Shah Theatre Academy

Founded Durban Ronnie Govender and Muthal Naidoo founded the Shah Theatre Academy in 1964, under the aegis of and in response to visits and workshops led by New York based Indian director Krishna Shah in 1963. Housed in the ***, it was meant to foster non-racial theatre. While the approach relied heavily on the realist tradition of the 1960s New York theatre, much of what was later to be called Indic theatre developed in this academy.

The Shah Theatre Academy was formed by a group of Durban theatre enthusiasts in 1962, headed by Ronnie Govender and named after Krishna Shah, the Broadway director who conducted a clinic on aspects of the theatre having been brought from New York to direct Tagore's King of the Dark Chamber and Alan Paton's Sponono. Without grants or subsidies the Academy went on to train several leading actors, directors and playwrights, including Stanley Mnuyandu, Benjy Francis, Guru Pillay, Kessie Govender, Welcome Msomi, Essop Khan, Saths Cooper and Babs Pillay.

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