ETD Collection

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/104


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    Honouring the life stage of the Crone: self-revelatory performance as rite of passage
    (2016) De Beer, Welma
    This study gave expression to my initiatory journey into the last life-cycle of my life, as archetypally represented by the Crone (Prétat, 1994:7–11). It is a personal journey that engages with a specific research question: In what ways can Drama Therapy facilitate the contemplation and initiation of the “Crone” as life stage through self-revelatory performance? Two essential questions frame this study: How can Drama Therapy help us to create a process that contains the inherent destruction that forms part of transformation? If so, what would be the elements and methods that can help facilitate such a process? These questions will be investigated through a creative project, using the method of Performance as Research and the form of self-revelatory performance. The self-revelatory performance engaged with autobiographical moments from my own life and focussed on the theme of transformation. This research report seeks to extrapolate and evaluate the process for the purposes of defining the role and function of drama therapy as self-revelatory performance. The work of Rene Emunah (2009) on the self-revelatory play as a tool for Drama Therapy serves as foundation for this research. Other writings which influenced the study were the work of Victor Turner (Schechner,1993) on liminality, Richard Schechner (1976) on ritual and performance, anthropology of performance and environmental space, Kabi Thulo (2009) on shamanism, Willmar Sauter (2000) on the Theatrical Event and Jacob Moreno’s idea of the Encounter (Kristofferson, 2014). Key concepts that will be investigated are: Jung’s concept of transformation and how it expresses itself through rites of passage, initiation and ritual, myth and storytelling, the crone archetype and self-revelatory theatre. The study’s research findings were derived from the processes of devising, performance and post-performance “insights” which form a part of this creative project. Essentially, this study suggests possible processes that can be used effectively in drama therapy to create a “rite of passage”, “honouring” a new life stage that can “reprogram” or transform us. The study posits that transformation is contained and facilitated when we are able to self-reflect on our history, thoughts, beliefs and cultural coding. Self-revelatory playmaking can be a valuable tool in drama therapy which holds the potential to assist cathartic self-reflection in a safe space (Emunah, 1994:225). This study provides a qualitative description of the phenomena of self-revelatory v playmaking and performance and grapples with how it creates a “rite of passage” to facilitate the transitioning into the last phase of life.
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    Striving towards ‘perfection’?: investigating the consumption of self-help media texts by black South Africans in post-apartheid
    (2016) Rens, Simphiwe Emmanuel
    This research project studies the consumption of ‘self-help’ media texts with respect to black South African audiences. The core objective of this project is to contribute to expanding debates on race, class, identity, and media consumption. Based on in-depth interviews with 10 avid self-help consumers, the paper develops an argument for the role of self-management in race and other social identities. The deployment of the qualitative methodology of a thematic discourse analysis of over seven hours of interview transcripts assists this paper in providing an account of where, when and how self-help media manifests in the lives of the chosen participants. The paper finds that participants are motivated to consume self-help media texts by a need to ‘know’ and ‘understand’ themselves and others in order for these participants to acquire what they express to be an atmosphere of inter-relational harmony. A growth of media texts forming part of a genre related to the practice of therapy in South Africa is owed to what I argue as a deep-rooted culture of ‘reconciliation’ and a preoccupation with emotions which stems from a particularly murky socio-political past still in a constant state of reparation (prevalent in discourses about reconciliation and forgiveness) in the democratic dispensation. As a key inspiration, the once-off yet pertinent process of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of South Africa has noticeably inspired a genre which supplies its audience with an array of self-help, therapy-inspired media texts thriving on the practice of public confession and testimony (key principles of the TRC). This has paved the way for a culture of ‘treatment’ and ‘remedy’ becoming what this paper refers to as a ‘public affair’. Active participants on these self-help, often therapeutic, media texts on mass media platforms regularly do so at the expense of exposing deeply personal issues to ‘experts’ entrusted to assist with ‘healing’ what are deemed to be problem areas in people’s lives. Referred to by some of the interviewees as ‘brave hearts’, these participants (‘public confessors’) hold a complex position in the minds of the interviewed individuals who, ironically, express admiration and respect to the individuals who publicly testify and confess as they are a valued reference of ‘learning’ but at the same time, an expression of disappointment and shame is bestowed upon these ‘public confessors’ for allowing their argued exploitation by the media. Amidst all this, it is apparent that consumption of self-help media texts have particularly intricate influences on the patterns of self-identity as constructed by the participants of this research project.