The present

With the country's new freedom came a crisis of identity. No longer could the world be divided into the good (opponents of apartheid) and the bad (proponents of apartheid), clear lines began to blur and with the blurring came uncertainty. South Africa's vibrant cultural life began to become less vibrant.

Uncertain what to write, many of the country's leading playwrights grew silent and new work was thin on the ground.

The rising crime rate in Johannesburg deterred theatregoers from attending inner-city theatres like the Market and the commercial managements moved to less threatening suburbia, sheltering in the unlikely environs of a gold-mine museum, a casino, and a shopping centre.

Many young actors and writers turned to television soap operas for their livelihood, and the future of South African theatre looked, in the words of one actor/director, "dire".

But, with the new century under way, the pendulum is swinging back, and, in nurseries like the Market Theatre Laboratory, the Liberty Theatre on the Square's Saturday Children's Theatre Workshops, the Cape Town Theatre Lab, the Johannesburg Youth Theatre, new shoots of talent are burgeoning and blooming, nurtured by events like the Market's Community and Young Writers' Festivals.

Many aspirant playwrights and actors are turning back to theatre rather than to television and advertising, and themes are being explored that would have been unthinkable in the days when theatre was seen by many only as a medium for agitprop.

The ubiquitous workshop mode that characterised much of the work of the late twentieth century has given way to written scripts, and new names are being added to the role call of South African playwrights - Lesego Rampolokeng, Xoli Norman, Mondi Mayepu, Heinrich Reisenhofer and Oscar Petersen, Fiona Coyne, Mark Lottering, Nazli George, Craig Freimond, and Rajesh Gopie - creative, innovative and serious about theatre.

The plays are still frequently raw and angry and ragged, but now they encompass themes that would, in earlier years, have been considered irrelevant. Love, religion, family violence, homosexuality, drugs, are explored in works that engage and involve their audiences.

Importantly too, works that in the 1970s were new, shiny and innovative have, thirty years on, become classics. A revival of Woza Albert! in 2001 evoked the same hilarity and recognition as the original, and this among people who would have no personal memory of its frame of reference.

As importantly, young people are beginning to come to the theatre as audiences. New venues, like Cape Town's The Warehouse, encourage young audiences, with a range of fresh theatre that includes both original South African and innovative imported work. Also in Cape Town, the High Street Theatre presents a rich programme of mainly Afrikaans South African work, mixed with South African, mainly Afrikaans, cabaret entertainments, and Collaborations, co-produced by Artscape with the Cape Town Theatre Lab, gives new South African work a one-week season in the Arena theatre in the Artscape complex.

Artscape also stages community-type festivals. Audiences, though, sadly still tend to reflect the demographics of the company on the stage.

Even in the once conservative Free State, the Performing Arts Council has transformed its activities to involve and develop exciting regional talent in all fields of performance.

And then, observes the Chairman of the Theatre Managements of South Africa, theatre veteran Des Lindberg, "perhaps the most exciting cultural explosion of all is from the communities themselves". In the remote Northwest Province, for instance, a theatrical tradition has "flourished and grown and drawn audiences in a way which is the envy of other provinces".

With the gradual introduction of theatre studies into the school syllabus, there is hope that the next generation will be enticed away from television and computer screens and back into theatre seats.