Todays episode is:

NARRATIVE
This is: DRM1027F
Youre in: Week 5
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What is narrative?
Why do we tell
stories in the form of
stories?
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4 QUESTIONS WELL ASK ABOUT

NARRATIVE:
1. How does narrative function in theatre
and performance?
2. Which narratives are told and untold?
3. What are the dominant narratives we
live with in this city/country?
4. How do our contexts (African/South
Africans) frame our experience of
narrative?
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What is narrative?
SIMPLE: Refers to a spoken or written account of
events (a story).
COMPLEX: A system of interrelated and organized
stories that share the common desire to appease
audience expectations according to known
literary or rhetorical/intellectual dominances.
SLIGHTLY MORE COMPLEX: Meta or Master
narratives : trans-historical narratives embedded
in cultures, in public life and society. A grand or
overarching narrative that gives rise to
ideologies. A narrative about narratives.
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What is narrative?

WHY DO WE TELL STORIES?

What is it about the narrative form that connects us to one another?
All conversations are narratives.
Narratives are the only way we can communicate with and understand one another - we organize information so that one thing follows/connects to another.

What is narrative?

Story is simply about a chronological sequence of events.

Plot is about the logic that connects those events (cause and effect)
One thing cannot happen without the other thing.
And so
(Thats causality)

What is narrative?

Plot and Story in Inside/Out

What is narrative?

Plot and Story in Inside/Out

STORY
The woman sees the man.
The man sees the woman.
The man and the woman lose one another.
PLOT
The woman notices the man because she is working in
the window of a shop. And so, he sees her because hes
on the sidewalk outside the window. And so, he starts
to perform for her. And so, during his performance he
loses sight of her. And so, he goes to look for her. And
so, she loses sight of him. And so, they give up looking.
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1. How does narrative function in theatre?

Why is narrative different in theatre than in film, books and TV?
- It involves senses besides just sight it has touch, smell, direct speaking, real connection to live human beings.
- Its not only cognitive and emotional, its also spatial and temporal

1. How does narrative function in theatre?

How do we think about theatrical narrative in a critical

way?

Ask yourself:
-

In what order was the information given?

Which events were selected by the storyteller?
How did it begin and end?
How is it being told (Dialogue? Movement?
Dance? Mime? Images?)
- Who is telling me the story?
- Are they speaking to me directly, or not?
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YESTERDAY:
What is narrative?
- An account of events (simple) and a system of
ideas or stories around which societies and
cultures are constructed (complex).
- We communicate through stories because the
narrative form allows us to organize information
in a connected way.
- Story is simply a set of connected events. Plot is
the logic which connects those events (cause
and effect)
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YESTERDAY:
How does narrative function
differently in theatre?
- It engages us in temporal, spatial,
emotional and cognitive senses
- It connects us to real human beings
(empathy)

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1. How does narrative function in theatre?

A critical analysis of I Turned Away and She Was Gone through the frame of Narrative
- In what order was information given?
- Which events were selected?
- How did it begin and end?
- How was it told (the storytelling forms)?
- How were you as an audience member implicated in the telling?
- Whose story was it? From whose point of view or through whose eyes were we seeing it?

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2. Which narratives are told and not told?

Point of View what is the positioning of the
storyteller (playwright) and the theatremaker/director?
Whose POV are we as an audience directed to see
the story from and why?
What is included and excluded in the story?

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2. Whose story is being told and not told?

Who is at the centre and who is on

the periphery?
A theatre-maker can never be
neutral your personal
ideology/values/frames will always
be present

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2. Whose story is being told and not told?

3 Components of Point of
View
Questions to look at when trying to
establish POV in a performance piece:
1. Spatial Temporal (the place and time
of the action).
2. Emotional (your own emotional
response to the performance)
3. Ideology (what beliefs or values are
being expressed?)
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2. Whose story is being told and not told?

CLASS TASK
Discuss the Point of View of the I Turned Away using
these 3 guiding questions:
Spatial/Temporal what did the geographic location
and the way time is approached in this piece tell
you about its point of view?
Emotional how did your personal history influence
how you received or connected with this piece?
Ideology what were the beliefs or ideas expressed
in this piece about how the world works?

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3. What are the dominant narratives (single,

dangerous stories) we live with in this city /
country?

- Which stories are told and which

stories are excluded or marginalized
in Cape Town?
- How can performance or performance
events challenge, disturb or
deconstruct meta-narratives?
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3. What are the dominant narratives we

live with in the city?
I have previously stated that the Rhodes statue is indeed a symbol of UCTs colonial
past. Many have noted that as it currently stands, the statue of Rhodes is unmediated
by any critical commentary or historical contextualisation. There is nothing to suggest
to any passer-by how the university situates itself in relation to Rhodes actions and
their impact. At the very least, we need to engage with that.
One option is to leave the statue as it is, but to place a plaque on its base that
acknowledges the many injustices of colonial conquest enacted under Rhodes watch.
This might be accompanied by another artwork to be located alongside Rhodes, to
speak back by way of alternative values and convictions. However, it is, in my view,
the particular location and setting of the Rhodes statue that is the problem and it
cannot be addressed by contextualising the statue or installing alternative icons. It is
because the brooding presence of Cecil John Rhodes is located in pride of place, at the
focal point of the campus, that it acquires the connotations of founder, hero, patron,
role model, and embodiment of UCTs heritage. I do not think the statue should be
destroyed or hidden away. I just think it should not be there it should be moved. This
will not compromise our ability to record and debate the role Rhodes played in the
citys and continents history. And it will not change our acknowledgment that UCT
acquired its site from the Rhodes estate, and the positive contribution that it has made
to our institution and its students.

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3. What are the dominant narratives we live with in this city?

Rhodes Statue: A Question of Narrative

We, as black students, as African students, need to be able to identify
with the institution. Whose story are we preserving? For the majority of
South Africans [Rhodes donating land] is a false narrative. How can a
coloniser donate land that was never his land in the first place?
Ramabina Mahapa, Student Leader at UCT, 17 March 2015

His name must be blotted from the history books.

Student at UCT Protest, quoted in Daily Maverick, 13 March 2015

We wish to remind the university that this debate is not new. We wish
to reject, as revisionist, the idea that moving the statue would erase
Rhodes from the universitys history.
- Open letter from former SRC presidents to University Council, 19
March 2015

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1. How does narrative function?

BASIC FUNCTIONS OF
NARRATIVE
The beginning creates desire in
audience
The middle impedes the desire
The end fulfills it satisfying or
unsatisfying

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RECAP
Critical questions to ask when analyzing
narrative (I Turned Away):
-

Order of information
Selection of events
Beginnings and endings
Primary medium
Point of view
Audience address
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ANNOUNCEMENT
RAILROAD ANGELS (Musical)
Hiddingh Campus, Arena Theatre
20h00
18 21 March (incl. 16h00 on 21
March)

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RECAP
Point of View in Narrative
- Whose story is being included and
excluded, who is central and who is
peripheral
- The theatre-maker always has a POV
- Whose POV are you being asked to
see the production from?
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RECAP
Dominant narratives in the city
- Stories that are told in the city, stories
that arent.
- Ways in which public events (like
Rhodes Must Fall) disrupt existing
narratives of space (what space is for,
what their historical contexts are, who
space belongs to)
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