Linkages between public intellectualism and post-apartheid South African theatre

The linkages between public intellectualism and post-apartheid South African theatre were explored in this research. Focusing on four theatre artists, this research sought to discover a grounded theory about how these artists practice public intellectualism. The analysis of selected interviews involving these artists led to the construction of a grounded theory of decolonial praxis that reveals how these theatre artists have taken action to primarily address the needs of the publics they represent. The nature of the grounded theory is such that it offers active theoretical tenets that theatre makers can engage, explore, and expand in their own research and in their practices. These theoretical tenets included critical reflexive sectoral participation, decolonial reimagining of creative practices, decolonial artivism, and awareness of socio-political context and positionality. This study also focused on the public outputs of the sample towards arriving at this grounded theory and the realisation of duplicability of the methodology and the overall research approach. The limitation imposed by exploring the practices of four Black theatre artists effectively means that this grounded theory cannot speak for the experiences of all theatre artists in South Africa. Considerably, this grounded theory offers prospective and practising theatre artists a means to explore strategies, models, frameworks, and theories for activating their agency as theatre artists and as public intellectuals.

本研究深入探讨了公共知识分子主义与南非后种族隔离时期戏剧之间的联系。聚焦于四位戏剧艺术家，本研究旨在揭示这些艺术家如何践行公共知识分子主义，并寻求构建一个坚实的理论。通过对涉及这些艺术家的选定访谈的分析，构建了一个去殖民化实践的理论框架，揭示了这些戏剧艺术家如何采取行动，主要针对他们所代表的公众需求。该坚实的理论性质在于，它提供了活跃的理论原则，戏剧制作者可以在自己的研究和实践中进行参与、探索和拓展。这些理论原则包括批判性反思的领域参与、创造性实践的去殖民化重构、去殖民化艺术主义以及对社会政治背景和定位的认识。本研究还关注样本的公共输出，以达成这一坚实的理论，并实现方法的可重复性和整体研究方法的实现。探索四位黑人戏剧艺术家的实践所受到的限制意味着，这一坚实的理论不能代表南非所有戏剧艺术家的经验。值得注意的是，这一坚实的理论为潜在的和实践中的戏剧艺术家提供了一种探索策略、模型、框架和理论的方法，以激活他们在戏剧艺术家和公共知识分子身份中的能动性。