Outers

Outers is a workshopped play by Barney Simon, Nicky Rebelo and the cast.

The original text

The idea for the play came from a writing project undertaken by Nicky Rebelo while a student at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1981, for which he made tape recordings of conversations with the down-and-outs of Joubert Park in Johannesburg and edited them into a text.

Rebelo's text formed the basis of the Outers project undertaken by Barney Simon at the Market Theatre in 1985. Having gathered a select cast of performers to participate in the workshop process, during which - guided by Simon and Rebelo - the cast were sent into parks, streets and work-places of JOhannesburg, "in character", to hunt for jobs, food, cigarettes, handouts and gaining invaluable empathy for the people the moved among. Also a wealth of new and topical material. Five weeks of processing the material, now under the direction of Barney Simon, resulted in the play now named Outers.

According to the programme notes for the original production, "Outers embodies Simon's credo as Artistic Director of the Market Theatre: 'to reflect our lives... to attempt a theatre that is alive to all dramatic possibilities that surround us - not only the obvious news stories, but the faces, the biographies, the vernaculars... that reach even to our doorsteps... to attempt a theatre that entertains and informs".