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Opened in 1912, on Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard between 133rd Street and 132nd Street, the Lafayette Theater was desegregated by 1913 and became Harlem’s most celebrated theater. In April of 1936, the theater staged Orson Welles’ adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which caught the moniker “VoodooMacbeth” on account of its setting in a fictional island in the Caribbean (thought to be Haiti). |
Svetlana Boym says that “memorial landmarks cannot be completely mapped; such memory is composed of shattered fragments, ellipses and scenes” (Boym 2001:52). What do you think she means with that? Do you think any of this can be applied to theaters, as sites of memory? Are the memories of the plays enacted in them still alive once the curtain falls?
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA |
The relation between theater, struggles and the remembrance of those struggles can be found in many different places around the world. South Africa is one of them. In 1981 the Handspring Puppet Company was founded here. Combining both puppets and live actors, this company has faced, from the stages, many of the challenges left by the traumatic South African past. We invite you to watch the trailer of one of this company's plays: Ubu and the Thruth Comission. The play touches on the conformation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996 in South Africa and how it dealt with the consequences and memories of the apartheid system. While you watch this, think what are the possibilities and constraints that a play has when dealing with collective memories - specially with traumatic ones -. What are the differences and similarities between a play that deals with memory and another that is 'memorable' - like VodooMacbeth -? If you want to find more information about the Handspring Puppet Company, you can do it in its website: http://www.handspringpuppet.co.za/about-handspring/ |