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Loren Kruger is a South African academic who taught at the University of Chicago from 1986 to 2024 and has written extensively on theatre, comparative literature, and urban studies.
Loren Kruger obtained Bachelors degrees in English and mathematics from the University of Cape Town, and she worked in a teaching role at the University of Johannesburg in 1980. She received a PhD in comparative literature from Cornell University where she was a teaching assistant from 1981 to 1986. Kruger completed independent studies in Paris at the Institut d'études théâtrales of Sorbonne Nouvelle University and the Institut für Theaterwissenschaft at the Free University of Berlin.
Loren Kruger's studies have focused on literature, theatre, and performing arts in various languages including Afrikaans, French, German, Spanish, and Zulu. She joined the University of Chicago in 1986. Before she departed in 2024, she held appointments in comparative literature, English, and theatre and performance studies, as well as affiliations in cinema and media studies, African studies and urban studies. [1] She was the editor of Theatre Journal from 1996 to 1999 and contributing editor of Theatre Research International in 2002 and 2003. She is an active member of the International Federation of Theatre Research, the International Brecht Society, and the Modern Language Association.
In 2012, article on adaptations of classical tragedy by anti-apartheid and post-apartheid South African stages, "On the Tragedy of the Commoner," won the Philadelphia Constantinidis Prize from the Comparative Drama Association. [2] [3]
Kruger's first book, The National Stage: Theatre and Cultural Legitimation in England, France, and America, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1992. It examines the role of theatre institutions in the creation of national publics, and describes national theaters in Central Europe that helped to facilitate the establishment of nation states. [4] [5] In 2004, Cambridge University Press published her book, Post-Imperial Brecht: Politics and Performance, South and East, which discusses Bertolt Brecht, links between the Global South and the Soviet empire, and Cold War-era imperialism. [6] It won the Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Study from the Modern Language Association. [7] [8] [9] [10] In 2013, Kruger's book examining the apartheid history, turbulent culture, odd-shaped districts of Johannesburg was published by Oxford University Press, Imagining the Edgy City: Writing, Performing and Building Johannesburg. The term edgy city describes both the physical geography of speculative urban development and the nervousness of citizens amid urban turbulence. [11] [12] [13] [14]
Kruger's books and articles on theatre in South Africa, The Drama of South Africa (1999), and the updated Century of South African Theatre (2019), [15] [16] [17] , are considered the most historically comprehensive study of this topic. [18]
Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright, poet, novelist and actor. He is widely regarded as one of Africa's greatest writer and one of the world's most important dramatists.
Dame Janet Suzman is a South African-born British actress who had a successful early career in the Royal Shakespeare Company, later replaying many Shakespearean roles on television. In her first film, Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), her performance as Empress Alexandra Feodorovna earned her several honours, including a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
"The Internationale" is an international anthem that has been adopted as the anthem of various anarchist, communist, socialist, democratic socialist, and social democratic movements. It has been a standard of the socialist movement since the late nineteenth century, when the Second International adopted it as its official anthem. The title arises from the "First International", an alliance of workers founded by Karl Marx and others, which held a congress in 1864. The author of the anthem's lyrics, Eugène Pottier, a member of the French branch of the organization, attended this congress. Pottier's text was later set to an original melody composed by Pierre De Geyter, a member of the Parti Ouvrier Français in Lille in industrial northern France.
Athol Fugard OIS HonFRSL is a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director widely regarded as South Africa's greatest playwright. He is best known for his political and penetrating plays opposing the system of apartheid. Some of these have also been adapted for film.
Mother Courage and Her Children is a play written in 1939 by the German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), with significant contributions from Margarete Steffin. Four theatrical productions were produced in Switzerland and Germany from 1941 to 1952, the last three supervised or directed by Brecht, who had returned to East Germany from the United States.
The distancing effect, also translated as alienation effect, is a concept in performing arts credited to German playwright Bertolt Brecht.
Leontine Sagan was a theatre director and actress of Jewish descent, whose life and career took her from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to South Africa, Britain and the United States. She is, however, best known for directing a film, Mädchen in Uniform (1931), which has been celebrated for its scathing indictment of Prussian military-style schooling, as well as its sensitive portrayal of same-sex intimacy between a teacher and a student at a girls' school, in the waning years of Germany's Weimar Republic,
Mädchen in Uniform is a 1931 German romantic drama film based on the play Gestern und heute by Christa Winsloe and directed by Leontine Sagan with artistic direction from Carl Froelich, who also funded the film. Winsloe also wrote the screenplay and was on the set during filming. Due to the film's overt and openly lesbian themes, the film remains an international cult classic and enjoys widespread acclaim from critics.
