Brett Bailey
Daniel Lar lham
Bre t t Baile y and Third Wor ld Bunfight
Journeys into the South African Psyche
“South Africa’s edgiest director.”1 “The whizz-kid of transformed drama.”2 “Bad boy of the [South African] theatre scene.”3 These are just a few of the epithets won by director-playwright Brett Bailey, variously charged with trespassing onto sacred cultural terrain and hailed as a trailblazing visionary forging the way toward a new South African theater — a theater capable of accommodating the complexities and collisions of belief, tradition, aspiration, and imagination that characterize life in that country today. Since exploding onto the South African theater scene with 1996’s Zombie, a volatile theatrical mix of ritual and spectacle, Bailey has built a reputation as one of the nation’s most consistently innovative and controversial theater-makers. With piercing blue eyes, a disarming smile, and a propensity for mile-a-minute verbal profusion, Bailey exudes an ease and self-assurance won through continual artistic risk taking. Bailey’s closely shaven cranium and penchant for torn khaki and denim fit nicely with his public persona in the South African media: that of a globe-hopping, extreme-theater provocateur whose adrenaline-seeking exploits have taken him to India, Bali, Europe, Uganda, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, and Haiti during the ouster of Aristide. Today Bailey hovers prominently on the margins of South Africa’s theatrical mainstream, intent on protecting his persona as an outsider artist with insider knowledge of African performance traditions. To date, Bailey’s work is far better known to foreign audiences in Europe than in the United States through international tours by his company, Third World Bunfight, and the publication of a compendium of early playscripts, The Plays of Miracle and Wonder: Bewitching Visions and Primal Hi-Jinx from the South African Stage (2003). The shifting stylistic modes and thematic emphases of Bailey’s productions over the past
Bre t t Baile y and Third Wor ld Bunfight
Journeys into the South African Psyche
“South Africa’s edgiest director.”1 “The whizz-kid of transformed drama.”2 “Bad boy of the [South African] theatre scene.”3 These are just a few of the epithets won by director-playwright Brett Bailey, variously charged with trespassing onto sacred cultural terrain and hailed as a trailblazing visionary forging the way toward a new South African theater — a theater capable of accommodating the complexities and collisions of belief, tradition, aspiration, and imagination that characterize life in that country today. Since exploding onto the South African theater scene with 1996’s Zombie, a volatile theatrical mix of ritual and spectacle, Bailey has built a reputation as one of the nation’s most consistently innovative and controversial theater-makers. With piercing blue eyes, a disarming smile, and a propensity for mile-a-minute verbal profusion, Bailey exudes an ease and self-assurance won through continual artistic risk taking. Bailey’s closely shaven cranium and penchant for torn khaki and denim fit nicely with his public persona in the South African media: that of a globe-hopping, extreme-theater provocateur whose adrenaline-seeking exploits have taken him to India, Bali, Europe, Uganda, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, and Haiti during the ouster of Aristide. Today Bailey hovers prominently on the margins of South Africa’s theatrical mainstream, intent on protecting his persona as an outsider artist with insider knowledge of African performance traditions. To date, Bailey’s work is far better known to foreign audiences in Europe than in the United States through international tours by his company, Third World Bunfight, and the publication of a compendium of early playscripts, The Plays of Miracle and Wonder: Bewitching Visions and Primal Hi-Jinx from the South African Stage (2003). The shifting stylistic modes and thematic emphases of Bailey’s productions over the past