"Dawn" is an autobiographical university theatre production based on the narrative of Samanyanga, a University of Zimbabwe undergraduate. The article draws from interview materials, personal communication and observations to theorise the experience of participating in the project. The concepts of "Aesthetics of Existence" and…

In this paper, I document and discuss the frustrations and survival strategies of Theatre Arts and/ or Performing Arts departments in STEMatised neoliberal Zimbabwean universities. I submit that while these departments devised creative survival strategies which kept them relevant and competitive for some time, they also relegated them to the…

This article focuses on how ableist discourses and practices seek to "normalize" the disabled body which is deemed to be "deviant". This leads to acts of normalization that expose disabled bodies to precarity, conceived here as the lived experience of marginalization, ostracism and vulnerability. Using the case study of a…

Scenography has long been embedded in every performance. However, within the applied theatre performance culture, scenography has been relegated to the periphery in place of auditory aesthetics and efficacy. This paper argues that scenography is the glue that sticks together performative aspects of community theatre projects as well as providing a…

One of the central tenets in applied theatre is the ability to confront issues of "power" and "powerlessness." Indeed, success or lack thereof in applied theatre projects is often adjudged against the ability or the extent to which these projects are, or have been able to "empower" the "powerless." In this…

The prevailing tendency in applied drama and theatre research and practice in African contexts has been for both critics and practitioners to apply the Freirian educational paradigm of "codification" and "decodification" in the interpretation of their work. Guarav Desai asserts that most of the theoretical premises of applied…