Barney Simon, co-founder and Artistic Director of Johannesburg’s world-renowned Market Theatre, was one of South Africa’s leading and most innovative playwrights anb directors. He perfected the art of wprkshopped productions, drawing on what he called the ‘biographies’ of his actors and sending them inot the streets to observe, explore and experience tteh textures of the lives thery tehn protrayed on the stage. His untimely death in 1995 sent the theatre world on South Africa  and baroad into mourning.

This collection reflects somthing of the range of subjects he tackled. The works are Black Dog/Inj’emnyama, set against the backdrop of the dark and violent days of the 1970s and 1980s; Outers, an insightful exploration of life among Johannesburg’s vagrants;  the internationally acclaimned docudrama, Born in the RSA; and Score Me the Ages, with its empathetic glimpse  into the lives of a pair of city ‘rent-boys’ and some of their clients.

An Introduction sets the work in the context of Simon’s life, his artistic motivation and his refelctions on the significance of theatre.