Unheard Narratives: theatre-making that celebrates Coloured stories

Abstract

In South Africa, the Coloured ethnic group is considered as either as a creation of apartheid or as an indistinguishable group (Mills, 2018). This research challenges these concepts and intends to adopt the principles that guide Playback Theatre, such as fluid sculpture and sharing stories with an audience present. Playback Theatre aims to honour each teller by providing a space for multiple viewpoints and voices to be heard (Rivers and Chung, 2017). This research report presents a creative research process with a group of elderly Coloured women from Belhar, Cape Town. During the creative process, principles of Playback Theatre were used to enable the women to share their personal stories, transforming these into a public performance with the larger community. The performance became a celebratory moment for the participants as well as the audience members. It was a moment to witness the stories of the older generation in the community and for the women, it was a moment to be witnessed and heard by the younger members and males of the community. By researching and undergoing this creative process, it became evident that storytelling and story sharing not only allows people to be heard and seen, but challenges preconceived assumptions of a homogenous group. This research report presents concepts of Coloured Identity, The Culture of Silence and Storytelling in an attempt to celebrate unheard narratives. According to narrative identity theory, stories often convey a sense of purpose and furthermore internalized family narratives can influence one’s sense of individuality (Clemons, 2018).