LESLEY MARX revisits The Space theatre and some of its stalwarts and memories in time for the 25th anniversary celebrations
ARTHUR BENJAMIN has a huge warm wicked generous laugh. It erupts as he tries to explain why Brian Astbury was, for him, an inspirational figure at The Space Theatre: “He got you to do things for nothing; he got you to go and beg for the theatre; he got you to share his vision; you could do theatre out of nothing.”
The words take on a special poignancy as I listen to him in the sparsely furnished dining room of the St Francis Home in Athlone, Cape Town. Still filled with the vision imparted by his years at The Space, Benjamin is now vice principal of the home, trying to give hope to 65 abused and abandoned children.
In a way, his life has the symmetry of a well-made play. His first theatre performance at The Space was as narrator for a children’s piece, The Incredible Jungle Journey of Fenda Maria. While performing in this play, he stage managed both it and the Barney Simon production of Medea.
The doubling-up of roles was typical of The Space. Brian Astbury’s memoir reiterates how, from its beginnings in March 1972, stars, cleaners and management would join in to paint and patch, sell tickets, raise funds, run the box office. Benjamin remembers being given lessons by Yvonne Bryceland, Michelle Maxwell, Jacqui Singer.
Inspired by the Open Space in Tottenham Court Road, London, with its spare simplicity, Astbury came back to Cape Town and found enough support – moral, financial and artistic – to open in Bloem Street with Athol Fugard’s Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, specially written for the occasion.
There are incredible stories of finding replacement actors and directors at the 11th hour. At least twice, the long- suffering Pieter-Dirk Uys came to the rescue. He was given five days to prepare for Skyvers/Jollers, after Robin Malan had to leave, and two weeks to complete the direction of We Bombed in New Haven, after Mavis Taylor fell ill. But then, The Space also offered Uys the opportunity to stage his own remarkable early work.
With Faces in the Wall, he was compared to John Osborne. Selle ou Storie brought him together with Christine Basson.
Other young talents were also given their chance at The Space: Bill Curry, for example, was able to come in from apartheid’s cold world and turn professional. Benjamin speaks of the tensions that the broader social and political context of the theatre could and did generate: “In no way could you keep out reality. You brought your country in with you.”
And then there was the fine talent of two women playwrights: Geraldine Aron and Fatima Dike. Aron’s Bar and Ger lay unread for months, because Astbury thought it looked as thick as War and Peace. In fact she had typed a verse per page and, after he’d read it, there was no doubt that a subtle and delicate new voice was going to be heard. Dike, affectionately known as Fatts, won Best New Play award for The Sacrifice of Kreli after it travelled up to Barney Simon and the Market.
Of course, Fugard and Bryceland are inextricably linked with the history of The Space. From its founding moment, Fugard’s savage funny painful redemptive confrontations with his country stamped the new theatre and the decade with the mark of courage and the refusal of silence.
The play’s stars, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, resigned from their regular jobs and used The Space from then on as a base from which to launch professional careers. Arthur Benjamin’s own story testifies to the power of The Space to change lives. A soil tester with a civil engineering company, he was given a scholarship to study civil engineering at UCT. He chose, instead, to resign and work full-time for the Space. The happy ending is that he later won a British Council scholarship and completed his theatre studies in Cardiff.
In the mid-Seventies financial stress forced Astbury and company to move to the YMCA building in Long Street. They closed the old theatre with William Tanner’s Tsafendas and got the audience to take their chairs around the corner to the new theatre. The story has become part of Space lore.
The opening of the new venue was celebrated with Dimitri Nicolas-Fanourakis’s production of Beckett’s Endgame. One of the notable features of Space history is the imaginative mix of the famous, the notorious, the established, the new, the safe and the avant-garde. So plays by Wesker, O’Neill, Labiche, Chekhov, Orton, Williams, Genet, Woody Allen, Griffiths, Shepard, Fassbinder and Rabe all appeared at one time or another.
And Uys made a hoe-down success (with four weeks to rehearse) of John Ford’s Jacobean revenge tragedy ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore. Then there were the Spanish dance programmes with Hazel Acosta and Pablo Navarro, and the tragic talent of Gary Burne.
Arthur Benjamin feels that this mix was one of the major reasons for The Space surviving as long as it did. Even the advent of television in 1976 and the craze for Rich Man, Poor Man every Tuesday night was no match for imaginative planning. Libby Morris simply staged her memoir of Piaf, Je Vous Aime, at 6 ‘o clock and packed the house.
If all there was to The Space was fond memories, a 25-year celebration would be simply a charming exercise in nostalgia. Benjamin tells of the pleasure of getting together to talk about the commemorative programme with Fatima Dike, Dorrian McLaren and Rob Amato.
But the real testimony to The Space lies in Benjamin’s own life and that of others like him. Accepting Astbury’s offer of R40 a week to be a general factotum, he ended his career at the Space as one of its finest stage managers. The final paragraph of acknowledgments that closes Astbury’s memoir is devoted to Arthur: “He became part of the show …”.
For Arthur the show continued into his Cardiff studies and his return to South Africa where he became a children’s drama teacher. He took his vision to retarded and deprived children. When he was appointed drama teacher to high-IQ children at the prestigious Groote Schuur Hoerskool, he saw process rather than product as the key.
For him, the wonder of it all lay in the process of teaching children to see different points of view. His own capacity for keeping many perspectives in view is the double life he led for many years: working full time at St Francis Home, but taking one afternoon a week off to teach the Groote Schuur children.
A host of special events and productions have been arranged to commemorate the anniversary of The Space. See back page for details