Woza Albert!: genre

Genre Overview

Woza Albert! is a powerful piece of political and protest theatre, specifically targeted at Apartheid in South Africa.
The play is a satire, using humour, irony, exaggeration, ridicule, and absurdity to highlight and criticise injustices of Apartheid.
It is also a work of Absurdist theatre, where its structure and content defy traditional theatrical conventions, displaying illogical sequences and existential themes.
Some aspects of the play fall under Physical theatre as the actors make use of their bodies to articulate the story and characters.

Political Theatre

Political theatre in Woza Albert! aims to inspire societal change by engaging its audience in political and societal issues.
Throughout the story, injustice, racial segregation and harsh realities of Apartheid are explicitly addressed and critiqued.
The play utilises its characters, narrative, and symbolism to lay bare the destructive nature of the Apartheid regime, thereby provoking thought and action in its audience.

Satire and Absurdism

Satire manifests in Woza Albert! as a skewed depiction of reality, using wit, ridicule, and irony to point out the absurdity of the Apartheid system.
The Absurdist elements of the play showcase a world that lacks fairness, coherence or purpose, symbolising the harsh reality of life under the oppressive system of Apartheid.
Key Absurdist elements include illogical events, circular conversation, commonplace objects imbued with transgendered meaning, presenting metaphorical mirror to society and treatment of profound subjects in a trivial manner.

Physical Theatre

Physical theatre elements of Woza Albert! project the emotions, attitudes and actions of the characters through body expressions, rather than through speech.
There’s heavy use of improvisation, mime and movement with a minimum number of props.
Given that the original production had only two actors portraying many characters, changes in physicality were essential to distinguishing between roles.

In summary, Woza Albert! is a mixed-genre piece that uses satire, political theatre, Absurdist theatre and physical theatre to craft a pertinent critique against the Apartheid regime.