OVERVIEW: In 2015, South African students protested exorbitant tuition fees, racial inequality at universities, and curriculums that failed to explore post-colonial South African culture. This page will explore the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s (UKZN) Shakespearean theater festival, #ShakespeareMustFall?, and the ensuing charge to portray Shakespearean drama through a modernized lens.
In 2015, South African students gained prominence and recognition through their calls for the decolonization of higher education. The ensuing protests took place within a shift in South African politics and culture, during which students voiced their concerns about the increasing costs of tuition as well as the racial disparity and inequality in admittance and attendance at South African universities. Additionally, through various hashtag campaigns, collectively deemed “fallist campaigns” due to names such as #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall, students called for university staff and administrators to give increased attention to scholarly works and pursuits outside of the Western, Euro-centric bubble that academia tends to focus on. Among this emerging dialogue, which coincided with the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s (UKZN) Drama and Performance Studies department hosted the #ShakespeareMustFall theater festival, which explored Shakespearean drama through a modern, post-apartheid, decolonized lens. The idea of decolonization remains contested among scholars, yet the #ShakespeareMustFall festival marked a pivotal moment in a cultural shift in South Africa. This shift focused on what is deemed important in South African theater and education, thus providing a unique framework to better understand what it means to interpret works of the past in an ever-changing society.
Background on Hashtag Movements, Fallism, and Decolonization in South African Universities
While post-Apartheid South Africa theoretically espoused equality of individuals regardless of their race, South African university students have called this idea into question through a variety of hashtag campaigns collectively deemed “fallism”. As Joleen Steyn Kotze explains, “Fallism was coined as a term to describe the ideological drive of disruption, and seeing the fall of something in mobilizing around the symbolism of oppressions and struggle” (112). As various fallist campaigns gained prominence in South African universities, most notably #FeesMustFall, campuses became increasingly policed and violence from police altercations and student clashes led to tear-gassing and gun violence (Loots et al. iii). Yet, among this violence, universities continued to hold classes, although with periodic interruptions, while beginning to rethink the Euro-centric curriculum condemned by fallist protesters. For fallists, “South African universities perpetuate a sense of abjection rendering African knowledge and identity as cast off in the broader institutional structure of access, culture, and knowledge” (Kotze 113). Therefore, as the yearly Shakespeare festival occurred on the KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) campus, which in 2016 marked the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, professors and students came together to explore how one of histories most prominent white, European, authors could be utilized to explore the notion of decolonization. Taking note of the fallist campaigns occurring at the university, the #ShakespeareMustFall? festival came to fruition.
#ShakespeareMustFall?
For UKZN drama students and professors, the #ShakespeareMustFall? festival seemed to offer a unique means to explore works traditionally considered to be the epitome of colonial England to understand how education could be restructured. Tamar Meskin explains, “The only way to engage Shakespeare is to see his works as belonging to an active culture, to find the living magic in them rather than viewing them as ‘no longer good for anything except museums’” (77). The idea of an “active culture” was central to many in the UKZN drama department, as students and professors sought to continue studying and performing Shakespeare’s works while also recognizing that the language and era of the texts could be alienating for many South African students. As Ayanda Khala-Phiri explained, “Historically… Shakespeare has been used to retain the perception of the cultural hegemony of his country of origin thereby rendering his literature a vehicle of colonial power” (88). Therefore, with this historical context in mind, Khala-Phiri served as one of the writers and producers of the performances enacted during #ShakespeareMustFall. Khala-Phiri described the process of creating her production as follows, “my aim was to… disrupt the original storyline, not as one who pretends colonialism does not exist but as one who wields the power to a re-imagine a story” (90). Similarly, producer Tamar Meskin sought to utilize theatrical creativity to “invite engagement with new interpretations, new connections, [and] new perspectives, which might lead to… the decolonization exercise” (81). Therefore, for both Khala-Phiri and Meskin, theater was deemed a useful tool to understand the concept of decolonization and how one might continue to read and perform works of the past while elaborating upon and revitalizing these works so as to make them more pertinent to the 21st century South African setting.
In order for Ayanda Khala-Phiri to produce her own “decolonized” version of Shakespeare, she focused on The Tempest, namely the female protagonist Miranda. Khala-Phiri stripped away the other characters from the traditional story and instead, “positioned Miranda as a first year student, in present day South Africa, having just been tossed on the island of a tertiary education institution during a terrifying storm of political instability” (90). The metaphorical storm in this case aligns with the storm conjured by Prospero in Shakespeare’s original work. Thus, by using Shakespeare’s story and characterization of Miranda as a starting point, a more modernized character who explicitly dealt with racism, sexism, and university culture in present-day South Africa emerged.
For Tamar Meskin, the idea of utilizing a Shakespearean character outside of his original context also served as a useful means to decolonize Shakespeare’s writing. Meskin was drawn to the character Julius Caesar as “the play… captures most vividly the dangers of power and its tendency to corrupt” (82). In Meskin’s production, students enacted a protest in which they performed slam poetry to express their grievances of modern South Africa to their (fictional) leader, Caesar (82). Therefore, through utilizing some of Shakespeare’s own language, characters, and plot lines, while combining this with 21st century themes, issues, and rhetoric, UKZN effectively explored Shakespeare’s work through a lens that made his plays accessible and relevant to South African students.
The #ShakespeareMustFall? festival served as an important point of focus for anyone interested in understanding how to grapple with a colonial past while also striving to reclaim what is valued and presented in education. At UKZN, theater served as a means for those interested in the arts to not only understand and perform theater from the past and present, but also as a vehicle for exploring contemporary issues through performance and play. #ShakespeareMustFall? might have gained inspiration from a traditionally colonial figure, yet the works, discussions, and performances that emerged from this festival set forth a modern South African identity through various storylines and characters. Thus, while decolonization in education cannot take place overnight and might not insight a radically new tradition of education, #ShakespeareMustFall? marked an important theatrical moment and a means of understanding the past through a contemporary lens.
Video 1: Clip of isiZulu inspired performance of Macbeth created for the #ShakespeareMustFall festival
Works Cited
Khala-Phiri, Ayanda. “Transformation’s Tempest: Miranda as a Student of Higher Education in South Africa.” Shakespeare in Southern Africa, vol. 30, 2017, pp. 86-94, http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=127918245&site=ehost-live. Accessed 8 April 2018.
Kotze, Joleen Steyn. “On Decolonisation and Revolution: a Kristevan Reading on the Hashtags Student Movements and Fallism.” Politikon South African Journal of Political Studies, vol. 45, no. 1, 2018, pp. 112-127, https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2018.1418216. Accessed 8 April 2018.
Meskin, Tamar. “To Play is the Thing: (Re)imagining Shakespeare on a Post-Colonial Stage.” Shakespeare in Southern Africa, vol. 30, 2017, pp. 76-85, https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/sisa.v30i1.8S. Accessed 8 April 2018.
Mungroo, Melissa. “#ShakespeareMustFall.” University of Kwazulu-Natal Notice System, 29 Sept. 2016, https://notices.ukzn.ac.za/ViewNotice.aspx/30632.
Ngcongo, Nellie. “IsiZulu Inspired Macbeth- Shakespeare Project 2016.” YouTube, YouTube, 12 Sept. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVwNhdWWW4s&t=27s.
Loots, Lliane, et al. “Decolonising Shakespeare? Contestations and Re-imaginings for a Post-liberation South Africa.” Shakespeare in Southern Africa, vol. 30, 2017, pp. iii-vi, https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/sisa.v30i1.1S. Accessed 8 April 2018.
