This paper reflects on audience complicity as a choreographic and compositional strategy within embodied activist performances addressing gender-‐based violence in South Africa. Drawing on sustained encounters with three works, namely Mamela Nyamza’s SHIFT(2010), Athena Mazarakis’ Standing By(2012), and Gabrielle Goliath’s ELEGY(2015–ongoing), the paper considers how these performances generate forms of spectatorship that exceed participation or immersion, positioning audiences in ethically and affectively charged relations of complicity. Grounded in a reflective, practice-‐informed methodology, the paper draws on lived experience as a witnessing spectator to argue that the enduring impact of these works lies in their capacity to linger beyond the live encounter. This lingering is understood not only as an aesthetic effect but as an activist outcome, linked to how each work choreographs conditions in which audiences recognise their implication within the socio-‐political structures being critiqued.
Rather than framing complicity as passive guilt, the paper theorises it as a productive site of activation that destabilises the distance between observer and event. It proposes “choreographing complicity” as a framework for understanding how embodied activism operates through the structuring of relational experience, enabling sustained ethical reflection beyond the moment of performance. By engaging works that continue to resonate years after their presentation, the paper contributes to discussions on temporality, memory, and afterlives in performance. It ultimately positions audience complicity as a vital and under-‐theorised strategy in performance-‐based responses to gender-‐based violence.
Dr Alan Parker is a performance-maker, dramaturg, embodied researcher and senior lecturer in the School of the Arts – Drama, at the University of Pretoria. He holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance from the University of Cape Town, with a focus on Live Art, Interdisciplinary and Public Art. Since 2019, he has also served as resident dramaturg for the Live Art Arcade, a non-profit organisation supporting early and mid-career artists in live and performance art through mentorship and collaboration. As a performance-maker, he has consistently presented work both nationally and internationally, for over two decades, at platforms such as the National Arts Festival, the Live Art Festival, and the Maitisong Theatre Festival, among others. Recent performance works include Fallen (and I can’t get up) (2024), Sometimes I have to lean in (2018), with Gerard Bester, and Heavy Metal (2026) with Gavin Krastin.