The Garden at the Threshold
The Garden at the Threshold is a one-act play by Percy Baneshik (1915-1999).
Contents
The original text
A one-act play written in 1951 that won the Van Riebeek Tercentenary Award.
The play, subtitled "An Historical Fiction in One Act", is based upon an incident when Van Riebeeck took in an English sea-captain, so that he could recover from scurvy. It uses the incident to explore English/Afrikaner(Dutch) relationships and exposes the misconceptions and prejudices that influence communication between two people.
Published in Eleven One-Act Plays, edited by A.D. Dodd and F.O. Quinn (Cape Town: Juta and Company, 1965). Later also published in Four South African One-act Plays (ed D.R. Beeton, pub. Nasou, 1973) and South African Focus 2 (ed S. Gosher and H. Houghton-Hawksley, pub. Hodder and Stoughton, 1987).
Translations and adaptations
Performance history in South Africa
1967: Performed by CAPAB's Theatre-Go-Round in 1967 directed by Roger Dwyer, in a double bill with The Happy Journey (Thornton Wilder).
Sources
Sydney Paul Gosher. 1988. A historical and critical survey of the South African one-act play written in English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Pretoria: University of South Africa.
Press clippings held by NELM: [Collection: DICKERSON, Beth]: 2009. 61. 2. 14.
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