Janine Lewis
Janine Lewis is an associate professor in the Department of Performing Arts at the Tshwane University of Technology. Her fields of specialisation include physical theatre, acting, theatre making, creative industries and theatre for empowerment. Lewis holds a doctorate in devising as WARPING (re)conceptual theatre making.
Additional qualifications include PGDip HE Pedagogy and MBA HE management from University of Haaga-Heila, Finland, and Touch for Health kinesiology. She also serves as a board member on AfTA, SACIA and TAU and is the chairperson for the DHET Creative Output Performance, Dance & Theatre subpanel.
Lewis has taught internationally at the Ohio State University USA, the Hunter Gates Physical Theatre Academy Edmonton, Canada, and the Annual International Festival of Making Theatre in Athens, Greece; and has presented at conferences in countries across the world and South Africa. Lewis has devised 21 productions at TUT, curated the Verve Physical Theatre Platform for 24 years, and has facilitated various applied theatre projects.
SEITY is a performance/art/healing company created by Lewis and Melodie Schoeman since 2006. Seity has successfully produced theatre productions such as Without Blood (SAST, NAF & 969 WITS fest); as well as performance art activations, collaborations, and site-specific works at: Pta Zoo, Land-art Festival Plettenberg Bay (Old Timber Store & KwaNokuthula), Asbos theatre, Vavasati (SAST), Feint Art Gallery, UJ Gallery, Ansister collective at Constitution Hill, TUT Verve Physical theatre & performance art platforms, WoordPoort UP, One-Billion-Rising campaigns, The Plat4orm @ skills village, and Dinokeng festival. SEITY also embraces alternative health with their balance studio offerings since 2021.
Phone: +27 0123826035
Address: Faculty of Arts & Design
25 Du Toit st ext, Arcadia, 0001
Additional qualifications include PGDip HE Pedagogy and MBA HE management from University of Haaga-Heila, Finland, and Touch for Health kinesiology. She also serves as a board member on AfTA, SACIA and TAU and is the chairperson for the DHET Creative Output Performance, Dance & Theatre subpanel.
Lewis has taught internationally at the Ohio State University USA, the Hunter Gates Physical Theatre Academy Edmonton, Canada, and the Annual International Festival of Making Theatre in Athens, Greece; and has presented at conferences in countries across the world and South Africa. Lewis has devised 21 productions at TUT, curated the Verve Physical Theatre Platform for 24 years, and has facilitated various applied theatre projects.
SEITY is a performance/art/healing company created by Lewis and Melodie Schoeman since 2006. Seity has successfully produced theatre productions such as Without Blood (SAST, NAF & 969 WITS fest); as well as performance art activations, collaborations, and site-specific works at: Pta Zoo, Land-art Festival Plettenberg Bay (Old Timber Store & KwaNokuthula), Asbos theatre, Vavasati (SAST), Feint Art Gallery, UJ Gallery, Ansister collective at Constitution Hill, TUT Verve Physical theatre & performance art platforms, WoordPoort UP, One-Billion-Rising campaigns, The Plat4orm @ skills village, and Dinokeng festival. SEITY also embraces alternative health with their balance studio offerings since 2021.
Phone: +27 0123826035
Address: Faculty of Arts & Design
25 Du Toit st ext, Arcadia, 0001
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In multi-ethnic South Africa these ritual embrace both traditional and popular
cultural practices. Just as there are 11 official languages spoken in South
Africa, so too are there variations of traditional wedding practices. In South
Africa it has become customary to have two wedding celebrations, one which
incorporates traditional practices and the other which follows the white wedding
norms of popular culture presented as a transcultural experience.
The potential of a wedding as an inherent performative theatre experience is
unmistakable: the tenets of dramatic tension, symbolism, and climax are all present
but are not tied to a predetermined text. To therefore recreate this ritualistic
event as a postdramatic theatre performance offers an integrated live/d experience
as an experimental immersive work of art that simultaneously is sensorial
and emotive by triggering memories or fantasies of comparable weddings.
