Cabaret in South Africa

Cabaret

A form of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue—a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables (often dining or drinking) watching the performance being introduced by a master of ceremonies or emcee (MC).

Cabaret also refers to a Mediterranean-style brothel—a bar with tables and women who mingle with and entertain the clientele. Traditionally these establishments can also feature some form of stage entertainment, often singers and dancers.

Cabaret in South Africa

But the first real indigenous development came in the 1970s with the emergence of the Kabaret movement. Kabaret is the Afrikaans word for cabaret. Though it is sometimes used in the general sense discussed above under Cabaret, it is usually used in the more specific, literary, sense it gained in South Africa , especially in the Stellenbosch and Cape Town regions during the 1970-1985 period. At the incentive of local writers, composers and directors, led by Hennie Aucamp, a form of resistance theatre utilizing the cabaret format emerged and caused a sensation at traditioanlly English liberal venues (e.g. the Market Theatre and the Grahamstown Festival). Based on the European political cabaret - notably the German cabaret or Kabarett (a form of political satire that was created at the end of the 19th century) and the theories and practices of Brecht and others, it became one of the most prominent and direct forms of political protest essayed by the Afrikaner youth of the time. ***

Return to South African Theatre Terminology and Thematic Entries

Return to Main Page