Workshop plays as worker education

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Periodical article

Title:	Workshop plays as worker education
Author:	Kotze, A. von
Year:	1983
Periodical:	South African Labour Bulletin
Volume:	9
Issue:	8
Pages:	92-111
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	trade unions community education drama
Abstract:	Worker organisation in South Africa is increasingly becoming a social movement apart from a political and economic necessity. In this it brings together large numbers of people who initially related to each other according to immediate problems at the factory, according to campaigns and strategies - in short: they related primarily as workers and secondarily as men and women with creative potential. It is this which has prompted the trade union movement to incorporate plays, musical groups and choirs as an extension of its education programme. Emerging workerplays are not meant for a consumer public, and they are created and performed within the perimeter of working-class leisure time - and space. The need to investigate these developments in order to encourage and co-ordinate activity among worker groups prompted this article. Its intention is further, to describe how workshop plays are events of a different kind, obeying and evolving their own laws of development. As an illustration follows discussion of the plays: Security, Ilanga Lizophumela Abasebenzi (The sun rises for the workers), Dikhitsheneng (In the kitchen) and the Dunlop Play.