ESAT Bibliography

The ESAT Bibliography is a series of bibliographies of writing and other materials available on South African theatre, film, media and performance (including relevant contextual material about South African arts and culture).

The basic list compiled by Temple Hauptfleisch and Miriam Terblanche

The listing managed and edited by Miriam Terblanche till 2023

Please note: The huge number of general resources available on world theatre, film, media and performance (even African sources on thewse subjects) are not usually listed below, for the focus here is specifically on South African practice. However, the use of any such reference works and other sources is clearly acknowledged in the "Sources" section of the relevant articles and entries. Of course, such resources may on occasion contain specific references to South African people, texts, performances, etc., and in such a case they are included in one of the categories given.

Navigation: To go directly to the listing of resources, click on the items The primary list of bibliographic resources or the Bibliography of texts and scripts on the of Contents list below, and to find out more about the general principles followed in the ESAT Bibliography, click on The basic principles of this bibliography.

The primary list of bibliographic resources

To go to the appropriate bibliography for your purposes, click on the relevant title below and follow the instructions there:

Books and Articles on South African Theatre and Performance

Books and Articles on South African Film and Media

General Archival and Library Resources in South Africa

General List of South African (and Relevant International) Journals, Magazines and Newspapers

Internet Sources on Theatre, Film, Media and Performance in Southern Africa

Visual Material on South African Theatre, Film, Media and Performance

Bibliography of texts and scripts

The Bibliography itself does not contain listings of individual plays, scripts and so on, since each text, script or collection of texts has its own entry. These are listed separately under four headings in the main body of the Encyclopaedia. To consult them, click on the appropriate section below:

South_African_Films

South African Stage Plays

South African Radio Plays and Serials

South African Television Plays and Series

The basic principles of this bibliography

What is included

The list provided here includes all the books, theses, journals, magazines, newspapers, articles and other materials consulted to write the ESAT encyclopaedia, but is not limited to that body of work.

The aim is to provide as comprehensive a bibliography of South African theatre, film, media and performance as is possible. However, please note only (formally or informally) published documents and manuscripts are normally listed. This would naturally include formally submitted theses or dissertations, since they normally ought to be available through academic library channels. Also included are listings of other sources, such as visual materials and internet resources (such as websites), etc.

What is impossible to include are all the pamphlets, announcements, programmes, reviews, interviews, posters, working scripts, and other documentation generated by any performance event or artefacts (film, TV series, etc). On occasion collections of plays or film and video scripts may be included here because they contain substantial historical and critical material, but otherwise such texts are discussed individually in the main part of the encyclopaedia.

NB: The bibliography itself does not contain listings of individual plays, scripts and so on, since each text, script or collection of texts has its own entry. (See Bibliography of texts and scripts below.).

Valuable other resources on general cultural matters, including theatre, film, media and performance, are the various libraries and archives in the country. Some of the more relevant are given in the section on General Archival and Library Resources in South Africa.

General Bibliographic conventions and usage

(1) Use and placement of articles in titles of plays, articles, books, venues, etc: In accordance with normal bibliographic usage, in cases where the titles of plays and performances contain an initial article (e.g. "A", "An" and "The" in English, " 'N" or "Die" in Afrikaans), the items are listed alphabetically according to the first noun following that initial article. The article is then put at the end of the title. To illustrate: "The Arrest by Uys Krige" is listed as "Arrest, The by Uys Krige" under #A. Similarly, the original Afrikaans version ("Die Arrestasie") is listed as "Arrestasie, Die by Uys Krige", also under #A.

NB: This is however only done for the numerous works listed in Afrikaans, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish in this encyclopaedia. In most other languages (such as the other seven indigenous South African languages, including Sotho, Xhosa and Zulu, and any European languages not listed above, such as Russian, Greek, Norwegian, etc), the full titles are listed exactly as they are, with beginning article where applicable, since the grammatical structure of most such languages are too complex and unfamiliar for us to apply this procedure consistently.

Please also note: Plays or Venue (Organization, institutions, etc) names with titles starting with a numeral or date are placed in a separate listing marked #Numbers or dates.

(2) Capitalization of titles: Since this encyclopaedia is written in English and the convention in English is to capitalize all nouns and verbs in the title of a publication or play, the same usage is extended here to titles in other languages, where the conventions may be different. The case of Afrikaans titles is particularly important here, since only the first word in an Afrikaans title is normally capitalized, the rest being written in lower case. So the play Siener in die suburbs will appear here as Siener in die Suburbs, Die jaar van die vuuros will be written Die Jaar van die Vuuros, and so on.

(3) Names of people: In the various listings, names are given in normal bibliographic form (last name, surname followed by first name,, second, etc). In the entries however the names are given in normal sequence, and are cross referenced as such.

(4) Searching for a name: Since links and cross referencing are done using the normal full title or name, use the names in the right order when using the Search function on this encyclopaedia.

(5) Abbreviations: For consistency, abbreviations forming part of the name of a person, venue (e.g. St for Saint in St John's Theatre ) are spelled WITHOUT a period/full top, as is normal South African usage, even though some sources and institutions appear to have preferred the final period/stop in their titles.

For more information on the general bibliographic conventions used in ESAT, go to:

ESAT Bibliographic Conventions

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