The Market, brainchild of the late playwright Barney Simon, is celebrating its silver anniversary this month with a line-up of some of the protest theatre which made it famous.
Heading the bill is the powerful Woza Albert, co-written and directed by Mbongeni Ngema, Percy Mtwa and Simon, which examines the second coming of Jesus Christ in apartheid South Africa.
Hailed as South Africa’s finest-ever piece of social theatre, the play was a smash success, running 18 months in South Africa and, remarkably, escaping the censor’s knife.
For Simon the play “talks about the horrors of South Africa, but also the strength of the black people there. It talks about the gift of life and the abuse of life.”
Market Theatre chief operations officer Gitanjali Pather said it was fitting that the play, which has had over 1Â 000 performances in 25 seasons in various parts of the world since 1981, should be the highlight of the celebrations.
“Woza Albert is synonymous with the Market Theatre. It is South Africa’s best-known theatre production internationally. And it is still relevant today,” she said.
When the Market was established in 1976, cinema and theatre audiences were segregated in South Africa, with organisers of shows having to apply for special permits if they wanted people of all races to attend.
The Market, however, resolved to defy the government and throw open its doors to all and sundry.
“Barney Simon refused to exclude anyone on racial or religious grounds – and he refused to apply for permits,” Pather said.
Remarkably, the government took no action against the playwright and the Market became the main home of alternative theatre in the country.
With other forms of political and social expression banned by the apartheid authorities, protest theatre in particular provided a means of expression for the black majority.
It also served to educate white audiences to the full horrors of apartheid discrimination.
With the demise of apartheid in 1994, the Market has remained a voice of conscience but has taken on the added role of training actors, technicians and script writers – especially black youths who were denied these opportunities during apartheid.
A total of 18 new South African plays were staged at the Market in the past year alone, most of them, according to Pather, “issue-based theatre”.
“The Market remains the real voice that questions our society,” she said. “We will always be a home for social theatre.”
Also in this month’s lineup is another power African piece of theatre, A Play of Giants, which was written by Nigerian Nobel prize-winner Wole Soyinka, who had to flee into exile when the then ruling military junta in Nigeria passed a death sentence on him when it was first published.
The play, through satire and sometimes ridicule, demonstrates what happens when a democracy goes wrong and dictators take over.
Pather said the Market is funded by the government to the tune of six million rand annually, but that this “merely helps keep the lights burning.”
Another three million a year is provided by the African Bank, which, according to Pather, has helped the Market to plan longer-term programmes and productions.
The theatre’s goals in the coming years, she said, is to train scriptwriters, export South African production and, perhaps, establish a proper theatrical company.
But above all, she added, to remain true to Barney Simon’s dream of providing a forum for alternative South African theatre. – AFP