To run a theatre you need to be a master (not a jack) of all trades. You have to understand what it’s like for the people onstage and backstage, in the audience and in the control booth, front-of-house and in the parking lot outside. Apart from this insight — which can only come from experience — you also need to be an entrepreneur with a high appetite for risk, a public relations genius, a human resources expert and a prudent financial officer. It helps if you’re an engineer.
One key prerequisite for the job is an ability to turn the air blue. You have to be able to creatively invoke the genitals of your enemies’ parents, to bemoan their fornicating forebears and to curse their offspring to the last generation. People must know not to cross you.
Sue Diepeveen, owner-manager of the Drama Factory in Somerset West, has all these qualities in abundance. I know because I have a small office in an upstairs corner of her building; I get to see the daily, unglamorous, miraculous work of keeping a theatre afloat. It was only recently, however, that I discovered the impressive depth and breadth of her swearing vocabulary.
The cause, unsurprisingly, was Eskom.
Diepeveen installed solar panels at the Drama Factory a few years ago, so she has been able to keep the lights on despite SA’s worsening power crisis. No unexpected cuts-to-darkness for her performers and audiences. For various reasons, however, her system now needs an upgrade to the tune of a few hundred thousand rand — a huge cost to carry for a small independent theatre, and the kind of news that understandably launches a thousand expletives.
This is only one of a million tales about how load-shedding affects the country’s businesses. It is nonetheless important to consider not just the general economic malaise but also the particular effects that electricity shortages have on various sectors. What are the additional blows that a national power disaster deals to an already ailing theatre industry?
The technical and aesthetic consequences for running a show immediately come to mind. Adjusting advertised show times, or delaying curtain-up so that load-shedding can start, ensuring that a few minutes of darkness before the generators kick in occur before and not during a performance. Creating an extra budget category for replacing projectors and lights that wear out more readily from an unstable power supply. Yet these things just are the visible tip of the iceberg.
There are numerous less direct threats. A theatre may have alternative power sources, but will audiences still stay away because of nighttime safety and security concerns? Various theatre managers have suggested that this is a more than anecdotal factor. Some of those who attend will choose to drive rather than use a ride-hailing service; they won’t spend money on drinks, another revenue stream reduced.
Never mind audience behaviour. Every aspect of putting a show together is compromised in one way or another. Resources spent on contingency plans constrain budgets at each stage: commissioning, casting, designing, marketing. Rehearsals are delayed, get-ins are longer. The wear-and-tear also takes its toll on a theatre maker’s imagination. The things you can dream become narrower in their scope. Creative ambition is dulled.
The SA performing arts industry has weathered numerous storms in recent years. While it hasn’t exactly bounced back from the devastating Covid-19 years, the sector has shown that much-praised quality, resilience, in spades. Hidden in the big picture, however, are hundreds — thousands — of stories of individual loss. Careers were cut short, projects were abandoned, companies closed.
Still, the shows go on. Not long after admiring Sue Diepeveen’s vented spleen, I was in the auditorium at the Drama Factory watching Aaron Mcilroy and Lisa Bobbert in their two-person musical comedy Go Big. This light-hearted romp employs the tragicomic figure of the precarious artist as a kind of sustaining motif, a running self-parodying gag.
Mcilroy and Bobbert play it for laughs, and all credit to them. But behind the comic mask is a crying face or, at least, a sincere appeal. Now as much as ever, SA theatre needs our collective support — even as we curse both the darkness and the cost of the light.
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