The comic theatre of Stephen Black in South Africa

Stephen Black's comic theatre has vanished from contemporary South Africa as effectively as its tangible appurtenances: the elaborate Edwardian theatre buildings, the palimpsests of improvised scripts, the photos and other documents, its living performers and even its audiences. There are cultural-historical reasons for this. Time passes; ways of entertainment die; aspirations change. But Black, a master entrepreneur of the colonial heyday, should not have been so forgotten.