SOURCE: Chapman, Michael. “The Black Theatre Model: Towards an Aesthetic of South African Theatre.” In Southern African Literatures, pp. 360-68. London, England: Longman, 1996.

In the following excerpt, Chapman traces the course of theater in South Africa from the 1960s through the 1990s, focusing on the works of Athol Fugard, Zakes Mda, and Mbongeni Ngema.

An upsurge of black theatre in South Africa in the 1970s characterised political and cultural consciousness-raising and identified the Black Consciousness movement as a powerful source of resistance to apartheid. It was a theatre adaptable to both popular expression, as in the play Sarafina!, and to more self-consciously artistic treatment in the work of Zakes Mda and Athol Fugard, probably the two most literary playwrights to turn to their purpose what I call here the black theatre model.

The model is a hybrid. We may identify local elements of traditional African performance: oral storytelling...