Sophiatown: A Play

By Junction Avenue Theatre Company

Sophiatown was the 'Chicago of South Africa', a vibrant community that produced not only gangsters and shebeen queens but leading journalists, writers, musicians and politicians, and gave urban African culture its rhythm and style. This play, based on the life history of Sophiatown, opened at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg in February 1986 to great acclaim. The play won the AA Life Vita Award for Playwright of the Year 1985/86. This new edition of the play includes an introduction which sets the work in its historical context.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1868142361
• ISBN13: 9781868142361
• Release Date: August 1993
• Publisher: Wits University Press
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Who will produce this in the US?

This is a fascinating South African play from the time of apartheid, in which a young white woman becomes a lodger in an otherwise black boarding house in Johannesburg, as a sort of social experiment arranged by a young black journalist. I've read that it's based on an idea put out by Lewis Nkosi and Nat Nakasa, who were South African journalists in the 1950s-1960s whose lives in South Africa were made untenable by the creation of apartheid. I'd love to see this lively, humorous, moving play produced in the U.S. Nutty to Meet You! Dr. Peanut Book #1