Prof Mark Fleishman

Professor

Professor. BA, Performer's Diploma in Speech and Drama, MA, PhD Cape Town

Convener MA Theatre & Performance. Co-artistic director of Magnet Theatre www.magnettheatre.co.za.
PI Reimagining Tragedy from Africa and the Global South (ReTAGS) http://www.retags.uct.ac.za/.
Teaches across a range of theoretical and practical courses with a specific focus on theatre-making, dramaturgy and artistic research. Research areas include contemporary South African Theatre & Performance, Translation and Performance, Staging the Archive/Performing History; Tragedy in the global South; Digital Performance Archiving.

 

Research (last 10 years)

Current Research Project:

Re-imagining Tragedy from Africa & the Global South (ReTAGS)

This project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, proposes to take a concept – tragedy - from the very beginnings of theatre in its European manifestation and to reimagine it from an African perspective to gain purchase on our evolving global presents and possible futures. It sets out to challenge the solipsism of the European conversation in theatre studies and its biases and preconceptions by putting Africa to work differently, to radically reorient thinking about theatre, and its study, and to put this thinking to use in reflecting on our collective and multiple ‘aftermaths in which the present seems stricken with immobility and pain and ruin’.1

The project aims to understand how (i) tragedy has been reconfigured in dramatic form in the postcolonial theatre; (ii) how moments of tragic excess are enacted outside of the theatre in the course of revolts against neo-colonial establishments and forces; and, (iii) in an embodied, performative manner, how tragedy might be utilized as a tool for understanding the present regime of time and its performative effects in the global neo-colonial complex that characterizes the world as it is emerging now across all hemispheres.

1 Scott, D. 2014. Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice. Durham and London: Duke University Press, p. 6.

 

Artistic Outputs (Last 10 years)

I have been creating and directing professional theatre productions for the past 38 years under the umbrella of Magnet Theatre, the company I founded with Jennie Reznek in 1987, and of which we are coartistic directors along with Mandla Mbothwe. I have created and directed more than 45 productions staged in small community sites and large- scale professional theatres and festivals across Africa and in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. In addition, the company runs training and development projects for youth from marginal communities in rural and peri- urban sites. The work of Magnet Theatre is documented in Megan Lewis and Anton Krueger (eds.), 2016. Magnet Theatre: Three Decades of Making Space. Bristol and Chicago, Intellect.

  • 2024 MANJE! MANJE! (Magnet Theatre) Dramaturg, Director and Lighting Designer Magnet Theatre, Cape Town
  • 2023 OEDIPUS AT COLONUS: #aftersophocles (Magnet Theatre) Dramaturg, Director and Lighting Designer Baxter Theatre, Cape Town; Theatre Konstanz, Germany
  • 2022 THE GOOD SOUL OF SZECHUAN (Bertolt Brecht) (Magnet Theatre) Director and Lighting Designer Magnet Theatre, Cape Town
  • 2021-2023 SNAPPED(Jennie Reznek) (Magnet Theatre) Dramaturg, Director and Lighting Designer Baxter Theatre, Cape Town 2019 ANTIGONE (NOT QUITE/QUIET) (Magnet Theatre) Dramaturg,Director and Lighting Designer Baxter Theatre, Cape Town
  • 2018 THE VISIT (FriedrichDurrenmatt) (Magnet Theatre) Director and Lighting Designer Magnet Theatre, Cape Town
  • 2015-2017 I TURNED AWAY AND SHE WAS GONE (Jennie Reznek) (Magnet Theatre) Dramaturg, Director and Lighting Designer Magnet Theatre, Cape Town; Hilton Festival, KZN; Market Theatre, Johannesburg; Frascati Theatre, Amsterdam
  • 2015 HEART OF REDNESS (Zakes Mda) (Magnet Theatre/Cape Town Opera) Dramaturg, Director and Lighting Designer Fugard Theatre, Cape Town
  • 2015 IN THE CITY OF PARADISE (revised version) (Magnet Theatre) Dramaturg and Director Magnet Theatre, Cape Town

