Writers bear witness: the Second World War

WRITERS BEAR WITNESS: THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Dr Rohan Quince, author; Jillian Vigrass, teacher, International Baccalaureate programme

E Friday 31 January  3.00 pm  COURSE FEES R110; Staff and students R55

The Second World War was arguably the most cataclysmic period of the twentieth century. When it ended, the world was left in a more precarious state than ever. The subsequent Cold War shaped the rest of the century and beyond. This lecture-performance examines events between 1937 and 1945 through the authors who lived through them. It demonstrates how this war differed from previous conflagrations: the clash of ideologies; invasion, occupation and resistance; the war in the air; the spread of propaganda through radio broadcasting; and genocide in the concentration camps. Extracts from well-known novels such as George Orwell’s Animal Farm, J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 and Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice are used. The lecture draws on the works of American poets Langston Hughes and e e cummings, French writers Paul Celan and Marc Bloch, the German Bertolt Brecht, Englishmen W.H. Auden and John Betjeman, the Romanian dramatist Eugene Ionesco, the Chinese novelist Ma Ning, and poets from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Russia. The lecturers cite the memoirs of Virginia Woolf, Primo Levi, Roald Dahl, Simone Weil and Anne Frank, as well as diaries written by ordinary men and women. Connections are made between issues of international relations and human rights which continue to perplex us to this day, despite the structures set up after 1945.

The historical events are presented in lecture form. The literary excerpts are performed. The tone is lightened with humorous extracts and song.

TO BOOK: https://www.webtickets.co.za/v2/performance.aspx?itemid=1554768232

Dr Rohan Quince (PhD, Southern Illinois University, 1987) taught English at Georgiam Southern University and, since 1994, at schools in Johannesburg. He published Shakespeare in South Africa in 2000. Shows at the National Arts Festival include World War 1 Remembered and What the Dickens! He runs the Shakespeare Club at the National Children’s Theatre in Johannesburg. He co-founded Writers Bear Witness in 2019.

Jillian Vigrass Gorton (BA and STD, UCT, 1972) taught English A (Literature) and Theory of Knowledge in the International Baccalaureate, teaching in Ethiopia, Portugal and Switzerland. She also taught in state schools in South Africa, Zimbabwe and the UK. Her writing includes a play, Chimurenga Children, and an educational children’s story about malaria, Ozzee the Dozy Mozzee. She co-founded Writers Bear Witness in 2019.