The Junction Avenue Theatre Company is one of South Africa’s best known and most successful workshop theatre groups. It has carved a special niche for itself in the world of South African drama by taking a fresh look at the country’s history in ways which are both interesting and innovative. Here, for the first time, is a collection  of the scripts of their four best-known plays, plays, each created in a workshop.

They are The Fantastical History of a Useless Man (1976); Randlords and Rotgut (1978), winner of the 1984 Olive Schreiner Prize; the much travelled, multi award-winning Sophiatown (1986); and the highly controversial Tooth and Nail (1989) never before published.

Professor Martin Orkin, well known author of Shakespeare and Apartheid and Drama and the South African State,  provides in his introduction brief accounts of the work of the Junction Avenue Theatre Company, the nature of Workshop Theatre in the context of traditions of naturalism and realism in establishment South African theatre, and critical accounts of each of the four texts.

Professor Martin Orkin is the Head of the Department of Theatre at the University of Haifa, Israel.