April 6, 2006
By Ndaba Dlamini
A PHOTOGRAPHIC exhibition, Stages Calling, by well-known photographer Ruphin Coudyzer marked the launch of the Market Theatre's 30th anniversary celebrations on Thursday, 30 March.
Attending the launch of the exhibition was the theatre's managing director, Sibongiseni Mkhize; the chairperson, Sebilitso Mokone-Tabane; the artistic director, Malcolm Purkey; and Vanessa Cooke, the Market Laboratory director.
Opening the exhibition, Mkhize said the year-long celebratory programme included local and international theatre productions, seminars and an archive and documentary project.
"The purpose of the commemoration is to celebrate the Market Theatre's successes of the past 30 years and to launch the theatre's new vision. This photo exhibition and the artistic programme serve to usher in a new era of confidence for a theatre that has successfully redefined its mission and goals in accordance with the new socio-economic and political developments."
The exhibition features images from theatre productions from the early days of the Market Theatre, from the 1980s and1990s, and from the most recent productions. Mkhize said the exhibition - and the photographer - represented the diverse and complex ways in which the Market Theatre had continuously grappled with the representation of reality since 1976.
"The photographs, just like the theatre itself, are not frozen in time but visually reflect the changes that the theatre has gone through over the years."
Cooke said Coudyzer was the first person from "the outside" to witness the birth of a show at a final dress rehearsal, a time when "everyone sees what they have been working on - the director, the designers, the crew and the producer and the actors perform with all elements in place for the first time".
"[Coudyzer] was present at the birth of many new South African plays. He witnessed the director's vision in many classics. He was the first audience to see the first performance of new performers."
Coudyzer has captured images of local protest theatre and Shakespearean classics at the Market Theatre for the past three decades. Born in Belgium, he moved to South Africa in 1971 and worked for a stock broking company. Later he joined the Argus African News Services and The Star newspaper, leaving in 1989 to become an independent photographer.
He has produced documentaries on Kliptown and an ongoing series on people in their everyday lives, Focus on People. He won gold, silver and bronze at the 2004 Profoto Awards in the Industrial Photography category. He also won the Industrial Portfolio category.
Mkhize said since its establishment in 1976, the Market Theatre had shaped and changed many lives, those of performers and audience alike.
Part of the city's fresh fruit and vegetable market in the early 1900s, the Market Theatre staged its first performance on 12 June 1976 and has, from the outset, tenaciously stuck to an anti-apartheid message. In 2005 the Market Theatre Foundation was declared a cultural institution, assuring it of government funding, which enables long-term planning.
The Stages Calling exhibition is on at the Market Theatre Gallery, open from Monday to Saturday from 9am to 5pm, and on Sunday from 10am to 6pm.
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