Shakespeare, Music, and South Africa

Perhaps no production of a Shakespeare play has highlighted the controversies, contradictions, and misunderstandings attendant on promoting the Bard’s work in a postcolonial anglophone environment as vividly as Gregory Doran’s staging of Titus Andronicus at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, in 1995. This chapter examines the music for the production, by Dumisani Dhlamini, as well as Tayo Akinbode’s music for Doran’s later and similarly Africa-set production of Julius Caesar for the Royal Shakespeare Company (2012). In the process, the discussion draws on Natasha Stiller’s concept of ‘coconuttiness’ as an aid to understanding the cultural significance of—and the inevitable controversies engendered by—these bold stagings. The chapter concludes with a critical assessment of the striking transformation of Britten’s opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream by the Isango Ensemble into a distinctive brand of ‘township’ opera (2015), the project being a direct reflection of its remit to promote ‘performances with a strong South African flavour’ inspired by a ‘re-imagining [of] Western theatre classics within a South African or township setting and by creating new work reflecting South African heritage’.