Linkages between public intellectualism and post-apartheid South African theatre

The linkages between public intellectualism and post-apartheid South African theatre were explored in this research. Focusing on four theatre artists, this research sought to discover a grounded theory about how these artists practice public intellectualism. The analysis of selected interviews involving these artists led to the construction of a grounded theory of decolonial praxis that reveals how these theatre artists have taken action to primarily address the needs of the publics they represent. The nature of the grounded theory is such that it offers active theoretical tenets that theatre makers can engage, explore, and expand in their own research and in their practices. These theoretical tenets included critical reflexive sectoral participation, decolonial reimagining of creative practices, decolonial artivism, and awareness of socio-political context and positionality. This study also focused on the public outputs of the sample towards arriving at this grounded theory and the realisation of duplicability of the methodology and the overall research approach. The limitation imposed by exploring the practices of four Black theatre artists effectively means that this grounded theory cannot speak for the experiences of all theatre artists in South Africa. Considerably, this grounded theory offers prospective and practising theatre artists a means to explore strategies, models, frameworks, and theories for activating their agency as theatre artists and as public intellectuals.