Therefore, this article considers the relevance of rituals found at white weddings as
popular culture within the montage staging process of creating the production
nupt[r]ials (2015). This is an original immersive theatre experience devised by
the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) Department of Drama and Film
and staged at the Breytenbach Theatre in March 2015.
Colonisation unwittingly placed Africa in a transnational melting pot, from which South Africa later laboured under apartheid rule that secured a unilateral national identity. During this time, protest action became the tool of the opposition, offering the only dissenting voice of the oppressed masses. From 1994 SA was democratised and the era of post-apartheid dawned. 23 Years of democracy has seen South Africa alter the significance of having a repressive voice. However, the return of a traditional identity that has become ironically increasingly ‘retro-national’ has retained the need for a dissenting voice through protest action.
Seen in Africa’s current socio-political climate, protest commentary may still be considered as a vehicle for marshalling public opinion as a political force. This chapter looks at the devised theatre production Ubulution (2016) as commentary on the contemporary use(fulness) of protest action personified through theatre. Ubulution speaks to the continuation and recurrence of the Ubu tales as started by Alfred Jarry (1896) and referenced in such South African seminal pieces as Ubu and the Truth Commission by Jane Taylor (1997). This new twenty-first century South African version of the Ubu tradition was devised in collaboration and compiled to form a theatrical multi-media exploration.
The Ubulution performance text strives to accomplish what an effective mirror to dystopia should do by exposing the spiritual, social, and political problems in modern society. This is in keeping with Jarry’s original style, that of pataphysics: “the science of imaginary solutions” (Hill, 1995:31). The protest play offers a lens to view the political wrangling of the characteristic, sustained use of protest action by African communities as ‘the voice of the people’. Through this theatrical lens, the current South African political climate is volatile. Certain people who fought for liberation have become power-hungry elite capitalists who turn on each other and use fraud and manipulation to obtain power. The disempowered masses are voicing their frustrations through violent protests in the mining, farming, education, transportation and service-delivery sectors, but little has been done to improve their well-being.
Staged in 2016, this addition to the Ubu texts was primed against the backdrop of seminal events in SA’s democratic era such as the protests which resulted in the Marikana massacres (2012) and the Fees Must Fall movement (2016). Ubulution embodies this battle between the forces, where society appears to be a well-working machine of structure and organization, but as events unfold, the opposite seems to be true. The text reveals a reality of an oppressive domination system, ruled by a shrewd and, as a proportionate ratio, miniscule elite class that is taking advantage of a stressed out, over-worked and increasingly unhinged working class. The play further offers as a solution the fact that only a radical change equivalent to an apocalypse brought about by the downtrodden, can defeat the oppression. Through personifying the voice of the people, Ubulution serves both as a reflection and a statement of the collective conscious of South Africans.
Towards understanding the development of the Ubulution performance text, this chapter offers a reflexive look at the use of the Golden Ratio for the Dramaturge framework (Chale, 2016) as an application of dramaturgy in African collaborative theatre making. This framework offers insight into demystifying the dramaturge’s creation of a performance text framed within the current South African theatre landscape.
South African performance lends itself to experiential and participatory performance in storytelling and collaborative social creativity – at the root rests the creative process. Physical theatre lends itself to a sense of complicité both in the process of making and in the rendition of the product(ion). There is a collaborative shared authorship between the performers, director and designer – both in physical- and devised theatre creative processes. Physical theatre therefore may be seen as an ideal tool for use in devising.
I will argue how complicité offers an influence on the devising model of physical theatre within a South African context. (re)conceptualising physical storytelling will be detailed as to chart the collaborative explorations in the devising practice. At the centre of this paper is the body in action – gesture/ movement/ stillness/ voice/ silence which do not operate in a linear but in a complex and simultaneously operating network unfolding in time and space.
