theatre research international · vol.  | no.  | pp–
© International Federation for Theatre Research  · doi:10.1017/S0307883320000589
Performing Protest and Protesting
Performance: The International Circuits of
Touring Political Theatre1
 
From  to , the Baxter Theatre of Cape Town, South Africa, produced a multi-racial Waiting
for Godot that garnered vastly different reactions in the various cities to which it toured. With a cast
led by John Kani and Winston Ntshona, icons of anti-apartheid theatre, it was sometimes hailed as a
scathing anti-apartheid polemic, sometimes admired for its ‘universality’, and in one case
denounced and shut down by anti-apartheid activists as a piece of pro-apartheid propaganda.
Based on both archival research and interviews, this essay investigates the artists’ intentions and
the public’s reception in order to illuminate how the international theatrical circuits dovetailed
with international activist circuits, sometimes supporting one another, and occasionally tripping
each other up.
In , as international activists were increasing their pressure on South Africa to end
apartheid or face increasing international marginalization, a South African production
of Waiting for Godot began its international tour. The production was conceived by John
Kani and Winston Ntshona, icons of anti-apartheid theatre who played the two leading
roles, though it is not widely researched or discussed among scholars of South African
performance. Despite the fact that some progressive activists rallied around the
production as a scathing critique of apartheid, others pushed it away as though it
were pro-apartheid propaganda. This essay is a detailed investigation of the
production, based on a combination of archival and interview-based research, which I
have conducted over the past six years. This research, and this production, can help
us in theatre studies to develop our understanding of how international audiences
respond to touring political theatre, and how such theatre influences international
movements for social change. The varied reception of this Waiting for Godot
underscores the ways in which political movements – even international ones – are
always fundamentally local. And it shows how plays – even ones that are hailed as
universal – are received and interpreted in a fundamentally local way, which may be
at odds with the intentions of the artists. This is therefore a history that underscores
how theatre companies who cross the globe with political plays would be wise to
investigate the granular details of local politics, as they perform within and against
systems of oppression. Anti-racist, anti-colonial artists run the risk of catalysing
protests that misinterpret their work and tarnish their reputations, even though these
movements might ultimately share – and even advance – their political commitments.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589

leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance
This essay begins with a section on the production’s historical record, as the story of
this production has not been well documented, and few are familiar with its intricacies.
Here, I trace the evolution of this Waiting for Godot from an idea, to a local production,
to a national tour, and finally to an international tour. Perhaps most importantly for the
investigation that follows, I clarify how the reception changed significantly from the
show’s initial run in Cape Town to its later performances in Johannesburg, and then
changed again in each of its international destinations. In a second section, I focus on
the play’s reception at its penultimate stop, London. Here, I draw on scholarship from
Loren Kruger, Christopher Balme and Donald Culverson, in addition to more
detailed archival evidence, to theorize why the London iteration of the play was
received as more overtly political than any of the prior iterations. I also suggest how
this warm and politicized reception seems to have benefited the local anti-apartheid
movement. Finally, in a third section, I focus on the play’s reception in Baltimore –
its final destination – where progressive activists opposed the play and shut it down.
I wrestle with the question of how London’s and Baltimore’s anti-apartheid activists
could have received this production so differently, and I posit that the local politics of
Baltimore were profoundly significant, in ways that the theatre company had not been
able to foresee. I conclude by proposing an understanding of how political theatre
functions in relation to political movements that is informed by the divergent
experiences of this Godot.
The production about which I write closed forty years ago. And yet the questions
about how touring political theatre works are still very much alive. For example, over the
past ten years, many progressive activists have coalesced to watch and support the
Belarus Free Theatre as it exposes the human rights abuses of the Belarusian
dictatorship. And yet, even as they have mobilized in support of this company, these
activists have also inadvertently constrained the artists with a narrow mandate to
create more and more material that focuses solely on their own oppression.2 From
 to , the South African installation performance Exhibit B toured widely in
an effort to confront the horrors of colonialism. Audiences walked through this
installation one at a time, encountering actors within who portrayed the victims of
European hegemony. Many found it profound and reorienting; others protested it,
and effectively shut it down, as inherently racist.3 In , New York’s Lincoln Center
hosted an Israeli production of To The End of the Land, a theatrical critique of Israeli
militarism by playwright Hanan Snir, adapted from the novel of the same name by
left-wing writer David Grossman. The production – funded in part with support from
the Israeli government – was decried and boycotted by some of the biggest names in
US and international theatre, despite the well-known, anti-occupation commitments
of its writer.4 In all of these contemporary examples, conscientious citizens and
activists had to sort out for themselves how to position themselves in relation to
artists from countries whose policies, or legacies, they oppose. Under what
circumstances should they rally behind these artists? Under what circumstances
should they boycott these artists? What standards should we hold them to? Can their
plays inspire and sustain movements for social justice? Can opposition to their art
embolden these movements? While none of these contemporary examples are perfect
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589
leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance

