Woza Albert! is one of the most popular and influential plays to have come out of the South African cultural struggle of the 1980s and a central work in the canon of South African theatre. Working with the idea of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ taking place in apartheid South Africa, the playwrights improvised a brilliant two-man show consisting of 26 vignettes, commenting on and satirising life under the apartheid regime. The play has become one of the most anthologized and produced South African plays both in South Africa, and internationally and is studied widely in schools as well as universities.
This Student Edition contains a commentary and notes by Temple Hauptfleisch, Emeritus Professor at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
METHUEN DRAMA STUDENT EDITIONS are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and classic repertoires. A well as the complete text of the play itself, this volume contains:
- A contextualised chronology of the play and the playwrights' lives and works
- an introductory discussion of the social, political, cultural and economic context in which the play was originally conceived and created
- a succinct overview of the creation processes followed and subsequent performance history of the piece
- an analysis of, and commentary on, some of the major themes and specific issues addressed by the text
- a bibliography of suggested primary and secondary materials.
Percy Mtwa was born and bred in Wattville, Benoni. In 1979 director Gibson Kente gave him a role as singer/dancer in Mama and the Load, which played at the Market and Baxter Theatres and toured South Africa.
Mbongeni Ngema was born in Umkumbane, Durban. He wrote and presented a play,
Too Harsh, appeared in Kessie Govender's
Working Class Hero, then wrote and, with Kessie's help, directed
The Last Generation. In 1979 he came to Johannesburg and approached Gibson Kente for work, finally getting a character role in
Mama and the Load, where he met Percy Mtwa with whom he would collaborate, along with Barney Simon, on
Woza Albert.
Barney Simon, founding Artistic Director of the Market Theatre, was born in Johannesburg. After backstaging for Joan Littlewood in the late 1950s, he joined Athol Fugard in Johannesburg's Dorkay House Rehearsal Room where
The Blood Knot was first staged. He directed Fugard in
Krapp's Last Tape and the first production of Fugard's own
Hello and Goodbye. In 1974 he founded the Company with Mannie Manim, which made its home in Johannesburg's old Market in 1976. He was the three-time winner of the Breytenbach Epathlon for best director. Barney Simon died in 1995.
Temple Hauptfleisch is a retired South African drama teacher, playwright and theatre researcher and historian. Currently Emeritus Professor at Stellenbosch, he is the former head of the Centre for SA Theatre Research (CESAT - 1979-1987), Chair of the University of Stellenbosch Drama Department (1995-2005) and director of the Centre for Theatre and Performance Studies at Stellenbosch (1994-2009). Founder-editor of the South African Theatre Journal (1987-) and its editor for 27 years, and the project leader and editor-in-chief of the online Encyclopaedia for South African Theatre, Film, Media and Performance (ESAT - 2005-). He has served on various international editorial boards for publishers and journals, and has published more than eighty works on South African theatre.
