Hit-and-Run Theatre: The Rise of a New Dramatic Form in Zimbabwe

{ 14 } \ Hit-and-Run Theatre The Rise of a New Dramatic Form in Zimbabwe —PR AISE ZENENGA In Africa and many other parts of the world, critical historical moments often necessitate the birth of new theatrical forms and practices. This article examines the intertwined practices of performance and historiography in postindependence Zimbabwe. The various performance paradigms that emerged from different historical epochs provide important ways of understanding Zimbabwe’s politics and cultural practices. In Zimbabwe, major historical moments—colonization, liberation, and anti-apartheid struggles; the introduction of economic-structural adjustment programs; the fight against HIv/AIDS; and the struggle for land, rights, and democracy—gave birth to specific theatrical and performance practices. This article focuses on the rise of a new dramatic form that came to be known as hit-and-run theatre, produced during Zimbabwe ’s unprecedented political and social crisis at the turn of the century. My analysis of the relationship between cultural practices and politics in Zimbabwe reveals that artists do not simply make theatre out of crucial historical events but that theatrical productions also determine and shape the direction of social change. This means that in the relations between specific historical processes and their various dimensions, theatre undergoes a dialectical development . Although this article’s primary objective is to examine the historical context and evolution of hit-and-run theatre in Zimbabwe, it also analyzes that country’s performance history in relation to dissent, resistance, and social change. This analysis requires a theoretical framework that combines performance , domination, and resistance in the practice of everyday life; however, no one coherent and consistent theoretical framework can explain the long history and complex practices that are incorporated in hit-and-run techniques. { 15 } HIT-AND-RUN THEATRE In this theoretical analysis, it is important to evoke Augusto Boal’s and James C. Scott’s theories to help illuminate how theatre and performance have historically intersected with the politics of liberation and practice of democracy . Even though Boal’s and Scott’s theories and practices are distant from hit-and-run theatre in space and time, there are inherent aesthetic, methodological , and ideological affinities and parallels among these performance traditions . Scott’s theory of hidden transcripts refers to subordinate groups’ actions outside the observation and surveillance of the authorities.1 Similarly, Boal’s invisible theatre methodology uses unwitting audience participation, or “spect-actors,” to disguise the performance as real life.2 Likewise, hit-and-run theatre manipulates time to create and sustain the invisibility necessary to survive censorship under authoritarian rule.This practice brings into critical focus a new time-based performance theory used to elude state censorship and security agents. Although these practices are conducted in the public sphere, the oppressed classes strive to keep protest and resistance hidden from authorities . In principle, the different performances of resistance maintain invisibility in the face of power. This means that both dominant and subordinate audiences “do not know that they are observing theatre but believe that the conflict or problem which they are witnessing is unfolding before their very eyes. Accordingly, as with happenings, it takes place not on a stage but in people’s everyday life—in a restaurant, a bus, a supermarket.”3 It is important to evoke theories that help interpret the various ways performance and everyday life intersect. Although the relationship between theatrical performance and everyday life is at the center of this analysis, it is important to triangulate and extend the focus to include social and political interaction. Over the years, several scholars have theorized on the everyday intersections of performance, politics, and social interaction. For example, in 1959 Erving Goffman developed a theory of the “self” that compares the way individuals interact with each other. Day-to-day human interactions resemble a theatrical performance comprising a front stage, where individuals put up false appearances to conceal their true feelings, and a backstage, which represents the real feelings. Goffman provides an explanation of how individuals put on fake facial expressions to avoid betraying their true stance and develop a system to suppress their true feelings in their everyday interactions.4 This means individuals carry out their daily activities in the same way an actor performs...