South African theatre
The theatre scene is buzzing in South Africa, with more than 100 active spaces all over the country offering everything from indigenous drama, music, dance, cabaret and satire to West End and Broadway hits, classical opera, and ballet.Venues range from the staid and monolithic homes of the former state supported performing arts councils to purpose-built theatres, a converted fruit market, country barns, casinos, and urban holes in the wall; from a gracious Cape wine estate to a rural railway station.
Add to that a multitude of festivals of various degrees of gravitas and any time of the year in South Africa offers an almost unlimited range of theatrical experiences. The annual National Festival of the Arts in Grahamstown which, in its 27 years has showcased the cream of the country's emerging talent and creativity in both the performing and graphic arts, has spawned a variety of more or less eccentric smaller festivals all over the country, each with its very particular personality. But this artistic explosion is a relatively new phenomenon.
The past
Apart from a couple of early productions, notably the ground-breaking musical King Kong in the late 1950s, theatre created in South Africa by South Africans really only began to make an impact on the stages either of their own country or of the rest of the world with the advent of Johannesburg's innovative Market Theatre in the mid-1970s, just as the cultural, sporting and academic boycott was taking hold, cutting the country off from world developments and trends.
Ironically, the outpouring of local talent was a direct result of the cultural boycott. In the absence of work and influences from abroad, South African theatre makers were forced to draw on their own resources, and they did so with huge creativity and singular success.
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