Location | Corner Caledon & Buitenkant Street Zonnebloem, Cape Town 8000 |
---|---|
Coordinates | 33°55′38″S18°25′28″E / 33.9271882°S 18.4245326°E |
Owner | Eric Abraham (2010–2021) |
Type | Theatre |
Capacity | 320 Main Theatre & 120 The Sigrid Rausing Studio |
Opened | 2010 |
Closed | 2021 |
Website | |
www |
The Fugard Theatre, also known as The Fugard, was opened in the District Six area of Cape Town, South Africa, in February 2010. It closed in March 2021 and was handed over to the District Six Museum by its founder Eric Abraham. The theatre reopened in 2022 as the District Six Homecoming Centre, while the Fugard's archive moved online. [1]
Following the Laurence Olivier Award-winning revival of The Magic Flute , starring South African performers of Mark Dornford-May's Isango Portobello, Eric Abraham wanted to create a space in Cape Town to house South African talent. [2] Abraham underwrote the construction of the theatre, naming it after playwright Athol Fugard. Developed with Dornford-May and Mannie Manim, Rennie Scurr Adendorff began renovating the National Heritage listed neo-Gothic Congregational Church Hall and two former warehouses, including the Sacks Futeran building, in September 2009. [3] [4]
Politicians such as Kgalema Motlanthe and Trevor Manuel as well as actors such as Alan Rickman and Janet Suzman attended the grand opening in February 2010. [5] Fugard himself premiered his play The Train Driver at the theatre in March 2010. [6] The Fugard became a venue that hosted plays, musicals, operas, and cinema and book events such as film premieres and the Open Book Festival.
Abraham, with Daniel Galloway as the managing director and producer (December 2010 to January 2020), ran the Fugard as a philanthropic endeavour. After announcing a temporary closure, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, in March 2020, the theatre offered online streaming performances overseen by then newly appointed general manager Lamees Albertus and Artistic Director Greg Karvellas. [7] However, the financial losses became too great, and there was little confidence that it would be safe enough to reopen soon. Abraham announced in March 2021 that the theatre would be closing and the building would be handed back to the District Six Museum Board, whom Abraham hoped would find use out of the space. [8]
Since its physical closure, the Fugard Theatre website has been changed into an online archive, which lays out the full history of the Fugard Theatre including a full listing of all past productions as well as a video series detailing the journey of the theatre. The archive intends to secure the memory of the space and offer the public a free-to-access, accurate historical archive of the theatre.
"Another icon has fallen", John Kani wrote of the closure, and Lebo Mashile called it a "painful death". Many in the artistic community, the press, and the EFF called on Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa to do more to support the sector. [8] Board chair Siraj Desai stated that a search for new tenants was under way. [9]
Athol Fugard OIS HonFRSL is a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director widely regarded as South Africa's greatest playwright. He is best known for his political and penetrating plays opposing the system of apartheid. Some of these have also been adapted for film.
Winston Ntshona was a South African playwright and actor. He won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1975.
Sir Antony Sher was a British actor, writer and theatre director of South African origin. A two-time Laurence Olivier Award winner and a four-time nominee, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982 and toured in many roles, as well as appearing on film and television. In 2001, he starred in his cousin Ronald Harwood's play Mahler's Conversion, and said that the story of a composer sacrificing his faith for his career echoed his own identity struggles.
Bonisile John Kani,, is a South African actor, author, director and playwright. He is known for portraying T'Chaka in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Captain America: Civil War (2016) and Black Panther (2018), Rafiki in The Lion King (2019) and Colonel Ulenga in the Netflix films Murder Mystery (2019) and Murder Mystery 2 (2023).
District Six is a former inner-city residential area in Cape Town, South Africa. In 1966, the apartheid government announced that the area would be razed and rebuilt as a "whites only" neighbourhood under the Group Areas Act. Over the course of a decade, over 60,000 of its inhabitants were forcibly removed and in 1970 the area was renamed Zonnebloem, a name that makes reference to an 18th century colonial farm. At the time of the proclamation, 56% of the district’s property was White-owned, 26% Coloured-owned and 18% Indian-owned. Most of the residents were Cape Coloureds and they were resettled in the Cape Flats. The vision of a new white neighbourhood was not realised and the land has mostly remained barren and unoccupied. The original area of District Six is now partly divided between the suburbs of Walmer Estate, Zonnebloem, and Lower Vrede, while the rest is generally undeveloped land.
Yvonne Bryceland was a South African stage actress. Some of her best-known work was in the plays of Athol Fugard.
Boesman and Lena is a small-cast play by South African playwright Athol Fugard, set in the Swartkops mudflats outside of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape. It features a "Coloured" man and woman walking from one shanty town to another, and explores the effect of apartheid on a few individuals.
Mark Anthony Dornford-May is a British theatre and film director, now based in South Africa.
Barney Simon was a South African writer, playwright and director. He was born and died in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The Space Theatre was a fringe theatre in Cape Town, South Africa which was active in the 1970s. It re-opened in late 2008.
The Train Driver is a play by South African playwright Athol Fugard.
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The following is a timeline of the history of Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa.
Sue Williamson is an artist and writer based in Cape Town, South Africa.
Trafalgar High School is a public English medium co-educational secondary school in District Six of Cape Town in South Africa. It was the first school built in Cape Town for coloured and black students. The school took a leading role in protesting against apartheid policies. It celebrated its centenary in 2012 and is still running and was recently declared a heritage site.
Vinette Ebrahim is a South African actress and playwright known for her role as Charmaine Meintjies in the SABC 2 soap opera 7de Laan. She is the sister of actor Vincent Ebrahim.
Shaleen Surtie-Richards was a South African television, stage, and film actress, perhaps best known for her starring roles in the 1988 film Fiela se Kind and the long-running series Egoli: Place of Gold. She performed in both Afrikaans and English.
Brian Astbury was a South African photographer, theatre director, acting and writing teacher, and founder of The Space Theatre in Cape Town, South Africa.
The Promise is a 2021 novel by South African novelist Damon Galgut, published in May 2021, by Umuzi, an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa. It was published by Europa Editions in the US and by Chatto & Windus in the UK.
Eric Abraham is a South African-British producer and former journalist and activist. Born and raised in South Africa, he moved in 1977 to England, where he lived in exile for 15 years for his reporting in opposition to the South African apartheid government in the press. He has since worked in theatre and screen, co-founding the London-based Portobello Productions as well as Cape Town's Isango Portobello and Fugard Theatre.