Nadia Davids

Nadia Davids (born in Cape Town) is an award-winning South African writer.[1] Her work has been published, produced and performed in Southern Africa, Europe and the United States.

Biography

Davids grew up in Walmer Estate, Cape Town, South Africa. She was educated first at Zonnebloem Girls School – one of the oldest, most storied schools in the Cape located at the edge of District Six – and later at St Cyprians School.

In June 2008, she received a PhD in drama from the University of Cape Town (UCT) for her thesis entitled "Inherited Memories; Performing the Archive", which explored the history, memory and trauma of forced removals from District Six under the Group Areas Act during the Apartheid era in South Africa, through the lens of performance.[1]

She held a Mellon Fellowship between 2000 and 2005, and was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley (2001) and New York University (2004–05).[2] She won a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2013[3]

She was one of ten playwrights participating in the New York-based Women's Project Theater’s Playwrights' Lab for 2008–10.[1]

She took up a full-time lecturing position in the Drama Department at the Queen Mary University of London in September 2009.[4] In 2018 joined the University of Cape Town's English Department as an Associate Professor.

In 2017 Davids was elected president of PEN South Africa, taking over tenure from Margie Orford.[5]

Works

Davids’ research sits at a nexus between Postcolonial Studies, Performance Studies and Live Performance. Her work contributes to the performative reimagining of South African archives and stages questions around trauma, cultural memory, the (im)materiality of the archive, of race, place and gender. Through themes of place, home, exile, resistance, and restitution, she examine material loss, engage with performative tactics of re-construction of place through memory, and suggest an ideological flow between oral history, witnessing, and theatre. She reference different contexts in which these experiences have been formed — District Six, slavery, colonialism, apartheid, immigration, post-9/11 racial/ethnic profiling, interstitial creolized identity formation-through various creative practices: theatre, short stories, documentary and screenplays. In this, she disrupts the assumed boundary between theoretical and practical work, insisting instead on a relationship of reciprocal intellectual and creative exchange. Her work is disseminated through a variety of forms (journal articles, live performances, published play texts, film documentaries, a novel) to a range of audiences (commercial, academic/educational).

At Her Feet (2002–12) – a one-woman show centred on Cape Muslim women's identities post 9/11 performed by acclaimed South African actor Quanita Adams, and Cissie (2008–11) — a play exploring feminist biography, the historiography of District Six, and archival storytelling through the theatrical imagining of anti-apartheid activist Cissie Gool’s life – serve as good examples. 'At Her Feet' first played at the Arena Theatre in 2002 and Cissie debuted at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in July 2008.

Both works have garnered theatre awards and nominations (five Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards, one Noma, one Naledi), and have been staged internationally (in Africa, Europe, the United States at venues such as Market Theatre, Baxter Theatre, Southbank Centre, and at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, Afrovibes, and the London Book Fair). The plays are studied at a range of universities (University of Cape Town, Stanford, New York University, SOAS, University of Warwick and York University) and are high-school set-works throughout South Africa. They are understood within these contexts as opening up unexpected spaces in which the lives of South African — specifically Muslim Capetonian — women, assume the central focus. At Her Feet was one of the first theatrical works to emerge in response to 9/11 and remains one of the only plays narrating the lives of Capetonian Muslim women. Described by Njabulo Ndebele as 'Unforgettable... Art of the highest order,' it returned to the Baxter in 2018 for its final run starring Quanita Adams

Davids' first novel, An Imperfect Blessing, was published in April 2014 by Random House Struik-Umuzi,[6] and in December 2014 was announced as one of three books shortlisted for the Etisalat Prize for Literature.[7][8] The novel was longlisted for the Sunday Times Award[9] and shortlisted for the UJ Prize.[10]

Her most recent play What Remains, about slavery, the Cape, the haunted city, and the now, was staged was staged at on the Main Festival at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival in 2017. Directed by Jay Pather, it featuring Denise Newman, Faniswa Yisa, Shaun Oelf and Buhle Ngaba.[11] 'What Remains' sold out at Grahamstown, went on to run a sold-out at Hiddingh Hall in Cape Town and played at the 2017 Afrovibes Festival in Holland. 'What Remains' was hailed as a 'beautiful masterpiece' in Cape Times; it was later was nominated for seven Fleur de Cap Theatre awards and won five, including Best New South African Play, Best Director, Best Ensemble, Best Actress and Best Lighting Design. An extract of 'What Remains' appears in Margaret Busby's 2019 edition of 'Daughters of Africa'.

In May 2016 Davids hosted a BBC podcast on Shakespeare in South Africa.[12]

Awards

The Rosalie van der Gught Award for Best New Director in 2003.

Finalist in the South Africa Pen Award adjudicated by Nobel Prize laureate J. M. Coetzee for her short story "Safe Home", and in 2009 she was placed third for "The Visit" in 2006

Nominated for the Noma Award for her play At Her Feet in 2007.[13]

Nominated for three Fleur du Cap Awards, including "Best New South African Play" for "Cissie" in 2008.

Awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize for her research on Prestwich Place, a slave-burial ground Cape Town.[3]

Nominated for seven Fleur du Cap Awards for "What Remains" in 2017. The play went on to win in five categories; Best New South African Play (Nadia Davids), Best Director (Jay Pather), Best Ensemble, Best Actress (Faniswa Yisa) and Best Lighting Design (Wilhelm Disbergan).

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References
  1. Playwrights, Women's Project Theater.
  2. "Zoe Wicomb and the Translocal: Scotland and South Africa" (13 September 2012), University of York.
  3. "Leverhulme Success for our Academics" Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine, Queen Mary University of London, 1 November 2013.
  4. "Dr Nadia Davids, PhD (Cape Town), Lecturer in Drama" Archived 2017-07-30 at the Wayback Machine, Queen Mary University of London.
  5. LindsayC. "Nadia Davids and Members of the Board Thank Margie Orford | PEN South Africa". pensouthafrica.co.za. Retrieved 3 January 2018.
  6. "Umuzi Acquires Acclaimed Playwright Nadia Davids’ Debut Novel, An Imperfect Blessing", Books Live, 2 October 2013.
  7. "2014 Shortlist Announced", Etisalat Prize for Literature.
  8. "The Etisalat Prize is a real force for good – Nadia Davids", Sabi News, 4 September 2015.
  9. "The 2015 Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize Longlist", Books Live, 6 April 2015.
  10. "The Shortlists for the 2014/2015 University of Johannesburg Prizes for South African Writing (English)", Books Live, 18 May 2015.
  11. "Remembering a past from 'What Remains' | Cape Times". www.iol.co.za.
  12. "South Africa, Shakespeare In... - BBC Radio 4". BBC. Retrieved 3 January 2018.
  13. "'At Her Feet' by Nadia Davids, Southbank Centre London, 3–5 October 2012", Framing Muslims, 11 October 2012.
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