Articulating pain and surviving trauma: interrogating the representations of extreme gender violence in two contemporary South African plays by Lara Foot and Phyllis Klotz.

Abstract

The high rape statistics in South Africa has launched diverse research enquiries to interrogate extreme gender-based violence particularly child rape and corrective rape. The findings from broad research studies for example by Rachel Jewkes, Hetty Rose-Junius and Loveday Penn Kekana (2005) point to poverty as a cultural legacy of colonialism and power imbalances between genders as some of the most significant symptoms of gender-based violence. Lara Foot and Phyllis Klotz as South African playwrights, directors and activists have used real-life rape cases to create plays that heighten awareness on rape through horrific fictionalised stories. This half-dissertation applies a literary and performative analysis on these plays namely, Tshepang (2005) and Chapter 2 Section 9 (2016), as postcolonial feminist theatrical texts that engage critical scholarly and performance discourse on gender-based violence in South Africa.