Fred Abrahamse

(19**-) Actor and Director. Studied drama at UCT?*. Began work for the Troupe Theatre Company, The Space Theatre in the 1970s and CAPAB, with roles including Candaules Commissioner, Dolls (directed by Richard Grant and Michael O’Brien),First Monday in October (with CAPAB), Guineafowl (with Troup Theater Company), Claw, Street Theatre , Agamemnon and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Baxter Theatre 1988). For a while in the late 1980s and early 1990s he was a resident director at the Baxter Theatre His directing credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream (the Market Theatre, 1989), District Six - The Musical (1987, Fleur du Cap Best Director), Steven Berkoff’s Decadence (1993), Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Millennium Approaches (1994), Beautiful Thing (1995, Fleur du Cap Best Director), Much Ado about Nothing (Maynardville, 2005), Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins (2008). In 2008 he became co-founder and Artistic Director of the NewSpace Theatre in Long Street. Co-writer (with Marcel Meyer) of two musicals, Bangbroek Mountain - The Musical About Camping (2006) and In Briefs - A Queer Little Musical (2007), both of which he also directed. Has directed some of the most successful and accessible productions of Shakespeare in South Africa. These include: the Handspring Puppet Company production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the 2002 Maynardville production of Dream, Much Ado About Nothing and Romeo and Juliet both at Maynardville, The Tragedy of Richard III (Grahamstown Festival, 2010), Shakespeare's R&J (2011) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (2012) [TH]

Sources

Limelight 1981/82, 1982/83

http://markettheatre.co.za/shows/watch/the-tragedy-of-richard-lll

ArtsCape, media Release, 19 June 2012

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