The Company

There have been a few theatre companies using The Company as a formal name over the years, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, as part of the alternative theatre movement of that period in South Africa.

The name was sometimes attached to that of a particular venue (e.g. The Space Theatre, The Market Theatre, the Baxter Theatre, and so on) or it carried an adjectival description (such is the PACT Afrikaans Company, The Arena Company, or the Company of Four for instance).

Among those using the title The Company as the full name, have been:

The Company, Johannesburg

An independent theatre company originally founded in Johannesburg during December 1973 by writer/director Barney Simon and lighting designer and theatre manager Mannie Manim to do avant garde[1] work.

Barney Simon was the artistic director and Mannie Manim was the administrative director. They worked with a core company of actors – Aletta Bezuidenhout, Vanessa Cooke, Leonie Hofmeyr, David Eppel, Judith Cornell, Janice Honeyman, Sue Kiel, Danny Keogh, Lindsay Reardon and John Oakley-Smith.

The Company's aims were:

• to perform theatre with and for all South Africans
• to create and perform indigenous work wherever possible
• to present current international hits alongside the classics

Names

Initially, the name The Company was used to identify the work of the troupe. They later became known as the Market Theatre Company when they started traveling abroad. From the late 1980s productions are typically simply attributed to the Market Theatre.

Venues

When they started off they were a company in search of a theatre, with the only criterion for a theatrical space being that it had to be accessible to black audiences. Initially they used a variety of venues and also introduced late night theatre to Johannesburg. The Company worked from several venues, including:

• New Troubadour Folk Club: a club devoted to folk music, situated in a corner bar of the Oxford Hotel, run by Dave Marks in the early 1970s with Brian Finch. This venue in the Oxford Hotel became the first home for Barney Simon and Mannie Manim's The Company.

• The Blue Fox: a converted restaurant, also in the Oxford Hotel.

• The Village Theatre: a theatre set up in a converted shop front in Orange Grove, Johannesburg by David Marks and Barney Simon.

• The Arena Theatre: a converted house in Doornfontein (on the corner of St. Augustine and Louisa Streets).

• The Nunnery: a theatre space used by the School of Performing Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand. Originally a convent hall, as a performance space for the University of the Witwatersrand's School of Dramatic Art (1973-1976).

• The Box at the University of the Witwatersrand.

• The Chelsea Theatre: a venue set up in Hillbrow’s Chelsea Hotel.

From 1976, The Company was resident at the Market Theatre.

Early productions (1974-1976)

Productions staged by The Company include:

1974: May Day Adventure Story, Twelfth Night, Hey Listen!, Lysistrata, Antigone (by Sophocles), Hello and Goodbye

1975: Selle Ou Storie (their first Afrikaans play), Fortune and Men's Eyes, Antigone (by Jean Anouilh), Show Me Yours..., Kennedy's Children

1976: Madame de Sade

Other productions (dates unknown) include The Flat and Sharp Bazaar, Storytime (at The Village Theatre in Orange Grove), People Too and The Drapes Come.

The Company and The Market Theatre (1976-1986)

In 1975, The Company was awarded the tender to convert the old Johannesburg market building into an arts complex. The new venue was named the Market Theatre and opened in 1976, with The Company as its resident producing body (though they had to pay rent to the Market Theatre Foundation for the use of the theatres, just as any other company making use of the facilities had to).

On October 19th 1976 The Company did the Marat/Sade (Weiss), directed by Barney Simon, as opening production in the Market Theatre main theatre.

Productions presented by The Company include:

1976: Pleasure and Repentance, The Seagull, Marat/Sade, Vroue van Troje, Comedians

1977: People are Living There, Mother Courage, Luv (with The Academy), The Me Nobody Knows, Absurd Person Singular

1978: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Long Day's Journey into Night, Bacchus in die Boland

1979: Cincinatti – Scenes from City Life, The Death of Bessie Smith, Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, Angel City, Holy Moses and All That Jazz, Sly Fox , Veronica's Room, How the Other Half Loves, International Stud

1980: An Arabian Night, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Poppie Nongena

1981: Woza Albert (in association with the Earth Players), Charles Dickens, Ain't We Got Fun, Live History Theatre

1982: And Green And Golden, Bedroom Farce

1983: Children of a Lesser God, This is for Keeps

1984: Torch Song Trilogy, Custom of the Country

1986: Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Sophiatown (in collaboration with Malcolm Purkey’s Junction Avenue Theatre Company), The Dybbuk

1990/1991: Shadowlands

For more information, see the Market Theatre.

The Company, Cape Town (1973)

Founded as a professional company in Cape Town by Norman Coates, Alan Johns and Suzanne Goldberg in 1973, the group put on plays in a pub-style intimate 50 seater theatre space under the Rondebosch restaurant La Perla.

Their first production was Beginnings and Survivors, followed by a production of Franz Kafka's The Trial in June 1973, featuring Terry Osler, Suzanne Goldberg, Charles Whaley and Aden Love.

Sources

Tucker, Percy 1997. Just the Ticket. My 50 Years in Show Business. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press: p. 333.

Correspondence held by NELM: [Collection: MANIM, Mannie]: 2010. 38. 9. 2. 50. 2.

Emlyn Williams as Charles Dickens programme notes, 1981.

Ian Gray 1973. There's a theatre on the way upstairs. In: Showbiz South Africa. June, 1973: p.41

Market Plays. Stephen Gray (ed.) 1986. AD Donker.

Greyvenstein, Walter 1988. The history and development of children's theatre in English in South Africa. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Johannesburg: Rand Afrikaans University.

Schwartz, 1988

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