In keeping with the auto-ethnographical approach (as postulated by Mitra (2010) and Spry (2001)) this paper strives to frame physical actions as expressive performance narratives in contemporary South African theatre. Achieved through using a performative lens to illustrate the dialectical mode of doing and being in the research process.
The paper will consider my use of expressive staging in the montage process of creating in our blood (2011). in our blood looks to African mythology and folktales to make sense of our current reality. It primarily focuses on the stories from the southern African region and acknowledges African gods and goddesses attributed with ancestral knowledge of the creation of Africa and development of its peoples. Specifically the matriarchal influences are explored to trace the themes of identity, diversity and dignity.
The writers aren’t hapless victims begging for hand-outs. On the contrary, they’re strong, determined, and fierce defenders of their right to choose their own paths in life.
The heart-rending experiences which many contributors relate are also stories of renewal, survival, and continuing on. In a world that delivers nearly instant evidence of humanity’s transgressions, resistance is now harder to silence. The topics covered include environmental destruction, genocidal conflicts between tribes and ethnic groups, ineffective legal protections for women, forced marital arrangements, the life-altering effects of religious and social customs (especially female genital cutting), emigration, and exile. That’s an enormous amount of material to cover in one book, but it all needs to be more widely known, by those in African countries as well as in other nations.
within their training that makes the transference of these concepts comfortable
to integrate into external performance modes such as puppetry. So too do
performing objects require a nuanced approach towards their performances
being equated to characters’ expressions. However, technicians are expected
to programme such mechanical performing objects with equivalent
anthropomorphised agency, often without insight into embodied
characterization. This paper explores the development and early validation of a
pragmatic tool to assess and apply agency to performing objects. The degree of
agency tool employs Affect theory to understand the process of
anthropomorphisation. The degree of agency tool is designed to measure the
degree of agency expressed by an operated performing object to avoid soulless
mechanical performance. We argue that the tool includes an exploration of
affect, emotion, anthropomorphisation, and non-verbal communication. As an
outcome, the design research process reveals that these topics form the
groundwork for the development of the degree of agency tool.
This article details the South African hybrid staged adaptation of Alessandro Baricco’s novel, Without Blood (2010) to explore the themes of reconciliation and forgiveness. Opposite to the commissions where stories are told and witnessed; this production sought to include the spectator through experience, incorporating them into the action by appealing to their senses and memory through visceral responses rather than only cognitive (re)actions. As ex-post facto research, achieved through using a performative lens to illustrate the dialectical mode of doing and being in the research process, this article intersperses portions of personal narrative with academic writing to enable a juxtaposed appreciation of the various layers of interpretation. Further, through
Janine Lewis
122
reflexive and reflective process, this article includes a delineation of the hybrid live-multimedia and physical theatre storytelling creative practice; including observed, yet subjective, perception of the audience’s response to the performances of Without Blood.
The objective of the production was never to instigate catharsis towards a rosy solution; but to provoke discourse and challenge viewpoints. Experience, whether lived or imagined, relates to culture and memory; it is influenced by and simultaneously determines both. The physical performer and sentient spectator, together, are dependent on this experiential performance for meaning-making. The theme of reconciliation exposed further by guilt and forgiveness, were conveyed via a shared experience through memory. Memory is not just an individual, private experience, but is also part of the collective experience. Guilt was addressed through forgiveness as transformative justice brought about by the two main characters making amends.
These performances were ultimately sensored which provided more food for thought than the play orginally intended, and roused discussions around the status of protest theatre in the current South African theatre dispensation. As the director and a creative artist, this paper strives to locate my thoughts surrounding the matter and to lend my voice to the protest theatre debate."
Fleishman (1996) suggests that for most people making theatre in South Africa, the written word alone is insufficient to portray or explain the full complexity of the reality they face. Rather these demands should be met or understood through the physical engagement of the body. Fleishman further suggests that theatre in South Africa has often been guilty of simplicity – that instead of literal simplicity, what is needed is the opening up of dialogue through demanding an actively imaginative personal response from the spectator.
