Abstract:
This article explores the ways in which Anglophone dramas in postcolonial South Africa became a tool
of political and protest theater. It examines the emergence of Anglophone theater, explores its
development into political praxis and discusses the performance or non-performance contexts, as well
as their specific socio-political milieux, with reference to the select plays from South Africa. These plays
are compelling as they characterize specific tensions internal to South Africa, while alluding to colonial
legacies and global coercion. Historicization is a crucial phase in this study and the key part of the
methodology that establishes their political and aesthetic significance, both at the time of performance
and after. The central argument of the article is that Anglophone theater of South Africa is subjected to
– and bound by – socio-political and cultural dynamics of the country; the emergence of political and
protest theater is often caused by subtle or overt subterfuges of biopolitics exercised internally within
this postcolonial territory.
