The Market Theatre turns 21 this year. We present 21 key moments in its proud history
1 On October 19 1976, the Market Theatre opens with Barney Simon’s production of Marat/Sade. (The former city market had been saved from demolition by its unique architectural features. Theatre people like Vanessa Cooke cheerfully dirtied their hands helping scrape windows and so forth to fix up the building, in and out.)
2 In 1977, the Market Theatre Foundation’s bookkeeper steals about R36 000 from the foundation and the Market Theatre Company, fakes figures, presents a fraudulent financial statement and nearly succeeds in closing down the theatre.
3 In the same year, Dollar Brand performs at the Market; John Kani and Winston Ntshona appear in The Island, their seminal play workshopped with author Athol Fugard. Brand – having become Abdullah Ibrahim – will next perform there more than a decade later.
4 In 1978, Pieter-Dirk Uys’s Die Van Aardes van Grootoor, starring Nomsa Nene, Lida Botha and Antoinette Kellerman, is the first show staged in The Laager. It is banned for obscenity, blasphemy and causing racial disharmony. It is unbanned on appeal, with a few cuts and an age- restriction. It is now even funnier, say critics.
5 Trains (which have since stopped) running beside the theatre bring productions in the Laager to a halt every night. As they thunder past, actors freeze on the stage until they have passed, then continue.
6 A protest play called Dry Dreams, starring Marcel van Heerden and Vanessa Cooke, plays one performance only, behind closed doors. The protest in question is directed against Market management policies.
7 In 1980, the taps at the bar are opened for the first time and The Photo Gallery is launched.
8 Woza Albert! – a seminal work in South African theatre, workshopped by Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema and Barney Simon, which inspired a decade’s worth of protest- oriented “poor theatre” – wins a 1993 Obie Award and a British Theatre Award. Having originally opened at the Market in 1980, it later toured the world to great acclaim and was revived at the Market in 1987 with Sello Maake and Louis Seboko.
9 In 1984, the Flea Market opens on the historic site of the Mary Fitzgerald Square and becomes a focus of hip Saturday activity in the city.
10 In 1985, the mayor of Johannesburg arrives in a horsedrawn carriage for festivities to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Market buildings. Meanwhile, the Market Theatre’s lease on the building expires and there are fears it will not be renewed, since manager Mannie Manim has joined calls for a boycott of the Johannesburg centenary celebrations.
11 In 1986, Sophiatown, starring Ramalao Makhene, Arthur Molepo and Minky Schlesinger, and workshopped under the direction of Malcolm Purkey, opens. It will go on to tour the world and be revived twice at the Market itself.
12 In 1987, Cape sax-player Robbie Jansen performs at the opening of Kippies – converted from a Victorian toilet. It will become Johannesburg’s favourite (sometimes only) jazz venue. In the same year, the section of Wolhuter Street that fronts the Market is closed and turned into the Anglovaal Mall with a walkway, shops and a restaurant.
13 Sean Taylor, MC of a rock concert on behalf of the End Conscription Campaign, gets annoyed and exposes himself to the audience. In what may have been a coincidence, a teargas cannister is later let off at the concert; the security police are blamed.
14 In 1988, photographer Kim Gray is compelled to withdraw her photo essay Suzi and the Steam Queens from the Photo Gallery at the Market under pressure from her subjects – mostly prostitutes who frequent the Quirinale Hotel in Hillbrow.
15 Market Theatre Laboratory, dedicated to developing new work and new actors, is founded in 1989.
16 In 1990, the Volvry tour of “alternative Afrikaners” such as the Gereformeerde Blues Band and Bernoldus Niemand rocks the Warehouse.
17 Picketers surround the theatre as the film The Last Temptation of Christ is about to show at the Weekly Mail Film Festival. The posters of the reborn-Christian crowd of protesters include the immortal “Jesus was a lesbian”, which some of them seem to think the film is about. Director Paul Schrader walks past the picketers unrecognised.
18 In 1993, Woyzeck on the Highveld opens, marking a highly successful collaboration between artist/director William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company. They will go on, in later years, to create the acclaimed Faustus in Africa and Ubu and the Truth Commission.
19 Nelson Mandela attends the gala premire of the 1995 return season of The Island. The theatre receives the Jujamycin Award. In the same year, the first-ever government funding of the Market is announced at the opening night of Antony Sher’s controversial production of Titus Andronicus. The play will be trashed by South African critics and ignored by audiences, much to Sher’s pique, though it will later be highly acclaimed in Britain.
20 Barney Simon, playwright and a guiding light of innovative South African theatre, dies in 1995. The next year he is followed by Mannie the beloved theatre cat.
21 The Market Theatre celebrates its 21st birthday as a world-renowned performance venue. The Yard of Ale drinking hole is to reopen, now to be known as Kofifi. Some (not all) of this information gleaned from Pat Schwartz’s book The Best of Company