Magical or illusionary physical theatre encourages this personal response by providing the spectators with a sensory experience. I am not suggesting that abstract physical theatre be paramount, but am acknowledging these performance narratives in South African theatre. In this paper I, as the author/artist, will discuss my perception of (re)conceptualising physical storytelling to delve into expressive rather than descriptive staging possibilities. The paper will frame my use of expressive staging in contemporary performances and will outline my approach to time and space in relation to expressive staging. As this is a self-reflective journey my works will be used as practical examples. The productions seek to portray emotional and social issues in South African stories through non-literal or abstract performance narratives primarily using physical actions to convey the message. I will argue that my work renders the message as (sur)real – narrative physical actions combining elements of/ or juxtaposing the real and surreal.
In multi-ethnic South Africa these ritual embrace both traditional and popular
cultural practices. Just as there are 11 official languages spoken in South
Africa, so too are there variations of traditional wedding practices. In South
Africa it has become customary to have two wedding celebrations, one which
incorporates traditional practices and the other which follows the white wedding
norms of popular culture presented as a transcultural experience.
The potential of a wedding as an inherent performative theatre experience is
unmistakable: the tenets of dramatic tension, symbolism, and climax are all present
but are not tied to a predetermined text. To therefore recreate this ritualistic
event as a postdramatic theatre performance offers an integrated live/d experience
as an experimental immersive work of art that simultaneously is sensorial
and emotive by triggering memories or fantasies of comparable weddings.
Therefore, this article considers the relevance of rituals found at white weddings as
popular culture within the montage staging process of creating the production
nupt[r]ials (2015). This is an original immersive theatre experience devised by
the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) Department of Drama and Film
and staged at the Breytenbach Theatre in March 2015.
Colonisation unwittingly placed Africa in a transnational melting pot, from which South Africa later laboured under apartheid rule that secured a unilateral national identity. During this time, protest action became the tool of the opposition, offering the only dissenting voice of the oppressed masses. From 1994 SA was democratised and the era of post-apartheid dawned. 23 Years of democracy has seen South Africa alter the significance of having a repressive voice. However, the return of a traditional identity that has become ironically increasingly ‘retro-national’ has retained the need for a dissenting voice through protest action.
Seen in Africa’s current socio-political climate, protest commentary may still be considered as a vehicle for marshalling public opinion as a political force. This chapter looks at the devised theatre production Ubulution (2016) as commentary on the contemporary use(fulness) of protest action personified through theatre. Ubulution speaks to the continuation and recurrence of the Ubu tales as started by Alfred Jarry (1896) and referenced in such South African seminal pieces as Ubu and the Truth Commission by Jane Taylor (1997). This new twenty-first century South African version of the Ubu tradition was devised in collaboration and compiled to form a theatrical multi-media exploration.
The Ubulution performance text strives to accomplish what an effective mirror to dystopia should do by exposing the spiritual, social, and political problems in modern society. This is in keeping with Jarry’s original style, that of pataphysics: “the science of imaginary solutions” (Hill, 1995:31). The protest play offers a lens to view the political wrangling of the characteristic, sustained use of protest action by African communities as ‘the voice of the people’. Through this theatrical lens, the current South African political climate is volatile. Certain people who fought for liberation have become power-hungry elite capitalists who turn on each other and use fraud and manipulation to obtain power. The disempowered masses are voicing their frustrations through violent protests in the mining, farming, education, transportation and service-delivery sectors, but little has been done to improve their well-being.
Staged in 2016, this addition to the Ubu texts was primed against the backdrop of seminal events in SA’s democratic era such as the protests which resulted in the Marikana massacres (2012) and the Fees Must Fall movement (2016). Ubulution embodies this battle between the forces, where society appears to be a well-working machine of structure and organization, but as events unfold, the opposite seems to be true. The text reveals a reality of an oppressive domination system, ruled by a shrewd and, as a proportionate ratio, miniscule elite class that is taking advantage of a stressed out, over-worked and increasingly unhinged working class. The play further offers as a solution the fact that only a radical change equivalent to an apocalypse brought about by the downtrodden, can defeat the oppression. Through personifying the voice of the people, Ubulution serves both as a reflection and a statement of the collective conscious of South Africans.
