African Music and Drama Association

The African Music and Drama Association (AMDA) was a non-racial association founded in 1959 in Johannesburg to promote the performing arts among all citizens.

Their offices were at Dorkay House, where Ian Bernhardt and Union Artists ran an arts centre.

The main activity of AMDA was the running of a drama school under the direction of a Johannesburg drama teacher, Norah Taylor, who had been Ezekiel Mphahlele's mentor. Student plays at the school, sometimes performed in public, included original texts developed by the students themselves under the direction of their teachers on traditional and ‘township’ themes. The AMDA school projects, initiated by Bob Leshoai, often included this material in their repertoires. AMDA's activities were less highbrow than those of Athol Fugard's Rehearsal Room group and contained many popular elements.

Sources

Robert Mshengu Kavanagh. "The Development of Theatre in South Africa up to 1976 - Anti-Apartheid Literature." Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg Lawrence J. Trudeau, Vol. 162. Gale Cengage, 2005.

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