Queer Festival adds a bold new chapter to Market Theatre’s 50th

The Market Theatre has always fashioned itself as a groundbreaking beacon of creative and social expression, a platform for nurturing and developing talent and a creative marketplace of inclusion.

When it opened its doors in June 1976, South Africa was at the crossroads of history. In the same week, schoolchildren in Soweto rose against apartheid’s inferior education system, changing the country’s political and cultural landscape forever.

For the past five decades, from its home inNewtown, the institution has grown into more than a theatre. Founded by celebrated arts figures Barney Simon and Mannie Manim, the Market Theatre has built its reputation on work that reflected South Africa in all its complexity.

Now, in its 50th year, the mood at the Market is reflective and forward-looking. The institution is honouring the artists, institutions and audiences who shaped its past while making room for a new generation of storytellers to define its next five decades.

This year, for the first time in its history, it is hosting its first Queer Festival. The choice to host it in October, observed as Pride Month, is intentional.

Spanning nine performances across cabaret, drama, live music, dance and new writing, the festival is designed as a celebration of identity, resistance, creativity and belonging. The main festival is on until today, with some of the productions set for beyond those dates.

“With this inaugural iteration, we enter a bold new chapter, promising a vibrant celebration of identity, resistance and radical joy,” says Market Theatre Foundation artistic director, Greg Homann. “The Market Theatre has always thrived on being home to the South African story across all backgrounds and experiences.”

Pieter-Dirk Uys will perform Evita@91, featuring his legendary alter ego, Evita Bezuidenhout. First conceived at the Market in 1981, the character became one of South Africa’s most enduring vehicles for satire and social commentary.

Her return, 45 years later, is a reminder of the theatre’s long relationship with artists who use humour to confront power.

The programme also reaches into the country’s fraught past through Chantal Stanfield’s Shockwave, directed by David Dennis. Set during PW Botha’s State of Emergency in the 1980s, the new play follows a character confronting questions of faith, identity and belonging amid fear and deepening prejudice.

Personal history takes centre stage in The Breasts of Tiresias, a new work by Angelo de Klerk and former Market Theatre artistic director Malcolm Purkey. The production explores identity, transformation, heritage and social conformity.

Vuyelwa Maluleke’s The Blue Album brings poetry, monologue, movement and choral voice together in an intimate portrait of queer life and love in townships.

Music also forms a central thread. The Johannesburg Queer Chorus will present Archive, a concert honouring the city’s queer community, while No Filter: A Showcase of Queer Writing, curated by Jason Wheeler and Maralin van Reenen, will bring fresh work from emerging and established LGBTQ+ voices to the stage. It runs until November 8.

The festival’s plays exemplify the traits that have kept the Market going for 50 years: artistic bravery, insatiable curiosity, and the conviction that a theatre should represent the entire spectrum of society.

Even if the anniversary is based on memories, its most powerful message is to support voices who are gaining attention. As Homann puts it, the Market’s endurance lies in its ability to remain “resilient, agile and important” to South Africa and the world, doing what it has always done best: opening its doors to stories that challenge, connect and enlarge the national imagination.

The Market will also honour one of its luminaries, Sibongile Khumalo, in a remembrance concert from November 13 to 14. Khumalo’s second album was recorded on its stage in 1998.