Ponte City is a skyscraper in the Berea district of Johannesburg, South Africa, just next to Hillbrow. It was built in 1975 to a height of 173 m (567.6 ft), and was the tallest residential skyscraper in Africa for 48 years, until overtaken in 2023 by Building D01, in Egypt's New Administrative Capital. The 55-storey building is cylindrical, with an open centre allowing additional light into the apartments. The centre space is known as "the core" and rises above an uneven rock floor. When built, Ponte City was seen as an extremely desirable address due to its location and views over Johannesburg, but it became infamous for its crime and poor maintenance in the late 1980s to 1990s. It has since been refurbished into a safe property. The neon sign on top of the building is the largest sign in the Southern Hemisphere. Prior to 2000, it advertised the Coca-Cola Company. In 2000, this was replaced by a banner promoting South African branch of Vodacom. Vodacom rebranded in 2023 to advertise VodaPay, a digital wallet system.
The Penn State University Press, also known as The Pennsylvania State University Press, is a non-profit publisher of scholarly books and journals. Established in 1956, it is the independent publishing branch of the Pennsylvania State University and is a division of the Penn State University Library system.
The Theatre Journal is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering the theatre arts, with articles from the October and December issues centering on a predetermined theme. It is an official publication of The Association for Theatre in Higher Education and is published on their behalf by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
Conceptualised by 20th century German director and theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), "The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre" is a theoretical framework implemented by Brecht in the 1930s, which challenged and stretched dramaturgical norms in a postmodern style. This framework, written as a set of notes to accompany Brecht's satirical opera, ‘Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny’, explores the notion of "refunctioning" and the concept of the Separation of the Elements. This framework was most proficiently characterised by Brecht's nihilistic anti-bourgeois attitudes that “mirrored the profound societal and political turmoil of the Nazi uprising and post WW1 struggles”. Brecht's presentation of this theatrical structure adopts a style that is austere, utilitarian and remains instructional rather than systematically categorising itself as a form that is built towards a more entertaining and aesthetic lens. ‘The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre’ incorporates early formulations of Brechtian conventions and techniques such as Gestus and the V-Effect. It employs an episodic arrangement rather than a traditional linear composition and encourages an audience to see the world as it is regardless of the context. The purpose of this new avant-garde outlook on theatrical performance aimed to “exhort the viewer to greater political vigilance, bringing the Marxist objective of a classless utopia closer to realisation”.
Barney Simon was a South African writer, playwright and director. He was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and spent most of his life there. The city of Johannesburg and its denizens, shaped by diverse racial and gender identities as well as by South Africa's politics, provided the core inspiration for his writing and directing work.
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, Brecht wrote didactic Lehrstücke and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre and the Verfremdungseffekt.
Ebrahim Hussein is a Tanzanian playwright and poet. His first play, Kinjeketile (1969), written in Swahili, and based on the life of Kinjikitile Ngwale, a leader of the Maji Maji Rebellion, is considered "a landmark of Tanzanian theatre".
Marathi theatre is theatre in the Marathi language, mostly originating or based in the state of Maharashtra in India, and elsewhere with Marathi diaspora. Starting in the middle of the 19th century, it flourished in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, it continues to have a marked presence in the State of Maharashtra with a loyal audience base, when most theatre in other parts of India have had tough time facing the onslaught of cinema and television. Its repertoire ranges from musicals, humorous social plays, farces, historical plays like 'Vedat Marathe Veer Daudale Saat' by Bashir Momin Kavathekar, to experimental plays and serious drama of the 1970s onwards, by Vijay Tendulkar, P. L. Deshpande, Mahesh Elkunchwar and Satish Alekar, which have influenced theatre throughout India. In the post-independence era, Bengali theatre, and Marathi theatre have been at the forefront of innovations and significant dramaturgy in Indian theatre.
Temple Hauptfleisch is a South African playwright and academic, a professor emeritus of drama at Stellenbosch University.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Johannesburg, in the Gauteng province in South Africa.
In the late 1980s, the African Research and Educational Puppetry Program (AREPP) founded "Puppets Against AIDS", a traveling puppet show that visited African villages and cities to encourage audience members to use condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS transmission.
Igbo literature encompasses both oral and written works of fiction and nonfiction created by the Igbo people in the Igbo language. This literary tradition reflects the cultural heritage, history, and linguistic diversity of the Igbo community. The roots of Igbo literature trace back to ancient oral traditions that included chants, folk songs, narrative poetry, and storytelling. These oral narratives were frequently recited during rituals, childbirth ceremonies, and gatherings. Proverbs and riddles were also used to convey wisdom and entertain children.
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