Baxter Theatre Announces Season at the 2017 Edinburgh Assembly Fringe Festival

The Baxter Theatre Centre, producers of the hit 2012 Edinburgh play, MIES JULIE, has been invited to showcase an impressive total of six award-winning, cutting-edge, South African productions at the 2017 Edinburgh Assembly Fringe Festival in Scotland this August.

Presented in association with Assembly Festival and Riverside Studios, the six dramas include Lara Foot's TSHEPANG: THE THIRD TESTAMENT, KAROO MOOSE - NO FATHERS and THE INCONVENIENCE OF WINGS, THE FALL and Sylvaine Strike's TOBACCO, with Yael Farber's MIES JULIE Mies Julie returns to complete the line-up. Lara Foot, the CEO and artistic director of the Baxter Theatre Centre and executive producer of the season says:

This is an amazing challenge and opportunity for the 36 actors and technicians who will be opening all six shows at the Assembly Fringe on the same day, 5 August. We are proud to be part of such a prestigious international festival where we hope to learn, grow and be part of world thinking, understanding and connectivity. We want to show that we represent theatre which is cutting-edge in style and content and that South African theatre is to be taken seriously. With some generous financial assistance from The Andrew W Mellon Foundation, Business and Arts South Africa (BASA), Investec and, with the Assembly on board, we were able to create this season.

William Burdett-Coutts adds his comments on the season:

We are delighted to welcome Cape Town's Baxter Theatre back to Edinburgh as part of their 40th Anniversary and in celebration of 70 years of the Fringe. Yael Farber's MIES JULIE was the theatrical coup of the 2012 festival. It garnered incredible reviews and awards and has gone on to enormous acclaim and sold out performances around the world. It really is one of the best shows I have ever seen and is entirely appropriate as the headline production of this season of six award-winning productions. With Lara Foot at the helm, Baxter Theatre continues to go from strength to strength and enjoys an enviable reputation for world-class theatre that shows the vibrancy of South African culture to audiences the world over.

This Baxter South African season at the Assembly Fringe Festival follows smartly on the Baxter Theatre Centre's milestone fortieth anniversary yesterday. At the forefront of the performing arts, both as a popular venue and as a leading award-winning producer, the Baxter unwaveringly continues the tradition of showcasing cutting-edge, contemporary and classic works, making it one of the busiest independent theatres in Africa.

The iconic theatre came into being as the result of a bequest from the late Dr William Duncan Baxter who, in his will, bequeathed an amount of money to the University of Cape Town for the purpose of establishing a theatre which would, in his own words, 'develop and cultivate the arts in Cape Town and the adjacent districts for all artists'. He and architect Jack Barnett wanted to design a theatre that embodied a South African spirit and culture, and it had to embrace all the people of Cape Town, at a time when South Africa was hugely divided.

Fahiem Stellenboom, the Baxter Theatre Centre's marketing manager, comments:

This is such an honour and we are thrilled to present this line-up of productions at the largest and most prestigious arts festival in the world, while the Baxter celebrates its 40th birthday and especially given our history as a theatre in South Africa since 1977.

Since first opening its doors, the theatre has always been a venue for all South Africans despite the restrictions imposed and segregation laws that were enforced by the apartheid government. The Entertainment Act of 1931 introduced legal censorship, the Publication and Entertainment Act of 1963 segregated black and white audiences unless under special licences. To build the Baxter in the city centre would have meant that black people could not have accessed it, and that is why the University of Cape Town became a strategic location and venue for a theatre for all.

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