盛行非规范性故事。这些叙述加剧了现有的暴力行为，这些暴力行为是由将酷儿置于边缘背景的制度所造成的。对酷儿历史、身份和性行为的探究引发了归属感问题，强调了南非许多酷儿人因继承的沉默制度而面临的观点和紧张局势。本文应用了戴安娜·泰勒的《档案与剧目：在美洲表演文化记忆》（2003）和朱迪思·巴特勒的《战争框架：生命何时可悲伤？》之间的对话框架。（2009）探索南非当代戏剧和表演者酷儿的过程。在本文中，我将探讨 Koleka Putuma 的作品，特别是《酷儿无复活节周日》（No Easter Sunday for Queers，2019），如何通过戏剧的记忆和重新记忆的具体模式来参与开拓归属感空间的行为。和性能。普图玛的作品方向引导本文提出这样的问题：南非酷儿戏剧如何面对让当代南非酷儿群体保持沉默的权力、暴力和统治体系？