Final curtain call for Cape Town’s Fugard theatre
The 320-seater Fugard Theatre is located within the historic Sacks Futeran building in Cape Town’s District Six.
CAPE TOWN, March 17 (ANA) – Cape Town’s Fugard Theatre is closing its doors permanently with immediate effect, after being shut for a full year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The founder of the 320-seater theatre, located within the historic Sacks Futeran building in Cape Town’s District Six, said in a statement posted on its website on Tuesday that it would not be safe health-wise, or financially viable to reopen in the foreseeable future.
“The theatre will be handed back to the owner of the freehold of the building – the board of The District 6 Museum – as a working theatre and we hope that they will be able to use it for the benefit of the Museum and the District 6 community,” founder, producer and benefactor Eric Abraham said.
He thanked the theatre staff for all their hard work as well as patrons for their support of the Fugard Theatre over the last ten years.
Last July, four months into a national lockdown enforced by the government to curb the spread of the coronavirus, the theatre said it would remain closed until it was confident that staff, performers and audiences would not be at risk from the virus.
The arts industry has been decimated due to the ongoing health crisis, with artists saying they have received little to no support from the government during the lockdown.
South Africa’s Sport, Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa has received flak for his department’s handling of a Covid-19 relief fund for artists. In January, Times Live reported that a petition drafted by artists had been set up, requesting Mthethwa’s removal.
According to the online version of The Citizen newspaper, artists say the relief funding made available by the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture came with bureaucratic hoops that excluded many and was simply a drop in the ocean in terms of the needs within the sector.
The Citizen said Mthethwa had come under fire for a recent tweet in which he claimed that South African theatre “is alive and well with performing arts institutions of the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture such as @ArtscapeTheatre, @MarketTheatre, @PACOFS3, @DurbanPlayhouse, @statetheatre and @WindybrowTheatr (sic) offering an array of indigenous drama and dance”.
He later apologised for the post, which many artists said proved just how out of touch the minister was with the plight of artists around the country.
– African News Agency (ANA), Editing by Stella Mapenzauswa
