Exemplifying South African Indianness through a Bolly-World experience: writing, directing, and staging Bollywood theatre in Durban, South Africa.

Abstract

The history of South African Indian theatre coincides with the arrival of indentured labourers from India in 1860. This type of theatre has evolved and changed with South Africa’s shifting political terrain, moving from ritual theatre to realism and protest theatre during apartheid. These ongoing changes now include Bollywood theatre, an adaptation of Bollywood cinema, which resonates strongly within the South African Indian diaspora (Desai, 2004). The aim of this research is to describe the writing, directing, and staging of this type of theatre in the city of Durban in South Africa. To describe this genre of theatre, how it is created, and why it resonates with the Indian community of Durban, South Africa, the practice-based research (Smith & Dean, 2009) process and an autoethnographic investigation of my own background and theatre-making process is provided. It includes a description of the post-structural framework (Derrida, 2001; Gannon & Davis, 2017) in which this research is located. The theoretical framework is identified and defined. Identity politics grounds the research in the cultural practices (Hall, 1996/7; Butler, 1993) of South African Indians, and I describe the practitioners that have influenced my theatre-making process to support the research (Stanislavski in Blumfeld, 2008; Grotowski, 2002). I adopted a qualitative methodological approach, grounded in autoethnographic data collection, interviews, focus groups, and video footage, as recommended by Jones (2016) and Zenya (2017). Bollywood theatre is a popular theatre form that connects with audiences, as it is made by the people for the people, and comprises multiple genres in one production (Barber, 1997). This research study scrutinizes archetypes in both Bollywood cinema and Bollywood theatre in South Africa (Rogers & Armstrong, 2009). I examined my personal history to reflect on my exposure to political climates and institutions of power and how this has shaped their world view and the stories and characters that they conceive. This thesis offers a history of South African Indian theatre through the writings of Sathasiven Annamalai (1998). Lastly this thesis ends by concluding that Bollywood Theatre is a new branch of South African Indian Theatre (SAIT) and that South African Indianness is exemplified through this genre.