corollaries to this production of Waiting for Godot, they all highlight how the
international reception of touring political performance can prove to be surprising,
complicated and fundamentally local.
The historical record
I first learned about this production of Waiting for Godot from a newspaper clipping in
the Billy Rose Theatre Division archives in New York’s Lincoln Center. An article in the
New York Times from  June , the clipping bears the headline ‘Baltimore Protest
Halts Drama by South Africans’. Over a three-day period, all of the US’s major
newspapers would run this story, along with many international news outlets. The
context: after two years of organizing, the First Baltimore International Theatre
Festival was opening.5 Theatre companies had arrived in Baltimore from Spain,
England, Ireland, Israel, Japan and South Africa, along with one company from
within the US.6 The South African company, the recently established Baxter Theatre
of Cape Town, was preparing to present Waiting for Godot, costarring Kani and
Ntshona; these artists, who headlined the billing, had gained international acclaim
five years prior with Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island, the scathing anti-apartheid
performances that they co-created with playwright–director Athol Fugard. Kani and
Ntshona were well known in the US, both to anti-apartheid activists and to followers
of international theatre: they had won a Tony Award for best actor, their plays were
reviewed and referenced in US anti-apartheid publications, and when they were
arrested and confined in South Africa for continuing to perform these shows, their
arrest inspired a massive protest among both theatre-lovers and activists, which
resulted in their release. But now, in Baltimore, five years later, an antagonistic group
of activists confronted Kani and Ntshona in the United States. Holding picket signs
outside the theatres of the festival, these activists called themselves the Coalition in
Support of the Liberation Struggles in Southern Africa and insisted on the closure of
Waiting for Godot. They called for a severance of all ties with South Africa, and
insisted that the inclusion of the Baxter Theatre amounted to a legitimization of the
South African government. Ultimately, the protest was so successful that the
Baltimore iteration of Godot was compelled to close before it ever opened.
Given the reputations of Kani and Ntshona as giants of anti-apartheid theatre, the
reception in Baltimore is initially baffling. And in historical hindsight, with the
well-known productions of Godot in San Quentin Prison () and in post-Katrina
New Orleans () – productions in which the play was widely understood to
highlight the conditions and tribulations of marginalized populations – the
perspective of the Baltimore protestors seems jarringly anomalous. As I sat at my
desk in the archives with this single article from the New York Times – the only
remnant of this production that I had access to at the time – I felt stunned. How
could anti-apartheid activists mistake John Kani and Winston Ntshona for apartheid’s
apologists? Why did these incredibly brave artists – who had already survived solitary
confinement in a political prison – back down and cancel their show? What
transpired between these activists and these actors? As I began to piece together
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589

leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance
answers to these questions, it became important to understand how the production’s
earlier performances were received and interpreted.
The show first opened a year and a half prior, in early , in Cape Town. Directed
by Donald Howarth, a British director–designer who had worked in Cape Town several
times before, it featured Kani and Ntshona as Vladimir and Estragon, alongside
Pieter-Dirk Uys as Pozzo, Peter Piccolo as Lucky, and Soli Philander as the
messenger. Reviews from this first iteration were overwhelmingly positive, though as
Philander recounted to me in an interview, the discourse in Cape Town focused
mostly on the production as an artistic achievement, rather than as a political
statement.7 Reviews praised the direction as ‘flawless’ and the acting as ‘moving’,
‘polished’, and ‘brilliant’.8 Kani, Ntshona, Piccolo, and Uys were all nominated for
Fleur du Cap awards, and Uys ultimately won the award for best supporting actor.9
Reviewers noted the ways that the play was given an ‘African flavour’ – ‘the arid set,
the parched sky, and a lullaby crooned in Xhosa’ – but they did not expressly attach a
political message to this particularization. Rather, they praised the play’s ‘universality’,
and one ambiguously credited Kani and Ntshona with ‘a new dimension to Beckett’s
dialogue’.10
However, while the reviews focused on aesthetics, a letter to the editor of the Cape
Times suggested that some audience members discerned a political message, at least in
the casting choices, where a black Vladimir and Estragon meet a white Pozzo and Lucky,
before being greeted by a coloured messenger at the end of each act. The letter was
written by Peter Fourie, a local actor; it accused the director of inscribing a political
message into Beckett’s play, in a ‘violation of the text which is totally antithetical to
the nature of the piece’. According to Fourie, Beckett’s play was inherently a
‘dramatization of a state of mind, a depiction of the inner, not the outer world’. He
concludes, ‘Mr. Howarth’s attempt to give [Godot] a local connotation is an affront to
the serious theatre-goer and an unforgiveable bastardization of one of the great plays
of this century. Beckett has been diminished and trivialized in the name of some
misguided liberal endeavour’.11
Fourie’s letter inspired many responses to the Cape Times, three of which were
printed within the week. One was from Donald Howarth, the director; another from
John Slemon, the Baxter’s artistic director; and a third from a Stanley Levensteen.12
Levensteen, who called the play ‘one of the greatest theatrical experiences I … have
ever had’, argued that Godot was ripe for political overtones because ‘it is concerned
with human suffering, injustice, and man’s inhumanity to man’. Borrowing Fourie’s
language, he asks rhetorically, ‘is not the inner world at least to some extent a
reflection of its outer environment’?13 In apparent accord with Levensteen, John
Slemon quoted a reviewer who had written, ‘It takes a great actor to alter the general
perception of a classic role’.14 In other words, according to Slemon, the production
did challenge audiences to look at Godot anew. This was not simply a local
production of a ‘universal’ text; it did offer something unique – and that uniqueness
was intentional and appropriate.
Over the course of the South African run, that uniqueness – the play’s political
dimension – would become increasingly apparent to audiences and reviewers.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589
leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance

Following the Cape Town run, the play was mounted at the Grahamstown National Arts
Festival, the Port Elizabeth Opera House, and Johannesburg’s Market Theatre. The
Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth runs were short – one performance in
Grahamstown and under a week in Port Elizabeth – but the Johannesburg run lasted
three weeks.15 In a  interview with me, Soli Philander gently mocked the
apolitical reception of the show in Cape Town, and recounted that over the course of
the run,
the rest of the country got much more the idea that [the play should be] appl[ied] to us.
They kind of got the idea that – ‘okay, there’s two white guys, and two black guys, and –
what are they trying to say here?’ … I think we had a strong sense that this was a
political message in Jo’burg, and in the other centres.16
Indeed, the reviewers increasingly used language that highlighted the racial
dynamics and class inequities between the characters in this production. They
described Uys’s Pozzo as an Afrikaner farmer and described Piccolo’s Lucky as ‘white
trash’. Characterizing Vladimir and Estragon as representative of an underclass, one
reviewer wrote, ‘Like their counterparts in Joubert Park and the Bowery’s Skid Row,
[Beckett’s tramps] still retain their pride and humanity, which comes out in copious
draughts of humour’. Explicitly naming the racial overtones, the same reviewer
concluded, ‘As can be seen by the large number of black theatre-goers who have
flocked to see this production, the play is relevant to our times’.17 Another wrote,
‘In light of the South African political situation, a line like “nobody ever recognizes
us” sounds particularly relevant coming from the mouth of John Kani. Pozzo’s
remark to Estragon and Vladimir, “you are human beings created in the image of
God”, was also stunning.’18 And yet, some reviewers continued to characterize the
play in apolitical terms. John Michell, reviewer for the Rand Daily Mail, wrote, ‘What
it’s all about and how you react to it is of course up to you … Becket questions
premises, then questions the question of questioning premises, which leaves you right
back where you started’.19
This mix of political and apolitical interpretations likely pleased the artistic team. In
interviews, Kani and Ntshona shared with me that they did find that the play spoke
directly to the inequities of the South African political landscape, and they found
those connections to be meaningful and powerful – but they did not set out to make
a protest play with this project. They wanted to produce something more subtle,
something that was faithful to the European vision for the play but that also spoke to
a local context. In an interview with me, Kani explained,
The deal with bringing on a British director was that he had to do it as if it was an
international – as if it was in London. ‘You gotta do this production as if you’re doing
it in London’, [we told him]. ‘Do not play the politics of South Africa at all’ … But
during the process of the play, I must admit something began to ferment in the
subtext. We had to, as Africans, bring up us: location, geography, and time (when we
were doing this play [in the s]).20
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589

leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance
Kani went on to talk about how he and his collaborators – especially director–designer
Donald Howarth – set the play on the edge of a rubbish mound where black people
would scavenge for food and other goods left by white South Africans. It was a setting
that ‘would be easily recognizable to every South African’ as a local space in which
inequities were in sharp relief. This localization would, in Kani’s words, ‘make people
who are majority black, seeing this play, somehow identify with it’. Lingering with a
line from the play that underscored its relevance to black South Africans under
apartheid, Kani said to me, ‘There’s a beautiful line, I think it’s Didi [Vladimir], who
says, “born astride a grave”. I cried when I read that line. I cried when I read that line.
We are born astride a grave’.21
Ntshona, too, spoke to me about how their Godot took on the politics of apartheid.
‘Creative works are like plants: they respond to the atmosphere they find themselves in’,
he said to me in a  interview. Beckett’s text, with the hopelessness of the main
characters and the inequities of the play, was the seed of a plant, and in the soil of
South Africa it grew differently than in Europe. ‘When John and myself were working
together, there was no way you could escape the social–political thing … [But] it’s not
like every day we wanted to climb rooftops and shout about [apartheid]’.22
So in the hands of these South African political artists, Godot contained a critique of
colonialism and apartheid, but the artists wanted it to do so with subtlety. By the end of
the South African run, it seems like critics and audiences were responding just as they
wanted: they saw, in Baxter’s Godot, their own political experience as a particular
permutation of a universal experience of suffering through indignities.
After the run at Johannesburg’s Market Theatre, Godot travelled beyond South
Africa’s borders. At this juncture, Pieter-Dirk Uys left the company, and Pozzo was
played by Bill Flynn for the remainder of the run; all other actors remained with the
project, and the design (with minor adjustments for different venues) remained intact.
The ensemble next took the project to New Haven, CT – a two- to three-hour drive
from New York City. In this run, the show was reviewed by a considerable number of
local, New England newspapers, in addition to receiving two reviews from
NYC-based national publications. The New Haven run garnered more negative
reviews than the show received in any other city, and the critique came
disproportionately from the small, local papers. Critics called the production ‘tedious’,
‘sluggish’ and ‘punchless’; several concluded that the South African ensemble did little
justice to the play, which could be better presented by a local company.
But the reviews in national publications, written by critics from outside the
immediate area, rang very different notes. Mel Gussow of the New York Times praised
the ‘invigorating production’ and the ‘remarkable actors’ who had an ‘almost conjugal
connection as artists’. In his estimation, Kani’s Vladimir and Ntshona’s Estragon were
‘warm-blooded incarnations of archetypal characters’.23 Newsweek’s Jack Kroll said
that the play took on ‘new meaning’ that ‘no other actors in the world could have
given it’. He described the set as ‘the veldt’, using distinctly South African vernacular
to evoke a semi-arid landscape, and suggested that this Godot had an earthy realness
to it: Vladimir and Estragon were ‘real people in a real place … waiting, not for God,
but for some guy who might have a job for them’.24 In other words, their hope of
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589
leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance

finding Godot had overtones not of an atheist critique of a Godless world, but of a
political critique of inequity.
The disparity between the New England reviews and the reviews in national
(New York-based) publications takes on particular significance in light of the play’s
reception at its next stop: London. Here, the reception was incredibly warm and
strikingly political. Without any equivocation or nuance, London critics interpreted
the play as a broadside against the racist policies of the white South African state. The
critic for The Stage wrote, ‘In this multi-racial version of Beckett’s text … the central
characters are seen as black South Africans waiting for freedom and political
change’.25 The review in the New Standard read, ‘Performed by black actors, the
tramps appear to be symbolizing their hopeless lot in South Africa … Godot is black
majority rule’.26 And Londoners flocked to see this production that they interpreted
as being starkly political: strong ticket sales led to an extended run at the Old Vic
Theatre. According to Kani, Beckett’s personal secretary later told him that the
extension at the Old Vic was the most significantly extended run of any Godot
production that he knew of.27 The ensemble also travelled to Oxford for a short run
at the Oxford Playhouse, though cast members remember little about this incarnation
of the show, and I have not been able to find any reviews of it.
Following London and Oxford, the company was invited to perform in Baltimore,
at the First International Baltimore Theatre Festival. As one of the highest-profile
performances at the festival, it was going to perform in a -seat venue, and was
anticipating full houses. But the response from anti-apartheid activists could not have
been more starkly different from that in London. Immediately upon their arrival, the
artists were met with picketing protestors and demands to withdraw from the festival.
The protestors also engaged in a letter-writing campaign decrying the production and
its inclusion in the festival; they targeted local officials, newspapers in the US and
South Africa and the leaders of the festival.28 This coalition opposing the show, which
called themselves the Coalition in Support of the Liberation Struggles in Southern
Africa, included the NAACP, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, the
hospital workers’ union, the Welfare Rights Organization, the Theater Department at
Morgan State University, and the Henry McNeil Turner Society of the Bethel AME
Church.29 Anthony Robinson, who co-chaired the coalition, called the Baxter Theatre
‘part and parcel of the South African propaganda machine to misrepresent what is
taking place within that country’.30 In response, Al Kraizer, the artistic director of the
festival, accused the coalition of ‘tactics of intimidation’, and Baxter artistic director
John Slemon shared that ‘the actors felt that their families and friends would face
repercussions at home’ if the Baxter were to continue performing in spite of the protest.31
Throughout the eight stops on the company’s tour, this production of Waiting for
Godot was hailed as a bold anti-apartheid broadside and denounced as pro-apartheid
propaganda; it was received as a ‘universal’ artistic masterpiece even as others
interpreted it as distinctly South African; it was also deemed both riveting and
tedious. The discrepancies call us to further develop our field’s understanding of how
touring performances are consumed and interpreted, and how they fuel international
social-justice movements. They call attention to the specificities of local politics and
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589

leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance
public spheres, underscoring that even broad international movements can operate with
distinct local concerns and artistic appetites.
Cultivating and sustaining righteous anger
In a  article in Diaspora, Loren Kruger analyses and critiques an ‘affect of urgency’
that characterized much of South African protest theatre during apartheid. Writing
about black protest theatre written with cathartic, climactic endings, Kruger argues
that such plays evoke a combination of pity and outrage within their international,
affluent, white audiences, affording them the opportunity to safely sample the horrors
of black life under apartheid.32 She draws on Frantz Fanon to argue that in so doing,
these plays reassure the dominant global powers of their hegemony, even while
castigating them.33 She argues that this theatre is both reductive and exhibitionist; it
flattens the complexity of South African culture and its heterogeneous elements while
offering black South African pain as a commodity for liberal white elites overseas to
purchase and admire.
Kruger points out that she is not writing about Athol Fugard’s plays in this article,
which, she says, have been ‘absorbed into an international canon of “great works”’.34 She
is certainly, then, not writing about any South African production of Waiting for Godot –
or at least not intentionally so. She is writing, instead, about plays like Survival,
Asinimali, and Sarafina, which charged their audiences with a simplistic but palpable
sense of identification with oppressed and defiant protagonists. It is remarkable, then,
to realize that Godot does seem to have charged its London audiences with this affect
of urgency. It could not possibly be more dramaturgically distinct from the protest
plays, but in the production’s depiction of inequity, destitution and endlessness,
performed in a recognizably South African setting, with South African accents, and
with a few tweaks to Beckett’s script, it put apartheid in London’s spotlight. In so
doing, it seems to have stirred the consciousness of the audiences and to have imbued
them with the combination of outrage and pity about which Kruger writes. The
newspaper articles and reviews brim with this affect of urgency, as reviewers state
their unequivocally allegorical interpretation of the play, testify to the play’s ‘emotive
political messages’, and describe their own reactions as shocking epiphanies.35
But only in London. Or rather, more in London than anywhere else. What
Londoners experienced as ‘political frisson’, Capetonians generally experienced as
‘universal’ and intangible, and New Englanders experienced as ‘sluggish’ and
‘punchless’.36 The divergence between these audience reactions may have begun long
before the audiences took their seats: in the advance press and the marketing of the
productions. In London, the Baxter, the Old Vic (the London theatre presenting the
show) and the London press collectively prepared audiences to interpret the play
through a political lens. John Slemon, the Baxter’s artistic director, told me that he
secured the run in London by sending the producers the letter to the editor of the
Cape Times that been written by Peter Fourie.37 By selecting that letter, he
exaggerated the ire that the play drew from the political right in South Africa. Kani
and Ntshona bolstered this perception, granting advance press interviews in which
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589
leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance

they emphasized the controversy that the show had caused in South Africa: ‘When the
play opened there was such an uproar!’ Kani was quoted as saying in London’s Observer.
‘The mere fact that the cast was mixed, and the mere fact that the tramps were played by
blacks, and the fact that those blacks were John Kani and Winston Ntshona … The
people of South Africa saw the play in a different light’.38
Kani may have exaggerated the extent to which the people of South Africa saw the
play in a different light, but, by so doing, he helped to usher in a reality in which the
people of London really did see the play in that new light. Audiences took their seats
ready to draw connections to news stories, personal testimonies, slogans shouted at
protest marches, and other works of art that referenced apartheid policies more
explicitly. In his book The Theatrical Public Sphere, Christopher Balme attests to the
value of artists and producers orienting their performances to the political movements
and discourses in which they are embedded. Drawing on Loren Kruger, Balme writes,
the public sphere created in the theatre by performance is [generally] of a different
order from that outside in the world of ‘general production’ and the ‘ruling order of
things’. It is, following Raymond Williams, ‘a site and discourse of subjunctive
action’. Yet a concept such as virtuality or ‘subjunctive action’ means that we need
to bracket off anything enacted within it.39
In other words, the framing of theatrical events often isolates them from the broader
discourse in the public sphere. Thus Balme conveys special enthusiasm for
productions that ‘either move out into the real world, or … bring the public sphere
into the theatre’, or somehow provide for an ‘extension of the theatrical public sphere
into the wider community’.40 When productions are in a position to be referenced in
a broader discourse, their unique ‘combination of rational-critical, agonal and ludic
modes of interaction’ can enliven that discourse in particularly impactful ways.41
In London, where the theatre-going public was living in a hub of the anti-apartheid
movement, where they were primed with news stories like the one that ran in The
Observer, and when they sat in the same theatre in which they had seen Sizwe Bansi
Is Dead and The Island five years prior, Waiting for Godot looked ‘very much like a
Fugard play’.42 As Irving Wardle wrote in his review of the London production, the
references to ‘struggle’, to physical violence, and to perpetually waiting for change all
seemed to be references to apartheid.43 Sitting in the theatre watching the two actors
who had so brazenly critiqued apartheid policies (in Sizwe Bansi and The Island), and
now seeing those same actors, on the same stage, satirically wait for change that never
comes, audiences rekindled the memories of the earlier plays to flesh out this one. It
became a ‘[node] in a network’ of anti-apartheid discourse, ‘rather than [a]
self-contained, orginary [work] of art whose aesthetic function evaporates with the
end of the performance’.44
To a lesser extent, this was also true for the New York critics who came to see the
play in New Haven. Like the Londoners, they lived in an international hub of the
anti-apartheid movement, and they knew Kani and Ntshona’s prior work well, so to
some extent they were primed to experience the show as a political statement. And of
course, they did – and they appreciated this artistic–political experience. The New
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589

leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance
England critics, who did not live in a hub of the anti-apartheid movement, and who may
not have been personally familiar with Kani and Ntshona’s prior work, did not
experience the show as a ‘node in a network’ – or at least not to the same extent.
While it is difficult to assess the political efficacy of a theatrical performance with
precision, I want to suggest that the priming of the public to anticipate a political show
may not simply have been effective marketing; it may also have been effective political
organizing. Donald Culverson, historian of the anti-apartheid movement in the US,
argues in his book Contesting Apartheid that the theatre of the anti-apartheid
movement was a valuable tool for organizers. He explains that ‘unlike domestic issues,
apartheid was not amenable to direct observation’, and thus organizers had to work
creatively to identify spaces and times to draw public attention to the issue.45 Touring
performances did this quite naturally – they gathered concerned people together,
immersed them in an experience that sustained their attention on phenomena that
were not amenable to direct observation, and, when they were at their most effective,
they provided an experience that was emotionally palpable and memorable. For these
reasons, he writes, anti-apartheid plays – specifically the works of Athol Fugard
(though there were certainly many others) – ‘became fixtures on campuses and
conventional theater circuits. These venues enabled black South Africans to speak
directly to Americans about apartheid, rather than having their experiences
interpreted’.46
While Culverson was, of course, writing about explicit protest plays, and not about
Waiting for Godot, London audiences did not seem to experience much difference
between the two. Within the public sphere of anti-apartheid discourse and Kani–
Ntshona plays, the London iteration of Godot rekindled a sense of righteous anger
and reminded audiences (if not exactly informing those audiences) of the apartheid
practices that were increasingly being critiqued in the metropolises of Europe and
North America. So even when reviewers critiqued the aesthetics of the production, as
Irving Wardle did when he suggested that British companies could produce a more
entertaining and satisfying production of the same play, this production continued to
attract audiences.47
Even the African National Congress, the international movement leading the fight
against apartheid, saw the London production of Godot as a potential tool for the
movement. Though initially sceptical of why these icons of anti-apartheid theatre
were performing a European play, they debriefed the performance with Kani and
Ntshona, calling the play ‘powerful’, ‘very deep’, and ultimately a story about ‘people’s
dignity’ and ‘humanity’.48 As was usual for Kani and Ntshona in these international
tours, after the authorities from activist movements saw the show, the rank-and-file
membership of the activist communities followed. ‘It’s almost like the word went
around like grass fire that this project we can support’, Kani said.49
So, while I do not disagree with Loren Kruger when she argues that the ‘affect of
urgency’ associated with protest theatre was reductive and exhibitionist, I also want to
complicate that assertion with the possibility that this reductive exhibitionism may
have been politically useful. Certainly it was seen that way by the activist leaders of
the day. It kindled a righteous anger among theatre-goers, focused them on the
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589
leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance

problems, and charged them with emotionally resonant stories of victims. And even
Godot, with a very different dramaturgy, had a similar effect on audiences when they
were primed by the press and the theatres to experience it as a political piece.
Oppositional activism
If Baxter’s Waiting for Godot was such a boon to the anti-apartheid movement, then it
would stand to reason that the movement’s organizers in Baltimore would have
attempted to rally their supporters to go and see it. Yet they did just the opposite:
they boycotted, picketed and denounced the production as part of a pro-apartheid
propaganda effort.50 Sometimes, international political movements need the energy
and momentum that oppositional, confrontational engagement can best provide.
According to Culverson, in the early s, the growing anti-apartheid movement in
the US was diversifying its tactics, and sharpening ‘its political edge by engaging in
both assimilative and confrontational activities. Assimilative, or inside, strategies
included lobbying, election campaigning, petitioning, and litigation, whereas
confrontational, or outside, approaches employed demonstrations, civil disobedience,
and other publicity-seeking methods’.51 Sitting passively in a dark theatre and
growing righteously angry about apartheid may also fuel the movement, but if the
play does not explicitly denounce apartheid or teach its audience about apartheid
policies, then it may be even more valuable as a target of the movement than as a
consciousness-raising tool. As Dennis Chong has argued, the opportunity for
movement members to picket and rally offers ‘expressive benefits’: activists can ‘voice
their convictions, affirm their efficacy, share in the excitement of a group effort, and
take part in the larger currents of history’.52
To direct this frustration at a theatre company, and to put particular pressure on the
two leading black actors, may feel unfair to the artists, who themselves are victims of the
same oppression that the activists are decrying – and who are delicately balancing a
subtle critique of apartheid with their desires to make a living and grow as artists. But
whether or not it feels fair to artists is not the primary concern of the activists, who
are consumed with the pressures and challenges of sustaining a decades-long
movement fighting oppression that is taking place thousands of miles away. Touring
theatre productions effectively bring a manifestation of one part of the world into
another. Depending on the production, activists may decide that this is a useful
educational tool, or they may decide that it is a useful target.
The history of the Baltimore protest ultimately reveals that the relative appeal of
championing or critiquing these touring performances may depend more on local,
domestic concerns than on international ones. Though the activist coalition of
Baltimore presented itself as acting in solidarity with the oppressed people of South
Africa, a deeper dig into the archives reveals that their concerns were really twofold.
First, as their name suggests, they were concerned that producing Waiting for Godot
(or any other production out of South Africa) in Baltimore was effectively validating
the South African government. But second, they were concerned that the white
festival organizers had not consulted Baltimore’s black community in the planning of
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589

leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance
the festival.53 They felt boxed out of the local processes that were determining the
cultural, economic and political landscape of their city. This second concern – about
the racial politics of Baltimore – was entirely missed in some of the reporting on the
event, including major articles in the New York Times and Washington Post and a
widely published Associated Press article announcing the withdrawal of the Baxter
from the festival.54 But the editorial staff of the Baltimore Sun, in an editorial
critiquing the activists, identified the primacy of this second concern (albeit
dismissively) when they stated, ‘It is doubtful that most of them care very much about
South Africa. Their main objection seemed to be that the festival organizers, in hiring
a largely black African company, did not clear it with “the black community,”
meaning themselves’.55 The Baltimore Afro-American, in an article that was much
more sympathetic to the activists, suggested that the concern about local racial politics
preceded the concern about international racial politics: ‘The choice of the
internationally known Baxter Theatre by the planners of the festival drew ire from
black community leaders, already enraged by their exclusion from the planning of the
affair’.56 And when Kani and Ntshona announced their withdrawal from the festival
on local television, Kani hinted – though he did not state outright – that the essential
concern was not with the Baxter:
We were led to believe that we would be welcomed by all segments of the community,
and we are disappointed to find that there is disagreement between blacks and whites in
Baltimore … We are caught in the middle, and we have no choice but to withdraw from
the festival.57
For the leading activists in Baltimore, who sustained the international movement by
convincing Americans that the struggle against racism at home should be understood as
inseparable from the one in South Africa, it was common to link local concerns with
foreign ones. Makekolo Mahlangu, who co-chaired the Baltimore Coalition with
Anthony Robinson, explained to me, ‘We had a motto: “Soweto–Baltimore. One
challenge, one fight”’.58 This rhetorical device reflects a growing phenomenon of the
time, as activists throughout the US linked US racism and South African apartheid.59
In an editorial praising the boycott, the Baltimore Afro-American articulated the same
sentiment:
The cultural elitists who conceived the festival … did not know that increasing numbers
of black Americans clearly see that the fate of millions of black South Africans ground
under the apartheid boot of the Afrikaner colonialists directly relates to the racist
regime under which Americans must live here at home. Johannesburg, Soweto [sic]
are not all that different from depressed sections of Baltimore, Manhattan, Detroit,
and other large US cities where countless blacks are forced to live in ghettos.60
Some in the coalition – like Mahlangu and Anthony Robinson, who co-chaired it – were
most invested in the international political angle. Others, like Stephen Hay, chairman of
the Theatre Department at Baltimore’s historically black Morgan State University, were
more invested in the local political angle. Within the coalition, these concerns seemed to
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589
leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance

blend harmoniously; neither Mahlangu nor Robinson remembers emphasizing one over
the other.61
That said, John Kani understood this to be a distinctly local concern. He and
Winston Ntshona met personally with the leaders of the coalition, in an encounter
that all have described to me as open and honest. But in an interview with me in
Johannesburg, Kani described the coalition’s concerns as being entirely unrelated to
South Africa. Perhaps he had more direct contact with Hay than with Mahlangu or
Robinson, or perhaps the activists’ rhetoric about Baltimore simply resonated
more deeply with him than their arguments that the Baxter was an instrument of
apartheid – but in Kani’s memory of the event, the activists had not even claimed to
be concerned about apartheid. The activists spoke to them about their frustration
with Baltimore’s city council, about their marginalization in a municipality where
African Americans constituted  per cent of the population, and about their political
aspirations to take over the local government. To rally their base, Kani remembers
them explaining that they wanted to begin by protesting the theatre festival, which
had ignored the black community even as they worked to put Baltimore on the map
of international, cosmopolitan cultural magnets. The festival organizers had
assembled an all-white board and staff, they had done no outreach to the local black
community, and they had only invited a single American company – the Actor’s
Theatre of Louisville – who were performing as an all-white cast. Moreover, Hope
Quackenbush, the executive producer of the festival, had responded to these critiques
by defensively and shamelessly insisting that African Americans were indeed part of
the festival organizing, because ‘blacks were on the festival staff as stagehands’.62 Kani
remembers the activists asking him and Ntshona if they would help the local black
community by pulling out of the festival, which would boost the visibility and the
enthusiasm of the local activists in their broader political agenda. The protest had
‘nothing to do with South Africa’, Kani said to me. ‘It was local politics that made us
withdraw from the festival’.63 The Baxter Theatre effectively became a lightning rod,
channelling the frustration of the black community against the local white
community, which ignored it and took it for granted.
The polite requests that Kani remembers getting directly from the activists were also
echoed, somewhat less politely, by the activists’ allies at the African National Congress.
In the United States, the ANC worked closely with domestic black movements. They
linked their causes closely together and they turned out activists for one another’s
events. In order to preserve this partnership, the ANC organizers in New York now
turned to Kani and Ntshona and applied additional pressure to get them to comply
with the requests from the Baltimore coalition. Kani paraphrased the verbal request of
the ANC leaders in the US: ‘We would appreciate if you were to listen with a kind ear
to their plea for you not to perform’. And just in case I took the gentle tone at face
value, Kani went on to clarify: ‘Do you know what would happen if then we come
back to South Africa and we kinda like defied the pleas of the ANC leaders abroad?
We would be fucking killed. Our houses would be burnt. We would be branded
informers and traitors to the struggle. We knew that’.64
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589

leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance
The activists were relatively uninformed about Kani and Ntshona’s work, and by
the time they sat down with the artists, the wheels of the protest were already in
irreversible motion. Robinson acknowledged to me that he had never seen or read
Waiting for Godot, and that he did not initially know of Kani’s or Ntshona’s
reputations (though he did come to learn about, and to respect, their prior work).65
In statements to the press, he got a few details wrong: he claimed that only two of the
five actors were black, and that these casting practices amounted to ‘tokenism’; in so
doing, he seemed not to understand that Soli Philander, as a coloured actor, was also
a victim of apartheid, nor that Kani and Ntshona were playing the lead roles and had
conceived of the production. In another press statement, he dismissively mocked the
idea that Waiting for Godot might read as an anti-apartheid commentary.66 He
seemed not to know, or not to care, that most Londoners and many South Africans
had understood the show as having an anti-apartheid message. In my own interview
with him, he reiterated this fundamental point: he did not believe that the play was a
political statement against apartheid, and he thought that Kani and Ntshona were
being used and manipulated by the Baxter.67 Though Kani and Ntshona clearly tried
to clarify their intentions, and though Mahlangu and Robinson received them with
relative warmth, the activists kept up their pressure. They lined up in opposition to
artists whose political convictions they shared.
Conclusion: international political movements and performing bodies
For anti-apartheid activists in , protesting the show – and ultimately shutting it
down – presented the opportunity to solidify a broader, stronger coalition of African
American and anti-apartheid activists. When they shut the production down, they
were able to claim a victory for both causes, and to fuel both movements. Robinson
and Mahlangu built on this success by turning out their coalition for many other
protests over the next several years – both in Baltimore and in Washington, DC.68
In contrast, British and South African critics of the South African government
rallied behind this play – and in London, the show seems to have put some wind
behind the sails of the anti-apartheid movement. But London seems to have been
unique in this respect. When plays are not explicitly decrying the very abuses that the
movements are organized around protesting, then the ability of international
movements to successfully rally around these plays may have more to do with local
culture than with international politics.
Out of this research emerges both new insight into the specific historical
phenomenon of apartheid-era touring productions and also new insight into
contemporary phenomena that bear some resemblance. Speaking historically, the
Baxter’s production of Godot, and specifically its distinct reception in different places,
enable us to understand how the international theatrical circuits dovetailed with
international activist circuits, sometimes supporting one another, and occasionally
tripping each other up. When a specific production house was well integrated in the
anti-apartheid movement, and when the theatre-going populace of a city was
immersed in the culture of the movement, the research shows that the theatrical
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589
leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance

production was able to both capitalize on, and serve, the interests of the movement. In
those cases, the affect of urgency – while perhaps reductive – was galvanizing. But in
localities that were further afield from the movement’s centre, it may have been just as
useful to the movement to position themselves as critics of the theatre than as
supporters of the artists.
Contemporary touring performances may be productively interrogated in light of
this historical record – and scholars, activists, and other conscientious global citizens
may find that the history of this Godot can inform how they wish to position
themselves in relation to touring performances. In certain contexts, people may decide
that performances like Exhibit B, To the End of the Land, and the repertoire of Belarus
Free Theatre deserve international support; like the ANC decided in London and New
Haven, these performances may be useful sites for international audiences to gather, to
learn, to be moved and to align themselves with political movements. But much may
depend on the local politics of venues and host cities; in some cases, movement
organizers may feel they have more to gain by protesting these productions, despite the
irony of undermining artists whose political convictions they largely share.




notes
I am tremendously grateful to all of the theatre-makers and activists who consented to be interviewed for
this research. These include John Kani, Winston Ntshona, Soli Philander, John Slemon, Anthony
Robinson and Mankekolo Mahlangu. I also want to thank my two research assistants – Abigail Schrader
(who was my student at Reed College, Portland, Oregon, during the first leg of work on this project) and
Jhelisa Carroll (who was my student at the University of Toronto) – for their assistance with transcribing
these interviews. Finally, I want to acknowledge and thank the Baxter Theatre, who generously opened
up their archives to me.
For more on the Belarus Free Theatre, and how well-intentioned progressives and activists have
inadvertently narrowed the range of material that the company feels that they are welcome to perform,
see Margarita Kompelmakher, The Human Rights Performative: The Belarus Free Theater on the Global
Stage (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy, ). For more on the ways that the
Belarus Free Theatre educates international audiences about political oppression in Belarus, see Dani
Snyder-Young, Theatre of Good Intentions (London: Palgrave, ), pp. –.
For more on Exhibit B as an anti-racist and anti-colonialist performance, on the intentions of its creators,
and on its impact on audiences, see Megan Lewis, ‘Until You See the Whites of Their Eyes: Brett Bailey’s
Exhibit B and the Consequences of Staging the Colonial Gaze’, Theatre History Studies,  (), pp. –
. For more on the protestors of Exhibit B in London, see Caoimhe Mader McGuinness, ‘Protesting
Exhibit B in London: Reconfiguring Antagonism as the Claiming of Theatrical Space’, Contemporary
Theatre Review ,  (), pp. –.
For more on the Lincoln Center production of To the End of the Land, and the controversy of accepting
Israeli government funding for that production, see Jake Offenhartz, ‘Artists Call on Lincoln Center to
Dump Israeli Government-Backed Play’, Gothamist,  July , at https://gothamist.com/artsentertainment/artists-call-on-lincoln-center-to-dump-israeli-government-backed-play, accessed 
February . For the letter of protest signed by Annie Baker, Caryl Churchill, Lynn Nottage and other
prominent theatre-makers, see ‘Letter Calling on Lincoln Center to Cancel Israeli Government’s “Brand
Israel” Theater Performances’, Adalah, NY: Campaign for the Boycott of Israel,  July , at https://
adalahny.org/web-action//letter-calling-lincoln-center-cancel-israeli-governments-brand-israel-theater,
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589

leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance





























accessed  February . For more on how individual artist-citizens made difficult decisions about their
own potential involvement in this boycott, see M. J. Kaufman, ‘Why Boycott a Play’, Howlround,  July .
David Michael Ettlin, ‘Tactics of Baxter Protestors Assailed’, Baltimore Sun,  June, , p. B.
‘Three Weeks on Stage: Here’s the Schedule’, Baltimore Sun,  June, , p. N.
Author’s interview with Soli Philander,  May .
Mark Swift, ‘Fine Acting in a Superb “Godot”’, The Argus,  February . Jill Fletcher, ‘Remarkable
Production of “Godot” at Baxter’, Cape Times,  February , p. .
‘ Theatre Award Nominations’, Cape Times,  February , p. . Many thanks to the Baxter Theatre
for the access they provided to their archival materials, which I have cited both here and throughout this
article.
Swift, ‘Fine Acting in a Superb “Godot”’. Fletcher, ‘Remarkable Production of “Godot” at Baxter’.
Peter Fourie, ‘Howarth’s “Godot” Is an Aesthetic Affront’, Cape Times,  March , p. .
Donald Howarth, ‘I Do Not Agree’, Cape Times,  March . Stanley Levensteen, ‘“Godot” was great
stage experience’, Cape Times,  March . John Slemon, ‘Beckett Was Consulted’, Cape Times, 
March .
Levensteen, ‘“Godot” was Great Stage Experience’.
Slemon, ‘Beckett Was Consulted’.
‘Live Theatre Entertainment’, Rand Daily Mail,  July .
Author’s interview with Soli Philander,  May .
Oswald Mtshali, ‘“Godot” Tragicomedy Is Relevant to Our Times’, The Star,  August .
Barrie Hough, ‘An Excellent Godot’, Beeld,  July .
John Michell, ‘A Play of Hope Amid the Gloom’, Rand Daily Mail,  July .
Author’s interview with John Kani,  May .
Ibid.
Author’s interview with Winston Ntshona,  May .
Mel Gussow, ‘Theater: South Africans in “Godot” at Long Wharf’, New York Times,  December, .
Jack Kroll, ‘“Godot” in the Veldt’, Newsweek,  December .
Review of Waiting for Godot, The Stage,  February .
Milton Shulman, ‘Taking a Coloured View’, New Standard,  February .
Author’s interview with John Kani,  May .
Ida Peters, ‘Showtime: Baxter Theatre Cancelled – Alternative Fest Successful Continues This Weekend’,
Baltimore Afro-American,  June .
This list of coalition partners is drawn from an article in the Baltimore Sun. David Michael Ettlin, ‘Tactics
of Baxter Protestors Assailed’, Baltimore Sun,  June . However, the coalition leaders explained to
me in an interview that the main organizing entity was the Bethel AME (African Methodist Episcopal)
Church, which they described as a five-thousand-member church in Baltimore that was heavily involved
with social-justice activism. Anthony Robinson, the coalition leader, was asked by the pastor to found
and lead a branch of the Henry McNeil Turner Society, a pan-African activist organization, within the
church. Robinson led this protest in his capacity as the leader of the Turner Society, with the broader
support of the church. He and Mankekolo Mahlangu, who led the protest with him, established
coalitional relationships with the other organizations on this list, including Morgan State University
(especially theatre professor Samuel Hay), the NAACP and several labour unions. Author’s interview
with Anthony Robinson and Mankekolo Mahlangu,  March .
Ettlin, ‘Tactics of Baxter Protestors Assailed’.
Ibid. ‘Baxter Cancelled as Actors Stay Out’, Baltimore Sun,  June .
Loren Kruger, ‘Apartheid on Display: South Africa Performs for New York’, Diaspora, ,  (), pp. –
, here p. .
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove, ), p. ; Kruger, ‘Apartheid on
Display’, p. .
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589
leffler Performing Protest and Protesting Performance




































Kruger, ‘Apartheid on Display’, p. .
Jack Tinker, ‘Seeing This Classic Play in a New Light’, Daily Mail,  February .
Michael Billington, ‘Waiting for Godot’, The Guardian,  February ; Swift, ‘Fine Acting in a Superb
“Godot”’.
Author’s interview with John Slemon,  May .
John Engstrom, ‘These Cries for Help’, The Observer,  February .
Christopher Balme, The Theatrical Public Sphere (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. .
Ibid., pp. , .
Ibid., p. .
Engstrom, ‘These Cries for Help’.
Irving Wardle, ‘Waiting for Godot’, The Times,  February , p. .
Balme, The Theatrical Public Sphere, p. .
Donald Culverson, Contesting Apartheid (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, ), p. .
Ibid, pp. –.
Irving Wardle, ‘Waiting for Godot’, The Times,  February , p. .
Author’s interview with John Kani,  May .
Ibid.
Ettlin, ‘Tactics of Baxter Protestors Assailed’.
Culverson, Contesting Apartheid, p. .
Dennis Chong, Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, ), p. , as quoted in Culverson, Contesting Apartheid, p. .
Megan Rosenfeld, ‘Baltimore Festival Flap’, Washington Post,  June .
‘South African Troupe Cancels Its Performance’, The Telegraph and Associated Press,  June .
‘Baltimore Protest Halts Drama by South Africans’, New York Times,  June , p. C. ‘South African
Troupe Cancels Baltimore Performance’, Washington Post,  June .
‘The Killing of “Godot”’, Baltimore Sun,  June .
James M. Abraham, ‘Boycott Victory: Black Actors Bow Out of Festival’, Baltimore Afro-American, 
June , p. , p. .
‘Black Troupe Cancels Drama’, Star News and Associated Press,  June .
Author’s interview with Anthony Robinson and Mankekolo Mahlangu,  March .
Culverson, Contesting Apartheid, p. .
‘Boycott Victory’, Baltimore Afro-American,  June , p. .
Author’s interview with Anthony Robinson and Mankekolo Mahlangu,  March .
‘Stars of “Godot” to Boycott Baltimore’, Baltimore Sun,  June , pp. C, C.
Author’s interview with John Kani,  May .
Ibid.
Author’s interview with Anthony Robinson and Mankekolo Mahlangu,  March .
‘Stars of “Godot” to Boycott Baltimore’.
Author’s interview with Anthony Robinson and Mankekolo Mahlangu,  March .
Ibid.
elliot leffler (elliot.leffler@utoronto.ca) is an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance at the
University of Toronto, where he has been on faculty since . Elliot holds a PhD in theatre from the University of
Minnesota, an MA in applied theatre from the University of Cape Town, and a BA in theatre from Northwestern
University. His scholarship on performance as a catalyst for intercultural dialogue has been published in The
Drama Review, Research in Drama Education, Theatre Topics, and Contemporary Theatre Review. His chapter
‘Bursting the Bubble of Play: Making Space for Intercultural Dialogue’ appeared in Megan Lewis’s and Anton
Krueger’s book Magnet Theatre: Three Decades of Making Space ().
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Miami University Libraries, on 17 Jun 2021 at 09:25:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883320000589