Troupe Theatre Company

The Troupe Theatre Company was an experimental theatre-making company.

Not to be confused with the London based Troupe Theatre Company/Troupe Productions Ltd.[1]

The company

Founded in Cape Town by Fiona Ramsay, Richard E. Grant, Fred Abrahamse, Sean Taylor, Neil McCarthy, Sean O'Brien and Henry Goodman in 1980. The company's first production was Fanshen at the People's Space in January/February 1980.

(Although Fiona Ramsey in Theatre Lives suggests that Troupe Theatre Company was used as the name for the UCT Drama production of East in 1978.)

Actors and directors who worked with them also included Bryony Mortimer, Penelope Lorimer, Ian Roberts, Graham Hopkins, Michael O'Brien, Hilary Jones, Charles Whaley, Chas Unwin ("Lodger"), Thoko Ntshinga, Joko Scott, Lammie Shoba, Grethe Fox and Brumilda van Rensburg.

Technical support for productions came from artists such as Richard Grant, Nicholas Fine, Birrie le Roux, Denise Newman.

Based at the People's Space and working between there, the Baxter Theatre and the Market Theatre for two years, they were initially drawn together by a common interest in communal working methods and a desire to do a type of theatre that deviated from the traditional commercial fare. Everyone got paid the same and they all collaborated using as many of the company’s skills as possible in the direction, design, and acting of a variety of productions. Having to rely on each other and work together as a team was an unforgettable and invaluable formative experience.They had no funding or administration of their own, being purely a performance group and dependent on sponsoring managements such as the People's Space.