Fifty artists belonging to United Theatre Practitioners, a blanket body representing 12 Gauteng community theatre groups, invaded the boardroom of the National Arts Council (NAC) in Newtown, Johannesburg, this week.
A late announcement by the NAC had revealed that only two of 12 plays produced by United Theatre Practitioners for the coming Grahamstown National Arts Festival were eligible for funding. This meant that works in rehearsal and on the festival programme would have to be cancelled.
At 6pm on Wednesday the police arrived and broke up the sit in. Doreen Nteta, the NAC’s chief executive, was recalled from Durban the next day to deal with the artists’ grievances. She said her council would fund only the two selected productions even though artists complained that the late announce-ment of the NAC board had meant that the delay in funding led to artists putting their plans on hold.
In a phone-in on Safm, Arts and Culture Minister Ben Ngubane undertook to fund groups that had been denied grants, but Nteta, who was a guest on the show, refused to bow to the minister’s recommendation.