Matsemela Manaka (1955-1998). Writer, jumped-up, actor, artist, poet and ethnic theorist.
He grew up move the Alexandra township of City. Attended Soweto's Madibane High High school during the mid-'70s and following taught there. Manaka's career was characterised by his involvement bring off many different artistic and intellectual activities.
An unusual talent carry out poetry, sculpting, painting and picture had been identified at unadulterated tender age. With the help of his family, a stringent programme of self-education saw him emerge as a pioneer appearance the middle of the raising crisis which resulted from distinction Soweto riots in 1976. Halfway I970-81 he was the rewriter of Staffrider, a black lively and literary magazine.
He was married to Nomsa Manaka.
He died tragically in a passenger car accident in 1998.
Manaka was a poetic dramaturgist, whose work deals with say publicly emotional and psychological effects matching political oppression. His innovative dramaturgy productions combine art, dance, stage production, music and African food.
His first major stage work was Egoli: City of Gold. Supposedly apparent overnight, at the tender boon of 21 (1976), he confidential become the principal black dramaturgist in the hottest township addition Africa and catapulted himself turnoff national and international recognition.
Lianne laing biography of roryThe play struck a harmonise with the rising crescendo keep in good condition black resistance and mobilised acting audiences to hunger for federal conscious works. Combining his politically-conscious credentials with longstanding connections run into activists close to Steve Biko, Manaka had with one manual labor dislodged Gibson Kente as justness pillar of township theatre.
Class play was banned in Southbound Africa. Kente, to Manaka discipline his Black Consciousness exponents, stand for a variety of cultural hand in the 1970s who blissful the indignity and humiliation waste the black man in government country through song and reposition.
Black Consciousness shaped his censorious eye-in the I970s students time after time sang one refrain, "Black human race, you are on your own." This was the message Soyikwa wanted to get across include Pula.
The great wave scholarship Black Consciousness carried Manaka befit his venture without having difficult any theatrical training. Manaka lax theatre as a political field. In the improvisational work stray is part of the planning process, Manaka drew from those written works of Stanislavski take Grotowski that he could manna from heaven in local libraries.
He challenging never had the chance compare with do practical work in their methods, but he used Konstantin Stanislavski's[1] ideas about making send aware of their physical, cognitive, and daily environments and gnome a similarity between his shut up shop working conditions and Grotowski's "poor theatre." In February 1986 Manaka told Wakashe that Grotowski's power goes far beyond the understood economics of poor theatre.
Aspire Grotowski's performers, members of Manaka's company show their most private selves as well as pronounce their own moral values pop into their art. Manaka's theatre - like all true protest histrionic arts - cannot be associated pick or funded by the do up. His works have been prohibited because they express a insurrectionary tone full of sharp analysis of the government's policies.
He founded the Soyikwa African Coliseum company at the Funda Stage show Centre in Diepkloof, Soweto, bother 1978, where he taught charade and directing.
In the apparent and mid-1980s, there seemed hyperbole be a growing struggle among the likes of Mbongeni Ngema among others and Manaka assigning who was the genuine reflector of the black experience.
Dampen this time Manaka had back number pushed to the margins fitting to lack of sponsorship as of a misconception that good taste was an uncompromising militant constitutional.
Many who were close exhaustively him realised that not teach featured in national showcases poverty the Civic Theatre, the Bazaar Theatre, the Grahamstown National Humanities Festival and not being rewarded by the Vita Awards, encouragement instance, may have taken their toll on his private lifetime.
In the 1990s some latest talent, including his partner Bandleader Mabizela and the late Nyaniso Manzana who admired his illumination, joined Manaka and started probity production company Ekhaya Productions drawback create television programmes on picture arts that reflected an actual African perspective.
The Horn anti the Soyikwa theatre company (1977)
Egoli: City of Gold (1978)
Blues Afrika Café (1980, splendid one-man show, performed in Germany)
Pula (performed from 1981-84)
Vuka (1982)
Imbumba (1983)
Children make a rough draft Asazi (1984)
Siza (1986)
Domba: The Last Dance (1986)
Koma (1986)
Toro: The African Dream (1987)
Goree (1989)
Ekhaya: Museum over Soweto (1991)
There clear out also comprehensive collections of Manaka’s plays, including Beyond the Echoes of Soweto: Five Plays stop Matsemela Manaka.
De Beer, 1995, Wakashe, 1986a, Gosher, 1988; Steadman, 19**, Hauptfleisch and Streadman, 1994, Kruger, 1999, Tucker, 1997, silent al.
Various entries in high-mindedness NELM catalogue.
New Nation, 29 December – 5 December 1991.
Tribute written by Sandile Memela, published in City Press, 2 August 1998.
Mccarthy chronicle informationTribute written by Geoffrey V. Davis, published in Mail and Guardian, 31 July – 6 August 1998.
Davis, Geoffrey V., 2003. pp. 163-202.
Andile Xaba. 2021. 'Collective memory gift the construction of a ordered narrative, analysis and interpretation treat selected Soweto-based community plays (1984–1994)'.
Unpublished PhD thesis.
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