How is it supposed to end? Analysing tender stories, agency, and endings in plays by women about black girl children in the South African post-apartheid context

This study aimed to redefine the concept of ‘a happy ending’ in a theatrical context that encapsulates cultural and historical trauma. It examined contemporary drama from Southern Africa written by women playwrights with black South African girl children as protagonists, recognizing the importance of the audience’s emotional journey. The pursuit of examining South African plays about the plight of black girl characters was to identify how women playwrights and theatre-makers conclude their stories set in environments woven with the existential challenges faced in the post-apartheid era. This study examined the relationship among a happy ending, tenderness, and agency in the crafting of the plays constituting the sample of this study. It is important to concede that ours is a purposeful inflection of the notion of ‘tenderness’, also rightfully associated with happy endings of happy plays that do not necessarily incorporate trauma or any agony in their fabliaux. The nub of our argument is that, ‘tenderness’ does produce happy endings in interesting ways that we delve into, leading to an even more delightful feeling of cathartic agency among the audiences of the plays under our scrutiny. As we argue alongside our analyses of the plays under our attention, pained endings often leave audiences with unresolved emotions, thereby reinforcing a sense of hopelessness. Our study explored how contemporary women playwrights conclude stories that address the socio-political, socio-economic, and cultural issues affecting black girls and the societies they are a part of. In addition to considering how ‘tenderness’ counteracts what would otherwise be prostrate audience responses most likely to result negatively in passive inaction, we argue that tenderness is not merely an emotional attribute in characters and audiences. The study aimed to demonstrate that tenderness is capable of functioning as a narrative device that can effectively depict adolescent female characters who develop from a state of passive sufferers to active agents of positive individual and community transformation. In our attempts to unpack the character trait of tenderness, we ultimately sought to assert that such dispositional tenderness redefines what is normatively known to constitute what audiences experience as happy endings in theatrical playwriting and scripted performance.