Electronic Theses and Dissertations (Masters)
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/37948
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Item Transgender Character Representation and the Gender Binary: Theorizing a Philosophy for Transgender Character Construction in Video Games.(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Bowler, Keagan Benjamin; Cloete, StephenTransgender characters in video games are often met with negative opinions by the largely heteronormative playerbase which, like in other media, results in a wider negative opinion on transgender people and subjects in reality. In exploring a personal identification with Celeste, I formulate a philosophy concerning the gender binary norm and its role in perpetuating harmful ideas. This philosophy manifests as both an ideology and platformer video game questioning what gender means to story and character. Through exploring gender, metaphor, queerness and game design, a philosophy is constructed to create a transgender character and video game story in a positive light.Item The impact of childhood trauma on intimacy: A literature review exploring Drama Therapy techniques for intimacy recovery in adult relationships.(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Magee, Kathryn; Thibedi, Linda (Mdena)This research paper explores how Drama Therapy techniques may be used for intimacy recovery in adult relationships in the context of childhood trauma. The immediate and long term consequences of childhood trauma are multifaceted and vary significantly. However, studies indicate that exposure to trauma during childhood adversely impacts brain development, which may disrupt other developmental processes as well as an individual’s capacity to form and maintain intimate relationships in adulthood. Intimacy is a vital element of relationships in that it provides a framework for communication and connection on various levels. Despite correlations between the two notions, research pertaining to the treatment of trauma with the intention of fostering intimacy is limited. Similarly, in the Drama Therapy field, there is little evidence indicating how the discipline could be adapted with the specific intention of fostering intimacy in relationships. Through an integrative literature review method, research pertaining to the impacts of childhood trauma, how childhood trauma influences intimacy, and predominant trauma treatment approaches and their effects, were explored. This informed an analysis of various Drama Therapy approaches, which may be useful in dealing with childhood trauma and fostering healthy relationships. From the literature examined, Drama Therapy may serve as a versatile tool for emotional regulation, narrative exploration, vulnerability and sharing, and transformation and empowerment, which all have the potential to foster intimacy in relationshipsItem Encountering apartheid publics: an essay film on Hendrik Verwoerd as public symbol 1958-1966 and implications for counter-publics today.(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-11-10) Effendi, Karima; Louw, Lieza; Kenny, BridgetThe policies of separate development under Verwoerd created the material conditions for apartheid and capitalism to thrive, but it's the hypothesis of this project that the pomp and ceremony, the suit, his speeches and performative statecraft, created the affective conditions for his thinking to make its way from the past into our present-time. This is a discursive inquiry that draws on political theory, psychoanalysis, feminist theory and essayistic film theory to explore how the slipperiness of apartheid discourse makes it impossible to counter it on its own terms. Verwoerd symbolised a pernicious ‘covering over’ of irreconcilable ambiguities in apartheid discourse that was used to construct and stabilise whiteness against ‘other’ constitutive subject formations. The second part of the creative project is an essay film, Verwoerd’s Smile, that uses an ‘apartheid’ and colonial archive to attempt to show up its own discriminatory logic. The film’s failure in doing this has a productive value that is instructive for understanding how the cloak of invisibility that shrouds whiteness from being seen doing its work, also protects it from being dismantled. Understanding this has implications for radical projects concerned with undoing apartheid.Item Locality Shaping the Institution: Genesis Connection Youth Skills Multimedia, Riverlea, Johannesburg(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Pather, Jodie; Ntombela, Nontobeko; Khan, SharleneFollowing the rich history that community art centres have had in South Africa, this research questions how locality may ideologically shape community-based arts institutions and have a bearing on how they operate and what they have access to. Specifically, this study looks at the community-based arts organisation, Genesis Connection Youth Skills Multimedia (Genesis), in Riverlea, Johannesburg. This research report is carried out to ascertain the extent to which Genesis and the work that they do is influenced by their home community of Riverlea, and how this locality may affect or determine their curriculum, programming, and access to funding. Through episodic interviews, I explore the significance of locality to community-based art centres as is experienced directly by facilitators of different initiatives. The first chapter in this report deals with an overview of scholarship on community art centres; defining and contextualising them, including a historical overview of community art centres that have existed in Johannesburg. Locality, as a concept and its associated literature as related to community art centres is discussed and incorporates perspectives from