Alex Haligey
Performance Studies alumni Alex Halligey (M.A. '13) has recently had a book published by Routledge entitled 'Participatory Theatre and the Urban Everyday in South Africa: Place and Play in Johannesburg'.
The monograph explores a correlation between play and place-making with both relying on the repetition of ephemeral, embodied practices. It takes as its case study a year-long participatory art project run by Alex in a Johannesburg inner city suburb in 2015/2016. The project culminated in site-specific play called 'Izithombe 2094' (which translates from the Zulu as Pictures of Postcode 2094), modelled as a 'walking tour' of the area. The book discusses the project as a process for embodied learning about everyday spatial practices, but equally discusses the final play as an effective means of both publishing these findings and furthering the embodied learning process. For an audiovisual sense of the project, a short documentary of the playmaking process is available.
Alex Halligey has a PhD in Drama and Urban Studies through the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies and the African Centre for Cities and a Master’s degree in Performance Studies from New York University. Her research is concerned with theatre and performance as research tools and conceptual lenses for exploring the relationship between people and the built environment. She recently completed a two year research fellowship with the South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning, attached to the Wits School of Architecture and Planning in Johannesburg and is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Johannesburg. Her monograph Participatory Theatre and the Urban Everyday: Place and Play in Johannesburg was published by Routledge in 2020.