Dramateers

The Dramateers was a short-lived amateur group active in Johannesburg in the early 1950s.

Amongst their members were Molly Seftel, Charles Stodel, Ian Bernhardt and Barney Simon and their productions included Night by Sholem Asch (1950), Power Without Glory by Michael Clayton-Hutton (1950) and Hello Out There! by William Saroyan (1951).

In the early 1950s, the Dramateers, performed a play in aid of the Alexandra Township anti-TB Association. One of the black members of the association went further than expressing his thanks for the financial support and asked if blacks might be permitted to see the play itself. The committee of the Dramateers felt the play, which included rape and murder, would not be suitable for black audiences and so they produced a series of ‘suitable’ one-act plays which toured in black urban areas. This led to the establishment of the Bareti Players, which in turn resulted in its founder, Ian Bernhardt, becoming chairman of the newly formed artists' union, the Union of Southern African Artists, which ultimately produced King Kong.

Sources

Robert Mshengu Kavanagh. "The Development of Theatre in South Africa up to 1976 - Anti-Apartheid Literature." Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg Lawrence J. Trudeau, Vol. 162. Gale Cengage, 2005.

NELM catalogue.

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