facilitators working in the field. The second chapter presents a historical overview of the area of Riverlea and builds on the description from Chris Van Wyk’s autobiographical work Shirley, Goodness and Mercy (2004), as a way of complementing, enriching and humanising the academic perspectives on the area of Riverlea. These upfront chapters provide the context for the birth of Genesis, and the terrain that it operates in. Lastly, the third chapter looks at the funding landscape that has sustained community-based arts in South Africa, with specific attention paid to government-funded community-based arts centres, alongside a discussion of how Genesis is funded. The purpose of this is to establish an understanding of the accessibility of funds for arts organisations, what their unique challenges may be, as well as to highlight the sustainability of government-funded organisations in comparison to that of self funded organisations, such as GenesisItem The affordances of Narradrama as a tool for psychological adjustment among Traumatic Brain Injury survivors in South Africa(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024-03) Bekker, Jané-Desire; Clarke, Lucy DraperTraumatic brain injury (TBI) is an acquired disability that can easily be overlooked, and there is a need for innovative, accessible and more effective therapeutic models for neuropsychological rehabilitation in the South African context. This practice-based research aimed to explore how Narradrama may assist TBI survivors in identifying and adjusting psychologically to their own identity, exploring ways to expand this identity and uncovering the affordances of familial witnessing. The practical application was conducted with a group of six to twelve adult TBI survivors in Johannesburg more than three years after their injury. Data was collected from interviews, six Narradrama sessions, and creative expressions made by participants. The findings in this study document two case studies and determined four sub-categories of witnessing that made an impact. Interpretative phenomenological analysis revealed the main themes of shame to empathy and disconnection to connection. For this sample group, a Narradrama approach proved effective for psychological adjustment to changes in identity and provided ways to expand confidence, meaning, agency and a sense of belonging.Item A transpersonal approach to drama therapy techniques for embodied grief work with women who experience loss and distress from an abortion.(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Brollo, Gillian Susan; Pankhurst, MargieAbortion as a lived experience is not often explored in research or therapy, particularly when women are distressed as a result of an abortion. This research addresses the scarcity of such explorations through developing and testing a workshop model based on transpersonal drama therapy in order to examine how women who are distressed after an abortion express and manage their experience, and also how women can integrate an abortion into their life story in order to find healing. The two key questions are concerned with firstly, how embodied activities can bring unconscious feelings to the surface, and secondly how narrative can work to integrate a distressing experience into a life story so that its emotional impact is managed and the individual finds ways to move forward from the traumatic event. Chapter One is an introduction to the context, one in which women who experience a sense of loss or grief after an abortion find few places for support, healing and most importantly, for expressions of distress. The introduction touches briefly on the hyper-politicised nature of abortion as a phenomenon and how difficult it is to communicate nuance within such a polarised context. Chapter Two is a description of the theoretical framework of the transpersonal approach which also serves a literature review. The literature drawn on includes models of drama therapy, griefwork, embodied grief activities such as rituals, transpersonal philosophies which present a world where the material and the immaterial are connected and draws these theories together within an Afrocentric paradigm. Chapter Three describes the methodology and explains how the workshop was designed and its aims. Chapters Four and Five are concerned with how data was obtained and a data analysis and discussion flowing from that analysis. The final chapter looks at findings including a deep sense of relief and healing in being offered a space to explore their personal experiences of abortion, and in the affirmation provided by witnessing other women’s stories and telling of their own; and recommendations for future research such as trying the model with a rural cohort, and extending the process in combining individual and group work in order to dive deeper into individual stories.Item A transpersonal approach to drama therapy techniques for embodied grief work with women who experience loss and distress from an abortion(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Brollo, Gillian Susan; Pankhurst, MargieAbortion as a lived experience is not often explored in research or therapy, particularly when women are distressed as a result of an abortion. This research addresses the scarcity of such explorations through developing and testing a workshop model based on transpersonal drama therapy in order to examine how women who are distressed after an abortion express and manage their experience, and also how women can integrate an abortion into their life story in order to find healing. The two key questions are concerned with firstly, how embodied activities can bring unconscious feelings to the surface, and secondly how narrative can work to integrate a distressing experience into a