Putsonderwater

(Tr as Well-without-Water or The Virgin and the Vultures) by Bartho Smit. Based on a Bernanos novella ‘’Sous le soleil de Satan’’ and set in a small South African village, the characters are representatives of religious, secular and political power, and the playwright’s exploration of their relationship with the young virgin, constitutes a virulent attack on social hypocrisy. Written 1960?*, published by Tafelberg Uitgewers in 1962. In 1961 it was submitted as possible opening piece for the newly built Johannesburg Civic Theatre, but was rejected. Denied performance in South Africa for many years, it was first performed to acclaim by ‘’Volksteater Vertikaal’’ in Ghent in 1968 and toured Belgium for a year.

Directed at Rhodes University in 1968 by Abraham de Vries, with Nelia Dryer, Hugh Forsyth, Wilfred Jonckheer, John Badenhorst, Tom Cloete, Noël Roos, Bill Sieberhagen in the cast. A production by Johan Mocke opened on 27 February 1969 at the Port Elizabeth Opera House, then had a brief and little publicised workshop production for an invited audience by the PACOFS experimental theatre group in the Ou Presidensie Teater (“Old Presidency Theatre”), directed by Henk Hugo. In 1970 a scheduled production by CAPAB was banned by the Administrator of the Cape Province (in his capacity as chairman of the board) a few days before the opening.

Eleven years later, in July 1981, the first fully professional production was done by PACT in the State Theatre Arena, Pretoria directed by Louis van Niekerk, starring Iza Trengove, Don Lamprecht, Louw Verwey, Franz Marx,Dan Welman, Sam Marais.

English translation by A. Dawes: Well-without-Water or The Virgin and the Vultures.

Om 24 March 1971 the play was presented in an English translation by Anthony Dawes as The Virgin and the Vultures by the amateur dramatic society of the Johannesburg College of Education under the direction of Joey de Koker.

Sources

Grütter, Wilhelm, CAPAB 25 Years, 1987. Unpublished research. p 447.

Teater SA, 1(2), 1968

PACT pamphlet, July 1981

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