Introduction: Contested Forms, Spaces and the Politics of Representation in Zimbabwean Theatre—A Historical Perspective

Abstract

This collection surveys the theatre produced in Zimbabwe from the last days of colonialism in the 1970s right up to 2009 when the country’s post-independence political and economic crisis, which had started in November 1997, had slowed down significantly. The slowdown followed the inauguration of a Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) brokered Government of National Unity (GNU) that brought together the then ruling ZANU PF party (under the late Robert Mugabe) and its chief post-independence political adversary, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) under the late Morgan Tsvangirai. We use the establishment of the GNU of 2009 as a cut-off point for this collection not least because the political and economic turmoil that characterised the colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwean state became highly enmeshed with the nature and extent of the country’s theatre and cultural production as alluded to in the title of our edited collection.