life story so that its emotional impact is managed and the individual finds ways to move forward from the traumatic event. Chapter One is an introduction to the context, one in which women who experience a sense of loss or grief after an abortion find few places for support, healing and most importantly, for expressions of distress. The introduction touches briefly on the hyper-politicised nature of abortion as a phenomenon and how difficult it is to communicate nuance within such a polarised context. Chapter Two is a description of the theoretical framework of the transpersonal approach which also serves a literature review. The literature drawn on includes models of drama therapy, griefwork, embodied grief activities such as rituals, transpersonal philosophies which present a world where the material and the immaterial are connected and draws these theories together within an Afrocentric paradigm. Chapter Three describes the methodology and explains how the workshop was designed and its aims. Chapters Four and Five are concerned with how data was obtained and a data analysis and discussion flowing from that analysis. The final chapter looks at findings including a deep sense of relief and healing in being offered a space to explore their personal experiences of abortion, and in the affirmation iv provided by witnessing other women’s stories and telling of their own; and recommendations for future research such as trying the model with a rural cohort, and extending the process in combining individual and group work in order to dive deeper into individual stories.Item Re-curating Bophelong’s Architectural Archive(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Msutu, Bongisa; Valley, GreerRe-curating Bophelong’s Architectural Archive is a study that explores the archiving of township (black) architecture, space and geography. The township, as a residential area originally and currently designed for the occupation of impoverished black people, has become a geography of appropriation, and an extension of radical self-care onto space – a spatial care. Bophelong, a township in the Vaal, is the subject of this study because its history – similar to the history of most South African townships - and lack of architectural archives present an opportunity for this exploration. This study provides a decolonial approach to archiving and curating black architecture, space and geography, considered ‘unarchivable’ by the traditional architectural archive that collects and curates in accordance with scientific empiricism. It is this colonial knowledge-producing tradition that renders township geographies epistemically worthless. Through qualitative re-search methods, this study provides and explores strategies of archiving and curating township architecture and space in such a way that it is politically and epistemically valuable to both its people and the architectural fraternity. It is the hope of this re-search that these strategies may lead to the valuing of such an archive, and to the interrogation of traditional architectural knowledge production and its politics of value.Item Who do i think i am? Autoethnographic and zoomorphic comics and the expression of coloured identity.(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Alexander, Ashleigh Jesse; RANDLE, LUWAROTIMI; REID, KIRSTENThis thesis presents my investigation into what I term my "Coloured Experience," my examination of zoomorphic imagery, and my approach to portraying this research through a comic book. This aims to produce an artifact that talks about being Coloured in a creative and personal way, which is a response to a significant gap in the portrayal of Coloured people, highlighting a tendency towards oversimplified, sensationalized, and politicised narratives. I employ autoethnographic reflection as my method of inquiry and use zoomorphism as a technique for representation, the outcome of which is a comic book. Zoomorphism in graphic narratives, works as a visually stimulating tool for representing the concept of race, by drawing on visual metaphor, animal association and allegory, in combination with the comics medium, and an engagement with guided autoethnographic journaling, this research produced a comic book where I was able to host a discussion on my experience as a Coloured person in a safe and creative way. This research does not extensively explore my origins, nor does it delve into the formation of Coloured people as a distinct racial group to establish a definitive common ancestor or construct a narrative to define the essence of being Coloured.Item Catch and release: A Practice-based analysis using interviews from healthcare workers, to explore the impact on self-care, using 5 Drama Therapy core principles and practices.(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) ADLAM, ANTONE; Thibedi, Linda (Mdena)This is a Practice-based Research study analysing the impact of five core principles from Phil Jones’s nine core principles in drama therapy. Data was collected from interviews with healthcare workers within a private hospital in Johannesburg. This research aimed to find the most suitable core principle for each interviewee, in order for them to practice self-care in an explorative and creative manner. While the research identified the importance of drama therapy and the core processes used within the researcher's rehearsals and solo performance based on the answers from interviews with the healthcare workers, the researcher identified the unique approaches and impact drama therapy holds to practice self-care. The integration of the core principles (as named by Jones, 1996) are embodiment, play, dramatic projection, interactive audience and witnessing, as well as drama therapeutic empathy and distancing.