Origins

Strictly speaking, the origins of South African theatre can be found in the rich and ancient oral tradition of indigenous South Africans - the folk tales around the fires, with their own drama, and an audience ranging from the very young to the very old.

Performances on stages came very much later. The formal South African theatre tradition dates only as far back as the 1830s, when Andrew Geddes Bains's Kaatje Kekkelbek or Life among the Hottentots was performed in 1838 by the Graham's Town Amateur Company.

The strong influence of Calvinism brought to the country by Huguenot settlers with their puritanical worldview meant that theatre was considered by many whites to be inherently wicked. However, in the early twentieth century it was missionaries who made an important contribution to a tradition of theatre when they used drama in education.

Their themes were not only staged versions of biblical teachings but also didactic plays located in South Africa. At Marianhill in the 1920s Father Bernard Hess also encouraged the production of comedies and the dramatisation of Zulu narratives.

Theatre began to flourish in black townships where performance arts became increasingly popular in the 1920s and 1930s as a form of working class entertainment.

In 1929 the Methethwe Lucky Stars was formed, basing its productions on themes of rural life and customs. In 1932, came the Bantu Dramatic Society, which aimed to encourage 'Bantu Playwrights' and to develop African dramatic and operatic art.

The 1930s and 1940s saw the blooming of the work of Herbert Dhlomo - teacher, journalist, and musician - the first South African playwright to make a significant attempt through drama to challenge colonial domination. His work The Girl Who Killed to Save was the first play by a black writer in English to be published.

Indigenous theatre continued to develop in the 1940s and 1950s with the formation of organisations like the Orlando Boy's Club Dramatic Society.

In the townships, particularly in Johannesburg's vital, violent, vibrant Sophiatown, with its mix of colours and cultures, of musicians and writers and gangsters, in the 1940s an eclectic performance culture was developing which drew upon American, English and African cultural traditions and involved comic sketches and acting as well as jazz, singing and dancing.

Decades later, Sophiatown's life, and its destruction in pursuit of the cause of segregation would be commemorated in an eponymous musical production created by the Junction Avenue Theatre Company, which won acclaim and awards locally and internationally.

Another forced removal that would give birth to a bitter-sweet musical production was that of Cape Town's 'coloured' suburb of District Six. Taliep Peterson, a former resident of District Six, together with Afrikaans cult singer David Kramer devised District Six - The Musical which opened in 1986 at Cape Town's Baxter Theatre.

In the late 1990s its successor, Peterson and Kramer's Kat and the Kings, also set in District Six, would go onto a successful season in London's West End and win the Laurence Olivier award for best new musical of 1999 while its cast collectively won the award for best performance.