Joe Barber

The personality Joe Barber

A real Cape Town barber, Mr Joseph Swain, had named his shop “Joe Barber” (an Afrikaans pun - "Joe" being a Cape-Afrikaans way of pronouncing "jou", the Afrikaans word for "your" - i.e "Your Barber"). By the dawning of the new millenium, Mr Swain's personality, the pun and his shop had become the inspiration for the series of hits plays by the same name. Swain went on to play a key role by supporting performances of the plays and it became tradition that on the last performance of every season he would take his bow at the end of the show.

The Joe Barber series of plays

In 1999 a comedy called Meet Joe Barber, written by Oscar Petersen, Heinrich Reisenhofer and David Isaacs, directed by Reisenhofer and performed by Peterson and Isaacs, opened at Skokiaan Theatre Bar, Cape Town. The play (and later the series of plays) dealt with daily events in a District Six barber shop, inspired by many visits to a Mr Swain's barber shop in Parkwood, where the authors had observed the clients, listening to the stories and jokes.

The original play was followed by a number of sequels:

2002: Joe Barber and Boeta Gamat Too,

2005: Joe Barber 3 the Family Affair, directed by Heinrich Reisenhofer with David Isaacs (as Boeta Gamat/Washiela) and Oscar Petersen (as Boeta Joe/Outjie/Valerie)

(2002), 

2005: (2005), Joe Barber 4 (2007) Joe Barber Up Close (2009), Joe Barber 5 – School Cuts! (2010), Joe Barber and Friends (2013), Joe Barber VI – Life (2014). In the latter years produced by Djamaqua Productions.

The plays have been performed widely in the country at festivals and comedy venues and in 2003 won a Kanna award for comedy at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (KKNK). By 2014 the "Joe Barber" plays had become the most successful and longest-running comedy series in Cape Town. A spin off has been a TV series.

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