Output details

'She turned everyone's head mine not for long': Performing the Memory and Biography of Cissie Gool (2008-13)

Research Project Description

This project situates two interconnected theatre pieces – CISSIE (2008) and This Woman is Not for Burning (2011) – at a nexus between oral history and traditional archival practices and asks how performance can be mobilised to re-imagine and animate the memory of anti-apartheid activist Cissie Gool.

Research Imperatives

To engage theatrically with Gool’s visibility, materiality, biography, citizenship and the hyper-performativity of post-apartheid memorialization activities.

To conduct the research through a myriad of forms: archival research, interviews, creative writing, rehearsal processes, video documentation/documentary and live performance.

To allow each form to invite questions around performance as/of place, as a mode of memorialization and as an act of political restitution.

To effectively stage and explore feminist biography.

Peer Assessment/Quality Indicators

CISSIE:

Staged at the 2008 Grahamstown National Arts Festival and the Baxter Theatre Centre (2008).

Funded by Baxter Theatre, South African National Arts Council, Swiss Prohelvitia Fund and Prince Claus Fond (2008).

Nominated for three Fleur de Cap Theatre Awards: ‘Best Actress’, ‘Best Supporting Actress’ and ‘Best New South African Play’ (2009).

This Woman is Not for Burning:

Staged at the Magnet Theatre, funded by the South African British Council (2011).

Showcased at the Women Playwrights International Conference in Stockholm, Sweden (2012).

Invited research presentations at the Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Warwick, York and Cape Town (2011-13).

Outputs

The Story of an Archive (2008 documentary).

CISSIE (playtext published by OUP, 2009).

This Woman is Not for Burning (Unpublished playtext, 2011).

This Woman is Not for Burning - Magnet Theatre, Cape Town (DVD, 2011).

‘“This Woman is Not for Burning”: Performing the Biography and Memory of Cissie Gool’, Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies, 38.2 (2012), pp.253-276.