‘Planning and control may well be essential components, but they do not guarantee that art will result.’

In 1972 Fourie staged Dürrenmatt’s play in Bloemfontein at the Performing Arts Council of the Free State (PACOFS). The year after, he staged it again in Cape Town under the auspices of the Cape Performing Arts Board (CAPAB), where he was the artistic director of Afrikaans drama. It was the first of several Afrikaans productions of Swiss plays staged in the 572-seater Nico Malan Theatre, heralding the emergence of a new southern locus for Afrikaans Frisch and Dürrenmatt.

This was not the first time a government-funded body had a staged a Swiss play in Afrikaans. As far back as 1964, PACOFS had already presented Ants Kirsipuu and Wilma Stockenström’s translation of Andorra in the Bloemfontein Civic Theatre. Nearly ten years later, in 1973, the Performing Arts Council of the Transvaal (PACT) followed suit.

But it was at CAPAB that Frisch and Dürrenmatt enjoyed particular attention. Up until the early 1970s, it had presented a number of Swiss plays in English translation. These included Dürrenmatt’s The Physicists, translated by James Kirkup and directed by Robert Mohr in 1964. Two years later it presented The Visit, Maurice Valency’s English translation of Dürrenmatt’s Der Besuch der alten Dame, guest-directed by the New Yorker Stanley Waren. In 1970, it staged Dürrenmatt’s Episode on an Autumn Evening, translated by Gabriel Kaminski and directed by Pietro Nolte. The following year, Nicholas Wright, a South African-born artistic director at London’s Royal Court Theatre, came to CAPAB to direct Michael Bullock’s translation of Frisch’s Biografie and Dürrenmatt’s Play Strindberg, translated by Kirkup and presented with the author’s working title, Strindberg Without Tears.

After 1971, CAPAB turned its attention to Afrikaans translations of Frisch and Dürrenmatt. Fourie programmed three more translations after Die Ehe: Frisch’s Don Juan oder die Liebe zur Geometrie (1975) and his Biedermann und die Brandstifter (1978), as well as Dürrenmatt’s Die Physiker (1980). The latter is the last Afrikaans production of a Swiss play I have been able to trace in the period up to 1994. Like Bartho Smit’s 1962 Die besoek van die ou dame, and unlike Schiess’s amateur productions over the years, these plays had access to the apartheid state’s vast resources. But first, they had to pass muster with those tasked with looking after its interests.

After Prime Minister Verwoerd’s assassination in 1966, the state strengthened the already considerable control it wielded over all aspects of society, including the performing arts. Among its tools were the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act 49 of 1953 which allowed the state to determine who could attend or perform in a particular venue. Another was the Publications and Entertainments Act 26 of 1963 that gave them control over what could be performed in the first place. Nowhere did these laws carry more weight than in the performing arts councils, who were dependent on a generous government subsidy. And so, another tool at the state’s disposal was, quite simply, money.

These laws would be challenged repeatedly in the 1970s, in the first instance by independent organisations like Cape Town’s Space Theatre (founded by Yvonne Bryceland and Brian Astbury in 1972) and Johannesburg’s Market Theatre (founded by Mannie Manim and Barney Simon in 1976). These two theatres exploited legal loopholes to stage transgressive plays and put multiracial casts in front of multiracial audiences. Operating with limited budgets and without government funding, their productions were dependent on a stripped-down understanding of theatre, utilizing techniques aligned with Polish director Jerzy Grotowski’s Poor Theatre movement. Fugard, the most significant local proponent of these techniques, illustrates the constraints under which he worked when he remembers how he and the Serpent Players handled the large casting requirements of Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan: ‘The only way I could differentiate between the characters, apart from the way the individual actors were also going to do, was we used different hats for different characters. As simple as that.’4 Athol Fugard, author interview, 10 November 2020.

Conditions at the drama departments of the state-funded arts councils were vastly different. Although some of them experimented with Poor Theatre techniques, their mainstream productions were richly funded and staged with lavish sets. Remembering the wealth of resources at his disposal, Fourie emphasizes that he worked with a large ensemble of actors in full-time employment. ‘You’ve got twenty, thirty actors on the stage’, he points out. ‘You don’t take a man and stuff a pillow up his shirt and now you’ve got a man with a fat stomach. You’ve got a guy with a fat belly in your company who you’re going to use, you know?’5 ‘Jy’t twintig, dertig spelers op die verhoog. Jy vat nie ’n man en druk ’n kussing by sy hemp in en nou’t jy ’n omie met ’n vet pens nie. Jy’t ’n ou met ’n vet pens in jou geselskap wat jy gaan gebruik, jy weet?’ Pieter Fourie, author interview, 16 October 2020. Fourie concludes: ‘At that stage, we had all the money in the world. But we had no freedom.’6 ‘Ons het op daai stadium al die geld in die wêreld gehad. Maar ons het geen vryheid gehad nie.’ Ibid.

Despite their dependence on government funding, some of the arts councils also offered resistance. The workings at each were far from identical. Manim’s experiences at PACT have already demonstrated that they were determined to a large extent by the personalities involved, from the committee members responsible for approving or turning down repertoire, to the administrative and artistic heads running each department. Clearly, apartheid’s laws were only as effective as the individuals tasked with their implementation. Some of the administrators and artistic staff embedded in the councils lacked a political appetite and viewed government interference as primarily an obstacle to the development of the performing arts. Others, only too aware of the political situation, actively challenged the conditions under which the councils received their state subsidies, eventually contributing to the relaxing of apartheid’s laws governing the arts.

One of these was Fourie, who had a particularly large appetite for risk and negotiating conflict. Under his leadership, the CAPAB drama department became known as arguably the most daring in the country, something widely ascribed to his ‘rebellious attitude, daring theatrical proposals and presentations, and controversial behaviour as theatre administrator’.7 ‘rebelse houding, waaghalsige toneelvoorstelle en toneelaanbiedings en kontroversiële optrede as dramabestuurder’, Temple Hauptfleisch, ‘Die Dobermann in die hoenderhok – Pieter Fourie en die Afrikaanse teatersisteem’, in Pieter Fourie: Teatermaker – ’n huldiging, ed. Fanie Olivier (Pretoria: Protea Boekhuis, 2019), 98.