A way home: performing auto-ethnography to inspirit liberatory agency and to transcend the estrangement effects of exile

• Main Author: Ndebele, Makhaola-Mosuoe Siyanda Njabulo
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10539/19887

Research Report submitted to the Wits School of Arts University of the Witwatersrand Faculty of Humanities In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Dramatic Art 2015 === By and large, not much research has been done around the effects of cultural and political exile on South African citizens exiled during Apartheid. This study intends, firstly, to explore the effects of estrangement on a second-generation South African exile; and secondly, to explore how theatre and performance practice can assist the exile to inspirit liberatory agency to regain a sense of belonging/home. The study is conducted through a performance auto-ethnography research paradigm and methodology. The creative performance work chronicles a South African life in exile in search of belonging/home. Aesthetically, it draws from a variety of theatre and performance influences, but more specifically it is rooted in indigenous Southern African performance genres, namely iiNgoma (healing rituals), iziBongo (praise poetry), and iiNtsomi (storytelling).