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Anne Fuchs: Playing the Market: the Market Theatre Johannesburg 1976-1986

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Anne Fuchs: Playing the Market: the Market Theatre Johannesburg 1976-1986 235 Anne Fuchs: Playing the Market: The Market Theatre Johannesburg 1976-1986. [Contemporary Theatre Studies; 1] (Chur: Harwood, 1990). xii + 183 pages. Theatre and the struggle against apartheid are associated in the minds of many with the names of Athol Fugard and the Market Theatre. Whereas the former has been the subject of extensive research over the past few years, the latter, being an institu­ tion, has lent itself far less readily to scholarly inquiry. Yet the Market Theatre has probably had a far greater influence within South Africa in creating, nourishing and producing an exciting theatrical culture, which, if not always explicitly politically committed, has been able to insert itself into the dynamic and often violent processes involved in dismantling the system of apartheid. It is the real achievement of Anne Fuchs' study - the author is a professor of comparative literature at the University of Nice and has published extensively on South African theatre - that these very complex processes are taken into account, in­ deed become quite central. The author has been able to inte­ grate her empirical data into a methodological framework which enables her to assess people, such as the founders Barney Simon and Mannie Manim, theatre groups, plays, indi­ vidual productions, financial and organisational background in terms of the interdependent production and reception of mean­ ing, which is ultimately what a theatre does. Fuchs shows that these semiotic processes are all interconnected. The title itself, Playing the Market, establishes cleverly one of the central points of contradiction, tension and ultimately productive crea­ tivity. The pun points to the delicate balance between the Market Theatre's dependence on South African big business for its fi­ nancial support, its commitment to multi-racial theatre both in the auditorium and on the stage, and to the history of the building, originally the Indian Citrus Market, as an interethnic meeting and trading place. The historical aspect alone makes a wonderful contribution to the notion of theatre as a "place of 236 performance," to cite the title of Marvin Carlson's study of the semiotics of theatre buildings. 1 Fuchs writes: The semiotics of theatre have to do with performance condi­ tions: the composition of the audience and the venue, condi­ tion and modify the reception of performance and, together, can constitute an additional referent to the message of the text already modified by actors, director and decor. The dual peri­ pheral and "market" situation was for the company at the same time new and, paradoxically, a symbol, translated in material terms, of their previous aims and objectives. (p.36) The Market Theatre is, thus, not just a building but also an organisation with, at the beginning at least, clearly defined programmatic goals. Fuchs provides illuminating background sketches of Barney Simon and Mannie Manim, probing into the former's work with Joan Littlewood in the 1950s and with Puerto Rican theatre in New York in the late 1960s; and to Mannie Manim' s connections to the Performing Arts Councils, the backbone of establishment theatre in South Africa. She touches also on the importance of the Space Theatre in Cape Town as a model and test for the political limits of multiracial theatre: they were, in fact, quite elastic; one of the many contradictions in the supposed monolithic edifice of apartheid. Explored in depth are the contributions and complications of the many white "Culture Brokers" involved in mediating be­ tween white and non-white theatre: Athol Fugard, Barney Simon, Robert MacLaren (Kavanagh). The term recurs frequently in the course of the book and points to the importance of what Fuchs terms ... the dialectics of a three-way confrontation involving town­ ship culture, [ ... ] militant progressive world theatre (with Grotowski, Brecht, Valdez and Boal as models) and a volun­ tary return to traditional sources. (p.129) By 1986 this kind of "brokering" did not only involve whites but black and coloured intellectuals as well. Considerable space is devoted to important new South African plays performed at the Market. Plays dealt with in 1 Marvin Carlson: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture. (London, 1989). .
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