Muthal Naidoo

Muthal Naidoo (1935-). Dramatist, director and teacher.

Biography

She studied drama at the University of Durban-Westville and became a founding member of Durban Academy of Theatre Arts (DATA) in Durban and taught at the M.L. Sultan Technical College. Then she left DATA to form Shah Theatre Academy with friends. In 1965 she left South Africa on a Fulbright Scholarship and obtained a PhD in Theatre and Drama from Indiana University in the U.S.A. in 1972. She was a lecturer at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, until 1976, then returned to South Africa in August 1976 to work with the Shah Theatre Academy. In 1981 she formed her own company, the Work-in-Progress Theatre Company (WIP), and in 1983 became the Head of the Department of Drama at the Giyani College of Education. While in the Transvaal she was also involved in the organisation of the Laudium One-Act Play Festival.

She is the author of a monograph, The Search for Cultural Identity - A Personal Odyssey. (No 1 in the Indic Theatre Monograph Series, Asoka Theatre Publications, 1993).

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

Author of a number of one-act plays, including Black Magic, Have Tea and Go, It's Mine (performed at the Hermit Theatre in Durban as a triple bill under the title Three for Tea) and Nobody’s Hero and Our Home performed as a double bill at the Market Theatre in 1987. She also wrote the plays Coming Home and Flight from the Mahabarath.