 

Postgraduate Supervision

Graduated students to date: 36 MA/MFA and 11 PhD.Currently supervising: 4 PhD

 

Written Outputs (Last 10 years)

Edited collections

  • 2024 Fleishman, M & Halligey, A (eds). Thinking, Making, Doing: a handbook on artistic research methods. UCT Libraries. [Open Access} Available: https://openbooks.uct.ac.za/uct/catalog/view/70/80/2736
  • 2022 Fleishman, M. & Baxter, V. (eds.) Reimagining a Classic: Reflections on Antigone (not quite/quiet) [2019]. South African Theatre Journal 35(3), special issue.
  • 2020 Matchett, S. & Fleishman, M. (eds.) Translation and Performance in an Era of Global Asymmetries, part 2. South African Theatre Journal 33(1), special issue. Editorial, pp. 1-4.
  • 2019 Fleishman, M. & Bala, S. (eds.) Translation and Performance in an Era of Global Asymmetries, part 1. South African Theatre Journal 32(1), special issue. Editorial, pp. 1-5.
  • 2015 Fleishman, M. (ed). Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa:Cape of Flows. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Peer reviewed journal articles

  • 2024 de Smet S., Fleishman M., Rousseau C., StalpaertC., De Haene L. The ephemerality of bearing witness: participatory refugee theatre with Syrian young adults in exile. Research in Drama Education. pp. 1-17. DOI: 10.1080/13569783.2024.2318218
  • 2023 Fleishman, M. Antigone [Not quite/quiet]: Adaptation, the Anarchive and Afterness. South African Theatre Journal 35(3), special issue: Reimagining a Classic: Reflections on Antigone (not quite/quiet) [2019]. pp. 150-166. DOI: 10.1080/10137548.2023.2173285
  • 2019 Fleishman, M. Migrating Mia Couto’s Voice[s]: strategies of translation across the borders of genre and nation. South African Theatre Journal 32(1), special issue: Translation and Performance in an Era of Global Assymetries, part 1. pp. 6-20.

Book chapters

  • 2019 Fleishman, M. Resisting Production: The Slow Politics of Theatre. In: Peter Eckersall & Helena Grehan (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics. London & New York: Routledge, pp. 147-150.
  • 2018 Fleishman,M. L'expérience d'Onnest'bo au Six District Museum. In: PaulineChevalier, Aurélie Mouton-Rezzouk and Daniel Urrutiaguer(eds.) Le Musée Par La Scène: le spectacle vivant au musée, pratiques, publics, mediations. Aurélie Mouton- Rezzouk (trans.) Montpellier: Deuxième Époque, pp. 308-318.
  • 2017 Fleishman,M. Towards a Pedagogy of Performance as Research. In: Sruti Bala et al(eds.), International Performance Research: The Unconditional Discipline? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 125-37.
  • 2016 Fleishman, M. Making Space for Ideas: The Knowledge Work of Magnet Theatre. In: Megan Lewis and Anton Krueger (eds.), Magnet Theatre: Three Decades of Making Space. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, pp. 53-72.
  • 2016 Fleishman, M. Applied Theatre and Participation in the ‘new’ South Africa: a possible politics.In:JennyHughes and Helen Nicolson(eds.), Critical Perspectives on Applied Theatre. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 193-211.
  • 2015 Fleishman, M. ‘Lapsing into Democracy’: Magnet Theatre and the drama of ‘unspeakability’ in the new South Africa. In: Mary Luckhurst and Emilie Morin (eds.), Theatre & Human Rights after 1945: Things Unspeakable. Basingstoke, Palgrave, pp. 57-73.
  • 2015 Fleishman, M.Dramaturgies of Displacement in the Magnet Theatre Migration Project. In: Mark Fleishman (ed.), Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa: Cape of Flows. Basingstoke,Palgrave Macmillan.
  • 2014 Fleishman,M and Pather,J. ‘Performing Cape Town: an epidemiological study in three acts’. In:Nicolas Whybrow (ed), Performing Cities.Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Published conference proceedings