Decolonising Theatre: Subverting the Western Dramaturgical Frame in Zimbabwean Theatre and Performance

Abstract

The official cultural policy of the colonial state in Zimbabwe was premised on the anglicisation of cultural production with a slavish adherence to the Western dramatic canon. Although this policy was resisted by cultural producers, the resistance was not mainstreamed in any meaningful way as a broad-based policy to be pursued. With independence from Great Britain on 18 April 1980, cultural producers took it upon themselves to mainstream this resistance to the Western canon through a process of decolonising Zimbabwean theatre to create what I have called alternative Zimbabwean theatre. In this article, I want to make sense of this creative process by deploying two sociological concepts: keying and fabrication. I appropriate these two concepts through the lens of decolonial theory, which is an analytical approach that both celebrates and destabilises the colonial and Eurocentric episteme to reconstruct new epistemic systems and forms. With a particular focus on two plays I argue that George Mujajati subverts the Western dramaturgical frame, acting methods and approaches through a process of “keying” and “fabrication.” Sometimes the Western dramaturgical frame is deconstructed by using aspects of it alongside an indigenous theatrical matrix.

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