Towards understanding the development of the Ubulution performance text, this chapter offers a reflexive look at the use of the Golden Ratio for the Dramaturge framework (Chale, 2016) as an application of dramaturgy in African collaborative theatre making. This framework offers insight into demystifying the dramaturge’s creation of a performance text framed within the current South African theatre landscape.
South African performance lends itself to experiential and participatory performance in storytelling and collaborative social creativity – at the root rests the creative process. Physical theatre lends itself to a sense of complicité both in the process of making and in the rendition of the product(ion). There is a collaborative shared authorship between the performers, director and designer – both in physical- and devised theatre creative processes. Physical theatre therefore may be seen as an ideal tool for use in devising.
I will argue how complicité offers an influence on the devising model of physical theatre within a South African context. (re)conceptualising physical storytelling will be detailed as to chart the collaborative explorations in the devising practice. At the centre of this paper is the body in action – gesture/ movement/ stillness/ voice/ silence which do not operate in a linear but in a complex and simultaneously operating network unfolding in time and space.
In keeping with the auto-ethnographical approach (as postulated by Mitra (2010) and Spry (2001)) this paper strives to frame physical actions as expressive performance narratives in contemporary South African theatre. Achieved through using a performative lens to illustrate the dialectical mode of doing and being in the research process.
The paper will consider my use of expressive staging in the montage process of creating in our blood (2011). in our blood looks to African mythology and folktales to make sense of our current reality. It primarily focuses on the stories from the southern African region and acknowledges African gods and goddesses attributed with ancestral knowledge of the creation of Africa and development of its peoples. Specifically the matriarchal influences are explored to trace the themes of identity, diversity and dignity.
The writers aren’t hapless victims begging for hand-outs. On the contrary, they’re strong, determined, and fierce defenders of their right to choose their own paths in life.
The heart-rending experiences which many contributors relate are also stories of renewal, survival, and continuing on. In a world that delivers nearly instant evidence of humanity’s transgressions, resistance is now harder to silence. The topics covered include environmental destruction, genocidal conflicts between tribes and ethnic groups, ineffective legal protections for women, forced marital arrangements, the life-altering effects of religious and social customs (especially female genital cutting), emigration, and exile. That’s an enormous amount of material to cover in one book, but it all needs to be more widely known, by those in African countries as well as in other nations.
within their training that makes the transference of these concepts comfortable
to integrate into external performance modes such as puppetry. So too do
performing objects require a nuanced approach towards their performances
being equated to characters’ expressions. However, technicians are expected
to programme such mechanical performing objects with equivalent
anthropomorphised agency, often without insight into embodied
characterization. This paper explores the development and early validation of a
pragmatic tool to assess and apply agency to performing objects. The degree of
agency tool employs Affect theory to understand the process of
anthropomorphisation. The degree of agency tool is designed to measure the
degree of agency expressed by an operated performing object to avoid soulless
mechanical performance. We argue that the tool includes an exploration of
affect, emotion, anthropomorphisation, and non-verbal communication. As an
outcome, the design research process reveals that these topics form the
groundwork for the development of the degree of agency tool.
This article details the South African hybrid staged adaptation of Alessandro Baricco’s novel, Without Blood (2010) to explore the themes of reconciliation and forgiveness. Opposite to the commissions where stories are told and witnessed; this production sought to include the spectator through experience, incorporating them into the action by appealing to their senses and memory through visceral responses rather than only cognitive (re)actions. As ex-post facto research, achieved through using a performative lens to illustrate the dialectical mode of doing and being in the research process, this article intersperses portions of personal narrative with academic writing to enable a juxtaposed appreciation of the various layers of interpretation. Further, through
Janine Lewis
122
reflexive and reflective process, this article includes a delineation of the hybrid live-multimedia and physical theatre storytelling creative practice; including observed, yet subjective, perception of the audience’s response to the performances of Without Blood.
