Charl Blignaut
The longest-running theatre project in South Africa, the Market Theatre Laboratory’s Theatresports, staged weekly in Johannesburg, is being videotaped live and will be broadcast as a 13-part series on SABC3 from mid-1997.
Following a growing world trend since the late 1970s, the Market introduced the comedy concept in 1991 and it has continued to gain popularity, spreading to Grahamstown, Cape Town and Durban – and now across the nation via the public broadcaster.
Two teams of actors and the audience participate in Theatresports. Fed cues from the audience, the teams compete against one another to act out impromptu instructions and the most humorous and original team wins the round. The most original suggestions from the audience also win prizes.
In a first for the SABC, shooting for the series began on Thursday this week under the direction of local comedy director Bobby Heaney and the co-ordination of actress Vanessa Cooke. One of the keys to the success of the Market’s Theatresports is the standard of professional actors employed in the production.
Equivalent theatresport television projects abroad are the British Channel Four’s Whose Line is it Anyway and ABC in America’s Theatresports.