Adrian Kohler

Adrian Kohler (19**-) Artist, designer, dancer, dramatist, puppeteer.

Biography

Adrian Kohler is one of two siblings of Harold and Thelma Kohler. His sister is Anita. They lived in the beautiful Port Elizabeth riverside village of Redhouse, alongside the Swartkops River. His mother was a well-known puppeteer and introduced both her children to the art of making puppets in the family garage cum workshop where Adrian spent many hours furthering his skills. As a young child he attended art classes under Ms Gansler at the Child Art Centre in Park Dive. He studied Art as a subject for matric at the Port Elizabeth Technical College under Alex Kiddie and matriculated from the Grey High School, Port Elizabeth, in 1969. His first puppet show was Dr Doolittle which ran for nine performances. He completed a BA in Fine Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, part of the University of Cape Town. In order to avoid conscription into the the South African Defence Force where he might be forced to enforce the apartheid laws of the time, Kohler went into self-exile and moved with his partner, Basil Jones, to Botswana where he gained employment with the Department of Education and ran the National Popular theatre Programme (theatre for development group Laedza Banani) for three years. Using a truck as his base he travelled around Botswana and produced a number of shows including Episodes of An Easter Uprising and Voyages in the Highveld.

His puppets for Handspring are held in public and private collections including the Constitutional Court in South Africa, the Munich Stadtmuseum in Germany, and the Old Mutual Art Collection.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

Adrian worked for The Space in the 1970s. There he had a role in the dance production The Family and in Thirteen Clocks and designed for the productions Endgame, Mixed Doubles, Old King Cole, Patrick Pearse Motel, Tsafendas, Endgame, and You'll Come To Love Your Sperm Test.

He wrote, made the puppets, directed and performed in Gertie's Feathers, first performed in 1976 at The Space. In 1981 he became a co-founder of the Handspring Puppet Company (with Basil Jones, Jill Faubet and Joe Weinberg). They moved into full-scale theatre puppetry with a landmark production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (Oude Libertas Theatre, Stellenbosch, 198*), directed by Esther van Ryswyk.

His Handspring Puppet Company made the gull puppets for Robert Hewett’s Gulls which Keith Grenville directed in 1987/1988. Adrian and Basil Jones made puppets for Barney Simon’s Starbrites which was staged at the Market Theatre in September 1990.

In the 1990s his collaboration with William Kentridge as designer/director led to widely celebrated productions of Woyzeck on the Highveld (1992), Faustus in Africa (1995), Ubu and the Truth Commission (1997) and the opera Il Ritorno d’Ulisse (“The Return of Ullyses”), which premiéred at the celebrated Kusten Festival des Artes in Brussels in 1998. He and Jones went on to do The Chimp Project (2000) and Tall Horse (2004). In these multi-media shows the company combine live actors, puppet and film footage.

Awards, etc.

Among the many awards that Adrian has won, some shared with Basil Jones, are the ACT AWARDS (Arts & Culture Trust Awards of the President) Lifetime Achievement Award, a Naledi Award for War Horse, a Vita Award (Gauteng region) for Faustus in Africa, best set design, shared with William Kentridge, a Fleur du Cap (2001) for Best technlcal contribution to a theatre production for The Chimp Project.

A discretionary award (Vita Award, national) for their imaginative puppet creations featured in a number of productions went to Adrian and Basil Jones in 1991.

Sources

Astbury 1979.

Tucker, 1997.

The Natal Witness, 9 September 1991.

Kalk Bay Modern [www.kalkbaymodern.co.za/adrian-kohler-1].

NELM catalogue.

Grey Foundation Lecture by Adrian Kohler, May 9, 2025.

Return to

Return to ESAT Personalities K

Return to South African Theatre Personalities

Return to Main Page