The objective of the production was never to instigate catharsis towards a rosy solution; but to provoke discourse and challenge viewpoints. Experience, whether lived or imagined, relates to culture and memory; it is influenced by and simultaneously determines both. The physical performer and sentient spectator, together, are dependent on this experiential performance for meaning-making. The theme of reconciliation exposed further by guilt and forgiveness, were conveyed via a shared experience through memory. Memory is not just an individual, private experience, but is also part of the collective experience. Guilt was addressed through forgiveness as transformative justice brought about by the two main characters making amends.
These performances were ultimately sensored which provided more food for thought than the play orginally intended, and roused discussions around the status of protest theatre in the current South African theatre dispensation. As the director and a creative artist, this paper strives to locate my thoughts surrounding the matter and to lend my voice to the protest theatre debate."
Fleishman (1996) suggests that for most people making theatre in South Africa, the written word alone is insufficient to portray or explain the full complexity of the reality they face. Rather these demands should be met or understood through the physical engagement of the body. Fleishman further suggests that theatre in South Africa has often been guilty of simplicity – that instead of literal simplicity, what is needed is the opening up of dialogue through demanding an actively imaginative personal response from the spectator.
Magical or illusionary physical theatre encourages this personal response by providing the spectators with a sensory experience. I am not suggesting that abstract physical theatre be paramount, but am acknowledging these performance narratives in South African theatre. In this paper I, as the author/artist, will discuss my perception of (re)conceptualising physical storytelling to delve into expressive rather than descriptive staging possibilities. The paper will frame my use of expressive staging in contemporary performances and will outline my approach to time and space in relation to expressive staging. As this is a self-reflective journey my works will be used as practical examples. The productions seek to portray emotional and social issues in South African stories through non-literal or abstract performance narratives primarily using physical actions to convey the message. I will argue that my work renders the message as (sur)real – narrative physical actions combining elements of/ or juxtaposing the real and surreal.
Germany), Günther Heeg (Germany), Eiichiro Hirata (Japan),
Patrick Primaversi (Germany), Mziwoxolo Sirayi (South Africa),
and Janine Lewis (South Africa). Moderator: Koku G. Nonoa
(Togo, Austria)
This study charts the multifaceted experiential explorations in the devising and montage processes with particular reference to the following areas:
the expressive performer – the performer’s body expressed in space and time;
physical theatre and (re)conceptualisation as expressive narrative tool for the performer/creator;
perception of space and time – (re)conceptualising physical storytelling to delve into expressive rather than descriptive staging possibilities. To frame my use of expressive staging in contemporary performances and outline my approach to space and time in relation to expressive staging;
the spectator as sentient participant – how the spectator engages with the physical expressive staging in reference to their personal-cultural context.
The aim of this study is to apply practice-based research through self-reflection and assessment of the devising and montage of my working-process; to propose a model of the devising and montage process as an effective performance narrative approach to (re)conceptual contemporary performance termed warping.
This study utilises a mixed-method research approach that includes participatory and democratic methods such as action research and reflective praxis from the qualitative method and analysis and assessment outcomes from the quantitative method. The theoretical underpinning of my work which delineates the non-linear creative path of my working-process is viewpoints.
vi
The study objectively traces my working-process particularly looking to the elements that are evident from physical theatre practices and practitioners that shaped the concepts of creativity and that frame the emerging model. The reflective practice resulted in two current product(ion)s that are created with the deliberate use of the model in process. Assessment of the efficacy of the working-process model was conducted through a triangulated appraisal of the current projects, utilising Viewpoints as an analysis tool. The devising and montage (re)conceptual design processes are substantiated by the use of performance images and DVDs. As a result of this study, I offer the model as a working process for warping, devising (re)conceptual theatre.