Phyllis Klotz

Phyllis Klotz (19**-). Director, writer, educationist.

Training

Graduated from the University of Cape Town.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

She worked with SAADYT and the Community Arts Project (CAP) in Cape Town. At CAP she developed, facilitated and directed the hugely influential workshop play Wathint’ Abafazi, Wathint’ Imbokodo [“You Strike the Women, You Strike the Rock”] in 1986, with Thobeka Macutyana, Nomvula Qosha and Poppy Tsira (calling themselves Vusisizwe Players.) They performed at the Market Theatre in December 1986, and returned in early 1987 before touring Europe and North America.

Klotz was Artistic Director and co-founder with Smal Ndaba of the Sibikwa Arts Centre in 1988. Phyllis has been involved in Developmental Theatre for many years.

She has toured extensively throughout southern Africa with plays that deal with topics from Shakespeare to the environment playing in schools, factories, day hospitals wherever people assemble. Her immersion in the problems of woman in the lower socio-economic group lead her to write collaboratively and direct You Strike the Woman You Strike the Rock. This seminal piece of South African theatre toured extensively at home and abroad.

She has written several plays with Smal Ndaba (co-founder of Sibikwa) which have garnered several awards for their contribution to South African theatre. These plays published under the title Sibikwa Plays have toured internationally to great acclaim.

Recently, Phyllis adapted Bessie Head's novel Maru for the stage the production played to over twenty thousand people.

Founder member of Sibikwa Community Project, 1989 (Benoni Warehouse) with Smal Ndaba. Smal did Protest Theatre, eg: So Where To? & D.E.T. Boys High, 1980. Uhambo(dir) Klotz & Ndaba, at Calabash Festival, NW, STD Grahamstown Festival, Jhb Civic Theatre. Also Out of Africa festival in Munich.

As playwright

She has written and devised a number of plays. These include:

• You Strike the Woman You Strike the Rock (with Thobeka Macutyana, Nomvula Qosha and Poppy Tsira ) (1986)

• So Where To? with (Smal Ndaba) (1989)

• Ubuntu Bomhlaba – The Humaneness of the World (workshopped with Smal Ndaba and the cast)(1993)

• Kwela Bafana (with Smal Ndaba) (1994)

• Uhambo (with Smal Ndaba) (1997)

• Maru (an adaptation of the novel by Bessie Head) (2006)

• Animal Farm (an adaptation of the George Orwell novel) (2009)

Awards, etc

Finalist Woman of the Year Award 2000, she has been active in formulating a new Arts Policy for South Africa and has worked extensively on Arts Education Policies with the Department of Arts and Culture.

She was named by The Star newspaper as one of the top ten cultural achievers in South Africa.

She won a Naledi Lifetime Achiever Award, February 2005.

Sources

D.E.T. Boys High programme, 1991.

Tucker, 1997.

The Star, 15 February 2005.

Phyllis Klotz and Smal Ndaba (eds.) 2023. Strategies for Survival at SIBIKWA 1988 – 2021. Landmarks of South African Theatre History. Oxford and New York: Routledge.[1]

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