Abstract
This chapter analyses Vhitori Productions’ Protest Revolutionaries (2012) as an example of democratic protest theatre in post-crisis Zimbabwe. It explores how Protest Revolutionaries empowers subaltern classes to use the theatre to design, implement and modify processes of social transformation. Most protest plays produced during the Zimbabwean crisis glorify the elites and do not seem to empower subaltern classes to shape the intellectual design of resistance in protest movements. The chapter analyses how Vhitori entertainment celebrates voices which are often overlooked in narratives of social and political transformation. The chapter applies Antonio Gramsci’s concept of subaltern agency to analyse semiotic resistance in so far as it shapes and modifies the struggle for change in Zimbabwe. Subaltern agency as portrayed in Protest Revolutionaries makes it by far one among the most progressive of Zimbabwean protest plays in terms of its democratic thrust.
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Notes
- 1.
Both Final Push and Madame Speaker Sir were written and directed by Silvanos Bhanditi Mudzvova, director of Vhitori Entertainment. These plays were mentioned in a citation which led to him being awarded the Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent by Human Rights Foundation in 2017.
- 2.
Decades of Terror was written by Daniel Maposa and directed by Samuel Ravengai at Theatre in the Park in 2007.
- 3.
Heaven’s Diary was written and directed by Daniel Maposa. He also performed in the same play.
- 4.
The nationalist discourse espoused by the state projected the West and Americans as sponsoring anti-state discourses through Civic Society Organisations.
- 5.
Chimurenga refers to ‘revolution’ or ‘uprising’. It is a term that was coined by Africans when they fought European settlers in the 1890s. There have been three Chimurengas in Zimbabwe, which are the first Chimurenga (1896–7), second Chimurenga (1966–79) and the third Chimurenga (2000–2009). T. O. Ranger submits that the state’s patriotic history project insisted that Chimurenga implies war against Whites. Chikaka and Cde Rebel argue that Chimurenga implies not a racial war, but a war against oppression in all its ramifications. Chikaka and Cde Rebel advance the point that the official understanding of Chimurenga masks corruption, poor governance, and primitive accumulation by state elites.
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Chikonzo, K. (2021). Towards a Democratic Protest Theatre in Zimbabwe: Vhitori Entertainment’s Protest Revolutionaries (2012). In: Ravengai, S., Seda, O. (eds) Theatre from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74594-3_11
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