The Dam

by Guy Butler

A commissioned work for the 1952 Tercentenary Van Riebeeck Festival and produced by NTO in 1952, directed by Marda Vanne, starring Rolf Lefebvre, Marcia Colville, June Range, Gerrit Wessels, Noëlle Ahrenson, Alan Chadwick, Michal Grobbelaar, Johan Malherbe, Frank Wise. Decor by Geoffrey Long. A play about an English South African farmer’s relationships with his family and neighbours, and his vision of, yet doubts about, building a dam in the river. The dam and the implications of its building become a metaphor for Butler’s liberal view of the politics of the times.

This was the winning play of the Van Riebeeck Playwriting Competition.

First published by A.A. Balkema in 1953.

Source: Theatre programme, 1952.

A one-act play. Published by DALRO in 1970.

Presented by the Repertory Theatre Society, later known as the Cape Town Repertory Theatre Society performed on 11 March 1941.

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