Performers Gerard Bester and Sandi Dlangalala in “The Breasts of Tiresias”, exploring the lived experience of being a trans man performed at the first Queer Festival at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg at the weekend. Photos: Ihsaan Haffejee
People came out in numbers to the inaugural five-day Queer Festival which ran from 21 to 25 October at The Market Theatre in Johannesburg.
The festival formed part of the theatre’s 50th anniversary celebrations, with drama, cabaret, dance and music performances exploring sexuality, gender identity and the experiences of LGBTQIA+ community.
Greg Homann, artistic director of the Market Theatre Foundation, said the festival was an opportunity to tell a wider range of queer stories.
“We didn’t want a single work in Pride Month to stand as a representation of the whole community because that community in itself is very diverse,” he said.
Evita Bezuidenhout, satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys’s alter-ego, opened the inaugural Queer Festival at The Market Theatre.
The festival opened with a sold out, once-off performance by Pieter-Dirk Uys’s iconic alter ego, Evita Bezuidenhout, with Evita @ 91. It was a full circle moment to Evita’s 1981 performance at the Market Theatre.
The programme also included Chantal Stanfield’s Shockwave, which explores homosexuality, religion and prejudice during apartheid’s State of Emergency in the 1980s.
Alex Sono performs Boy In Chains as part of No Filter: New Queer Writing, which staged 18 new works from emerging and established queer writers.
Shockwave follows Larry (played by Trevor Lynch), a young man who must navigate his sexuality in a society shaped by fear and prejudice. It revisits a period when homosexuality was criminalised under apartheid and gay people faced widespread stigma.
“Homosexuality and faith often lived side by side in our communities, but only as long as certain things were never spoken about,” said Stanfield.
Homann said audiences were moved by the play, particularly younger people who might not have known that being gay in South Africa was once illegal. “Just your existence was illegal,” he said.
The Blue Album was written and performed by Vuyelwa Maluleke about queer life and love in black townships.
Other productions included The Blue Album, written and performed by Vuyelwa Maluleke, exploring queer life and “corrective rape” in townships.
Another hit with audiences was the play The Breasts of Tiresias, co-written by Angelo de Klerk and former Market Theatre artistic director Malcolm Purkey about the lived experience of a trans man.
A performance of A Bearded Marriage was part of the No Filter: New Queer Writing programme.
“I think we need more trans stories,” Homann said.
He said launching the festival in the theatre’s 50th year was an opportunity to recognise freedoms won over decades while acknowledging that discrimination based on sexuality and gender identity remained a challenge.
Homann said the inaugural festival had limited resources, but the response showed a need for more queer performance.
He confirmed that the theatre planned to hold the festival again next year.
Neo Nightingale, Righard van Jaarsveld and Kevin Narain performed a cabaret on the final day of the festival.
Trevor Lynch and Renate Stuurman performed Chantal Stanfield’s Shockwave, exploring homosexuality, religion and prejudice during apartheid’s State of Emergency in the 1980s.
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