CAPAB Drama

CAPAB Drama was formed in Cape Town as one of the principal arts segments of the Cape Performing Arts Board (CAPAB).

History

For a large part of its history the CAPAB Drama section had two sub-sections: the Afrikaans Company and the English Company.

The directors/managers of CAPAB Drama included Pieter Fourie (director of Afrikaans drama, 1967-?), Peter Curtis (director of English drama, 1967-1978), Johan Esterhuizen (1985-1989).

The CAPAB Drama Companies ceased operations in May 1997, and dissolved in 1999 when the entity was renamed ArtsCape.

Productions

1960s: CAPAB's first productions were Becket (Anouilh) and Hedda Gabler (by Ibsen, in Afrikaans) in the Hofmeyr Theatre in November 1963. CAPAB's first production of a South African play written in English was The Year of the Locust by James Ambrose Brown (1966). Its first original Afrikaans play was

1967: Portuguese Match , The Dock Brief, The Best of Dorothy Parker, Heartbreak House, The Happy Journey, The Garden at the Threshold, All Roads Lead to Rome, The Beaux Stratagem, Winter Journey and The King's Mare.

1968: Peter Pan, The Seven Ages, Candida, The Lion in Winter, The Chalk Garden, Cape Charade, Don't Let Summer Come, Suite in Three Keys, Fury, Dangerous Corner and The Lesson.

1969: Antigone, The School for Scandal, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, People are Living There, Twelfth Night, Wholly Matrimony, The Sniper, The 65th Square and Boesman and Lena.

1970s: With PACT and the Phoenix Players, CAPAB staged Athol Fugard’s Boesman and Lena and People are Living There (both directed by Fugard and starring Yvonne Bryceland and Glynn Day at the Hofmeyr Theatre in 1970.

1970: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, The Way of the World, The Cherry Orchard, The Man of Destiny, O'Flaherty V.C., Tango, The Importance of Being Earnest and Episode on an Autumn Evening.

1971: Talk of the Devil, Orestes, Winners, Enter a Free Man, Dear Antoine (opening play at the Nico Malan Theatre), Hadrian VII, Strindberg Without Tears, Biography, The Daughter-in-Law.

1972: Hedda Gabler, McCullough, or Travels with a Collapsible Woman, The Real Inspector Hound and Police (double bill), Under Milk Wood, Macbeth, The Good and Faithful Servant, The Stronger and Orison (double bill).

1973: The Friday Bench, See How They Run, Miss Julie, The Collector, Annie Get Your Gun, A Sleep of Prisoners, The Mandrake, The School for Wives and Mother Courage and Her Children

1974: London Assurance, A Collier's Friday Night, Lorenzo: A Biography of D.H.Lawrence, The Game of Kings, King Lear, Present Laughter, A Tribute to Noel Coward, King Stag and Three Cheers for President Charlie.

1975: The Alchemist, Story Theatre, Rookery Nook, Dear Janet Rosenberg, Dear Mr Kooning, Antony and Cleopatra, A Doll’s House, The First Night of Pygmalion, Good Grief, a Griffin, Pygmalion, The Story of an African Farm, You Never Can Tell.

1976: Julius Caesar (CAPAB at Maynardville), Shrivings, Mr. Rhodes and the Princess, The Playboy of the Western World, Richard III, Fury, Out at Sea.

1977: Much Ado About Nothing (CAPAB at Maynardville), The Misanthrope, Arms and the Man, Roulette, Hamlet.

1978: Twelfth Night (CAPAB at Maynardville), Private Lives, Time-Sneeze, Tartuffe, Hay Fever.

1980s: Dalene Matthee’s Fiela se Kind starring Shaleen Surtie-Richards (1986); Basil Rubin in association with CAPAB staged William Luce’s Zelda at the Adcock-Ingram (August 1987). CAPAB with Volute Productions staged Robert Hewett’s Gulls which Keith Grenville directed (1987).

1990s: Michael Drin's The Phantom of the Opera (1990).

For more information, see Cape Performing Arts Board

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