South African Theatre – Four Plays and an Introduction

South African Theatre – Four Plays and an Introduction is a multicultural collection of representative plays, edited and introduced by Temple Hauptfleisch and Ian Steadman.

First published in 1984 by De Jager-HAUM, Pretoria, this is the first collection of South African plays to overtly acknowledge the complex cross-cultural nature of South African theatre, and to introduce the idea of a more encompassing theatrical system in the country. The authors' categorization of the theatrical system in the country as consisting of a number of sub-systems, which they refer to as English Theatre, Afrikaans Theatre, Black Theatre and Alternative Theatre did much to shift the emphasis in drama teaching and theatre training to a consideration of the larger whole in a time.

Besides substantial introductions to each of the sub-systems, the collection contains four illustrative plays: Bartho Smit's Christine (translated from the Afrikaans by Walter Greyvenstein), Athol Fugard's Hello and Goodbye, Maishe Maponya's The Hungry Earth and Cincinatti – Scenes from City Life, a workshop play by Barney Simon and company.