Outers

Outers is a workshopped play by Barney Simon (1932-1995), Nicky Rebelo (1958-) and Cast.

The original text

The idea for the documentary style play came from a writing project undertaken by Nicky Rebelo while a student at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1981, for which he made tape recordings of conversations with the down-and-outs of Joubert Park in Johannesburg and edited them into a text.

Rebelo's text formed the basis of the Outers project undertaken by Barney Simon at the Market Theatre in 1985. Simon gathered a select cast of seven talented performers to participate in the workshop process, during which they were sent into parks, streets and work-places of Johannesburg, "in character", to hunt for jobs, food, cigarettes, handouts and thus gaining a wealth of new and topical material as well as invaluable empathy for the people they moved among.

This initial research period was followed by a workshop process of five weeks under the direction of Barney Simon, in order to process the material and shape a performance text.

According to the programme notes for the original production, "Outers embodies Simon's credo as Artistic Director of the Market Theatre: 'to reflect our lives... to attempt a theatre that is alive to all dramatic possibilities that surround us - not only the obvious news stories, but the faces, the biographies, the vernaculars... that reach even to our doorsteps... to attempt a theatre that entertains and informs".

The original script is held by NELM in the Barney Simon collection (1995. 11. 5. 7. 1.) and was published in Born in the RSA: Four Workshopped Plays by Wits University Press in 1997.