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Ubuntu Theater: Building a Human World in Yael Farber's Molora

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2021

Phillip Zapkin
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Abstract

Yael Farber's Molora blends themes from the Oresteia, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Xhosa folk singing to produce an aspirational vision for an equitable postapartheid South Africa. This blending draws on ubuntu ethics—the living philosophy that holds that subjects become properly human only through their interaction with others and a commitment to making the world better—by combining these cultural forms and signs without hierarchically privileging any. Farber's revision of the plotline of the Oresteia emphasizes human community because the chorus of Xhosa women collectively introduce order and justice, as opposed to the imposition of order and justice by Athena in Aeschylus's play. The chorus protects Elektra and Orestes from violence and offers them—as well as Klytemnestra—the chance to return to a human community through forgiveness and the renunciation of violence. This is precisely ubuntu's aspiration.

Type
Essays
Information
PMLA , Volume 136 , Issue 3 , May 2021 , pp. 386 - 400
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Modern Language Association of America

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References

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