Alex Halligey (MA '12) recently completed her fieldwork project, which culminated in a street theatre/walking tour piece entitled "The Bertrams Stories Project."
Statement from the Artist:
"I started the Bertrams Stories Project in October 2015 as part of my doctoral research into how drama and theatre might be useful tools for discovering knowledges of everyday life in relation to the built environment. For my methodology I drew on Tim Ingold’s notion of ‘working with’ the materiality of the world in order to find ways of corresponding with it. Ingold proposes that knowledge is neither predetermined nor extracted but rather emerges through the relationship between things. In order to know you must get involved with relating; you must engage in correspondence.
Over the course of a year I used a variety of ways to initiate a correspondence with three adjacent inner city Johannesburg suburbs, Bertrams, Lorentzville and Judith’s Paarl, all three often grouped together as ‘Bertrams’. I ran participatory drama workshops with four different institutions (Bertrams Junior School, Bienvenu Refugee Shelter for Women and Children, Gerald Fitzpatrick House for senior citizens and Maurice Freeman Recreation Centre); conducted interviews with people from these institutions, people on the street, people who have some kind of connection to the area, local business people and traders; volunteered at Bambanani Organic Vegetable Garden; hired a studio in the area and walked the streets. The last phase of the research was a playmaking process to create a piece of theatre as public art to be performed in the public spaces of the area, offering something of a reflection on Bertrams in its contemporary moment. Working with three professional theatre makers, Toni Morkel, Lindiwe Matshikiza and Baeletsi Tsatsi, my intention was both to assimilate the findings, ‘the correspondence’, of my research so far into a theatrical form and to further this correspondence through the play devising process. The playmaking process involved ongoing work with the participatory drama groups and offering the cast a series of prompts and tasks to engage with the area – its landscape, objects, its people and the relationship between all three of these that make Bertrams what it is. The resulting play was a walking tour through the streets and public spaces of Bertrams, Lorentzville and Judith’s Paarl, led by the cast of professional theatre makers as tour guide characters/storytellers/provocateurs, and with installations and performances by local participants along the way."
The Bertrams Story Project has been reviewed by Jozi.Rediscovered and The Huffington Post.
Alex Halligey is currently completing her PhD in Drama through the University of Cape Town’s Drama Department and the African Centre for Cities. She is researching through her own theatre and performance practice the ways in which drama and theatre as public art in Johannesburg might help to explore the relationship between people and the built environment. She teaches part-time at the Market Theatre Laboratory and the Wits Theatre and Performance Division and writes for a daily radio soap opera, called Radio Vuka. Outside of her research, she works with environmental activism theatre company, Well Worn Theatre, and continues to make her own performance work.