Introduction

Abstract

This special issue focuses on a production, Antigone (not quite/quiet), created and staged at the Baxter Theatre, in Cape Town, in 2019. The production was one of a number of similar productions created as part of the project: Reimagining Tragedy from Africa and the Global South (ReTAGS), funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation between 2019 and 2023. ReTAGS is a project that proposes to take a concept – tragedy – from the very beginnings of theatre in its European manifestation and therefore of the discipline of Theatre Studies which is decidedly European, and to reimagine it from a perspective in Africa that is at once directed at the complex challenges of our global postcolonial present and towards our possible futures both inside and outside of the theatre. It is clear that there have been numerous adaptations and stagings of ancient tragedies by major writers and theatre-makers across the African continent, particularly through the period of anti-colonial struggle and the rise of independent nation-states after the Second World War. To name just a few on the continent: Wole Soyinka, Ola Rotimi, Femi Osofisan, J.P. Clark (Nigeria), Efua Sutherland (Ghana); Ebrahim Hussein (Tanzania), Sylvain Bemba (Congo Brazzaville), Saad Ardash and numerous others (Egypt), Athol Fugard and others (South Africa); Trinidad Morgades (Equatorial Guinea). In the Afro-diaspora: Aimé Césaire (Martinique), Félix MorisseauLeroy (Haiti), Kamau Brathwaite (Barbados), Derek Walcott (St Lucia). There is something about these plays and their playing that appeals to African theatremakers, performers and audiences. ReTAGS has set out to interrogate this vast body of work produced in the theatres of Africa and its diaspora. Furthermore, and importantly for this special issue, it uses performance methodologies as analytical tools to gain purchase on the complex realities of the colonial aftermath by investigating current events in the postcolony beyond the theatre, through the ‘prism of tragedy’ (Quayson 2003, p. 56). The project is inspired by a reading of the recent work of David Scott (2004; 2014) and of Hans-Thies Lehmann (2016). For Scott, in rough summary, the history of anticolonialism and its aftermath has traditionally been framed through the trope of romance: the triumph of good after trials and tribulations. Such a framing is dependent on a utopian horizon towards which the narrative proceeds. This has led to a triumphalist narrative of salvation and redemption in which the evil colonial regime is overthrown by the steadfast persistence and bravery of the people and/or the anticolonial hero who emerge victorious at the end. Scott examines the revisions CLR