Loren Kruger
Born and educated in South Africa (BA Honours: UCT), with further education in France, Germany and the United States (PhD: Cornell U.), Loren Kruger is an award-winning, writer, editor, translator and professor emerita at the University of Chicago. In addition to the above locations, her research interests include comparisons across the global South from Chile to India, as well as global, local, and glocal histories of socialism and related political and cultural movements
Her books include:
Beyond the Internationale: Revolutionary Writing by Eugène Potter Communard. Ed and trans. Loren Kruger. (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2024)
A Century of South African Theatre (Bloomsbury 2019)
Imagining the Edgy City: Writing, Performing and Building Johannesburg (OUP 2013)
Post-imperial Brecht (CUP 2004); winner: Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Study, MLA 2005
The National Stage (Chicago 1992)
A selection of articles and other short pieces are available on Academia.edu.
For more bibliography, see the links below to Kruger's pages at University of Chicago, Google Scholar and ResearchGate
Her books include:
Beyond the Internationale: Revolutionary Writing by Eugène Potter Communard. Ed and trans. Loren Kruger. (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2024)
A Century of South African Theatre (Bloomsbury 2019)
Imagining the Edgy City: Writing, Performing and Building Johannesburg (OUP 2013)
Post-imperial Brecht (CUP 2004); winner: Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Study, MLA 2005
The National Stage (Chicago 1992)
A selection of articles and other short pieces are available on Academia.edu.
For more bibliography, see the links below to Kruger's pages at University of Chicago, Google Scholar and ResearchGate
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Papers by Loren Kruger
if not outright civil war, South African
theatermakers during the apartheid era found in classical tragedy scenarios
for representing the struggle against the brutality of an authoritarian
state but in post-apartheid South Africa the stakes have changed.. The persistence of inequity and injustice perpetuated by new rulers,
even if they were former victims, prompts a skeptical revaluation of the
official narrative in which the African National Congress (ANC) claims
the moral high ground of a national hero. As the wealth gap increases,
poverty remains entrenched, and death stalks the country in the shape
of AIDS, assaults on women and children, and criminal violence out of
all proportion to the value of property being stolen, the epic narrative
of national liberation and the victory of justice over oppression have
been cast into doubt. Many local theatermakers have used satire to indict the
corruption, impunity, and indifference of the newly powerful. Audiences
Others have turned to dark farce:. But the legacy of death by AIDS, crime or
malign neglect, which has marred the epic narrative that the ANC still
calls the “national democratic revolution” and shadowed the posture of
leaders calling for national unity in the face of deepening disenchantment
and outright suffering, demands the unflinching portrayal of the harm
perpetuated by its agents, in what should be called the tragedy of the commoner. This article looks at adaptations of tragedy from Fugard's Orestes to Farber's Molora that cast a critical eye on the state of the nation and its commoners struggling against rulers
This article uses TEDIUM and HUNCHBACK VARIATIONS by Chicago playwright Mickle Maher as a point of departure for analyzing the rhythm of attention and distraction, attunement and drag, imaginination and tedium in the experience of making and watching theatre. This analysis draws on Brecht on estrangement, Heidegger on tedium and attunement, Beckett on absorption in failure as well as the plays of Theater Oobleck
if not outright civil war, South African
theatermakers during the apartheid era found in classical tragedy scenarios
for representing the struggle against the brutality of an authoritarian
state but in post-apartheid South Africa the stakes have changed.. The persistence of inequity and injustice perpetuated by new rulers,
even if they were former victims, prompts a skeptical revaluation of the
official narrative in which the African National Congress (ANC) claims
the moral high ground of a national hero. As the wealth gap increases,
poverty remains entrenched, and death stalks the country in the shape
of AIDS, assaults on women and children, and criminal violence out of
all proportion to the value of property being stolen, the epic narrative
of national liberation and the victory of justice over oppression have
been cast into doubt. Many local theatermakers have used satire to indict the
corruption, impunity, and indifference of the newly powerful. Audiences
Others have turned to dark farce:. But the legacy of death by AIDS, crime or
malign neglect, which has marred the epic narrative that the ANC still
calls the “national democratic revolution” and shadowed the posture of
leaders calling for national unity in the face of deepening disenchantment
and outright suffering, demands the unflinching portrayal of the harm
perpetuated by its agents, in what should be called the tragedy of the commoner. This article looks at adaptations of tragedy from Fugard's Orestes to Farber's Molora that cast a critical eye on the state of the nation and its commoners struggling against rulers
This article uses TEDIUM and HUNCHBACK VARIATIONS by Chicago playwright Mickle Maher as a point of departure for analyzing the rhythm of attention and distraction, attunement and drag, imaginination and tedium in the experience of making and watching theatre. This analysis draws on Brecht on estrangement, Heidegger on tedium and attunement, Beckett on absorption in failure as well as the plays of Theater Oobleck