Janet Smith
The hairiest fun lots of Johannesburg theatregoers had a couple of years ago was Doo Bee Boobies, the soft-core drag show with beautiful ankles that forced them to stand up and warble or be singled out for a one-liner slap in the face.
Janice Honeyman says she still adores the show, would dig to bring it back onto the Johannesburg circuit. She is as much a booty-wiggling fan of the Civic Theatre where it was staged, because shows like Doo Bee Boobies can be billed there as attractions alongside grassroots productions and big-deal musicals.
“Arts are as crucial to the spirit, fibre and general well-being of society as clothing, housing and electricity,” she says.
Her approach to her newest Christmas pantomime Robin’s a Cruise-Ou required “sifting through all the best bits of panto and looking at our society now to come up with something closer to home but also fun”.
That’s why next year’s line-up at the Civic is as eclectic as it is, and it’s also why Honeyman has been slavishly devoted to posting strategies to fill up the seats over the next 12 months.
The artistic director has an immense blackboard in her office on which every day of every week of next year is marked with events. Some she has erased for our benefit so the surprise isn’t lost. Others, like an appearance by Israeli mind-warpist Uri Geller, are presented with mild relish.
There’s opera and ballet and drama and comedy and children’s theatre and music and the return of a huge hit for a limited season only. Honeyman announces that the seriously long run has been ditched in favour of shorter seasons: she wants to capture the imagination of ticket-buyers with an assortment of delights.
“We’re really thinking about subscriptions now, based on a solid, but diverse programme of shows for the new year,” she says. “We’re busy working out a package and developing more of a multidirectional approach to getting the people back into the theatre more often.”
There have been “ropy patches”, including the council’s decision to slash its subsidy to the Civic Theatre and the scandal surrounding La Cage aux Folles.
Honeyman is concerned about the council’s failure to respond to the critical role the arts play in community life, and stresses that the Civic, with its selection of performing arts on stage, is a vital component of Johannesburg’s drive towards educating the public.
Still, the optimum use of theatres in the complex shines luminous on the blackboard.
“The prerequisite is quality work, and even then it’s incredibly difficult to make each theatre financially viable, but we’re going to keep up the rate of textured work with messages for our society.
“We’re not going to lower the standard of the content of the plays we take to the audience because then we’ll be left with one meaningless compilation musical after the other. In 1998, the Civic is going to reveal the substance of theatre, and test new ways of enticing the public.”