Editorial: Culture and Context: Notes on Performance in South Africa

Southern Africa in the 1980's embraces ideologies and material realities which radically affect art and culture. The observer can no longer base assessments upon idealist and humanist notions derived from traditional prescriptions in art : the ideological, political and socio-economic contradictions which affect the lives of all people on the sub-continent must be accomodated. The cultural expressions of under-privileged groups in southern Africa satisfy few prescriptions in the vague terminology of elitest notions of "art", and artistic conventions evolved by such groups cannot adequately be described or evaluated within the critical terminology evolved by, and applicable to, Eurocentric notions of art. While, therefore, the most intelligent use of the word "theatre" will define the concept in terms broad enough to embrace virtually all aspects of performance, the word nevertheless contains connotations of a tradition rooted in a Hellenistic-Renaissance cultural continuum. Critical Arts has already contributed to a reassessment of such traditional definitions of theatre in its third issue (1), but it is necessary to spread our net more broadly in order to underpin the relevance of performance in a study of southern African culture.