The Hungry Earth

The Hungry Earth is a play by Isaiah Maishe Maponya.

Translations and adaptations

A full length play about the mine-workers and their struggle against oppression under Apartheid. Drawing much on the structure of Brecht’s The Measures Taken, it presents a powerful ‘lecture-demonstration’ of black working-class life in South Africa.

First written and performed in 1979 and the text first published by Polyptoton (London) in 1981, thereafter in Temple Hauptfleisch and Ian Steadman: South African Theatre – Four Plays and an Introduction (HAUM Educational, 1984). It was later also publised in a variety of other collections, including Postcolonial Plays (Routledge); South African Plays (Nick Hern Books) and Maponya's own collection, Doing Plays for a Change (Wits University Press).

Performance history in South Africa

1979: Performed by the newly formed Bahmutsi Players at the Donaldson Orlando Cultural Club in Soweto in May, then in the Wits Box.

1982: Performed by the Bahamutsi Players as a Baxter Theatre Production, directed by Maponya, starring Sydwell Yola, Simon Mosikile, Velile Nxazonke.

1983: Presented at the National Theatre London by the Bahamutsi Players, under the direction of Ian Steadman, later touring Britain and Germany.

Sources

Brian Barrow and Yvonne Williams-Short, (eds.). 1988. Theatre Alive! The Baxter Story 1977-1987 The Baxter Theatre.

Loren Kruger 1999. The Drama of South Africa: Plays, Pageants and Publics Since 1910 London: Routledge

Percy Tucker. 1997. Just the Ticket. My 50 Years in Show Business. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

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