Gangsters

Gangsters is a play by Maishe Maponya.

Not to be confused with Die Gangsters ("The gangsters") by Ben Dehaeck (1983).

The original text

A play about a tortured poet “Rashechaba” (= “father of the nation”) in a South African prison. Apparently inspired by Beckett’s Catastrophe, which Maponya had directed in 1984. The play was developed by the auuther and cast in workshop and was first performed in The Laager at the Market Theatre in 1984. The text was first published in D. Ndlovu (ed) Woza Afrika! An Anthology of South African Plays by George Braziller, New York, in 1986. Later also in Doing Plays for a Change (Ed. Ian Steadman), by Witwatersrand University Press, 1995.

Performance of the play was originally limited to “experimental” (i.e. “approved”) venues, and forbidden elsewhere by the Publications Control Board. (See Section 7 of the entry on Censorship.)

Translations and adaptations

In an American production at the Lincoln Centre, New York in 1985, the clothed male figure (“Rasechaba”) was replaced by a naked female (“Masechaba” = “mother of the nation”).

Performance history in South Africa

1984: First performed by the Bahumutsi Theatre Group in The Laager at the Market Theatre in July, in a double-bill - Dirty Work/Gangsters - with another Maponya play, Dirty Work. Directed by Maponya with Charles Comyn, George Lamola and Simon Mosikili. Lighting design by Andy Mazibela.

1985: The Dirty Work/Gangsters double-bill performed once more by the Bahumutsi Theatre Group in The Laager at the Market Theatre in February. Again directed by Maponya, but with a new cat consisting of with Jon Maytham, Sol Rachilo and Maishe Maponya.

Sources

Ruphin Coudyzer. 2023. Annotated list of his photographs of Market Theatre productions. (Provided by Coudyzer)

Schwartz, Pat 1988. The Best of Company: The Story of Johannesburg's Market Theatre. Johannesburg: Ad Donker.

Duma Ndlovu (ed) 1986. Woza Afrika! An Anthology of South African Plays (George Braziller, New York).

Ian Steadman (Ed.) 1995. Doing Plays for a Change (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press).

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