The School Dramatic Society has had a long and successful career and it can look back with pride and satisfaction at its many productions.

 

Dramatic productions are an important part of a school year as they cater for that section of the pupils whose chief interest is not in rugby, cricket, tennis and other sporting events. It is noticed, however, that many of the School’s best sportsmen have displayed much talent on the stage. At one school production the boys of the First Fifteen made an excellent chorus of peers in “Iolanthe”.

 

The story of the Dramatic Society goes back to 1923 when a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was put on, but it is highly probable that there were earlier productions. Records of any earlier productions do not seem to exist.

 

Many members of staff and numerous Old Boys will remember the difficulties that confronted them when a play was being produced. The School Hall, now known as the Payne Hall, was really not big enough as one third of it was taken up with the erection of a very primitive stage. Adjacent classrooms were used as dressing rooms and spot lights were placed on the balconies above. The Floor-boards creaked ominously when the actors moved about and candle grease was used to try and prevent this form happening. The curtain was a real Heath Robinson affair and it got so tattered that a request was made to the Girls’ School for use of their curtain.

 

Seating, too, was very primitive as use had to be made of some of the School’s sports stands to enable people at the back of the hall to see what was happening on stage. As the Payne Hall has many doors, it was often draughty and the acoustics were by no means good. Despite all this, the ladies wore evening dresses and men dinner jackets for most of the performances.

 

One production was done in the lovely grounds of the old Tsessebe House, but unfortunately a shower of rain put all the footlights out of use and an interested dog rather disturbed the players by its continual barking. A performance of “Twelfth Night” was done on the floor of the Payne Hall without the stage and the audience had to be very limited in numbers to enable them to see. Behind a box hedge Sir Toby Belch was reading his part and he had been imbibing too unwisely, he lost his place in the script, and the words which came from behind the hedge would no doubt have amazed Shakespeare.

 

At one time the annual production was usually a Shakespeare, though other plays like “Treasure Island” were interspersed. Some years the staff decided to show the boys how it ought to be done and several plays were produced by them and were greeted with great applause. Among these were “Lord Babs”, “Arsenic and Old Lace”, “The Middle Watch” and “The Witness for the Prosecution”.

 

The arrival of Mr H.P.A Hofmeyr as Headmaster brought a big change as he was very interested in music, and we then had a number of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas produced most successfully by him. By this time (1961), however, the new hall had been built and a proper stage with room for the chorus work was available though at first the lighting was very inadequate. Perhaps the most successful Gilbert and Sullivan was “Trial by Jury” which was performed three times. “H.M.S Pinafore” with its excellent set was highly appreciated. From time to time Matric setworks were done and these always presented seating problems for the front-of-house manager.

 

In the early days of the new hall, seating was very inadequate too as people at the back could not see properly and the acoustics were poor. Eventually, thanks to the work of Mr Vic Robson, wooden platforms were erected at the back of the hall, and this helped considerably. Better lighting was introduced and the change rooms below the hall were no longer the grim dungeons they were at one time. The stage has never been ideal as room in the wings is scanty and access from one side of the stage to the other very difficult. A slightly higher stage too would have been to advantage. The many large windows make matinee performance rather unsatisfactory without very heavy curtains to darken the auditorium.

 

An interesting innovation was the Inter-House-One-Act Play Festival which started off as a play-reading society and gradually became something more ambitious. It was really one of the most interesting of the House competitions and, at times, reached a very high standard. Of course, the boarding houses had a big advantage as it was easier for them to produce the plays but some of the day houses did very well, as well. Unfortunately, enthusiasm for this competition waned and it was many years until the School again produced house plays in 1989: possibly coming of television and videos had much to do with this. 

 

It is easy to deplore the vanishing from the scene of major play productions but these days it is not easy to find members of the staff who have the talent, time and patience to take on the task, and this is a great pity. As with other societies, play producing depends largely on individual enthusiasm on the part of some member of the staff, and the School for a long time has seemed unable the find the right person.

 

How lucky the school has been over the years to have had people like A.S Dashwood, F.W. von Linsingen, B.W. Rose, G.G. Dickerson and that incomparable pair, Janet and Dan Swart, and of course others. The Swart period was a great time for the Dramatic Society. Dan put on some excellent Shakespearian plays, and Janet did the musical ones. When they both left the staff the School suffered a big loss, and no-one has followed their example.

 

In the nineteen-eighties no major performance was staged, but Mr J Brodrick organised an annual Arts Festival which was produced in various classrooms and the Media Centre. This scheme gave a number of boys a chance to try acting, directing, script-writing and performing in various ways.

 

The biggest production undertaken in recent times was a combined effort by the three Jeppe Schools, produced especially for the centenary celebration in 1990. A cast of over 150 pupils, staff and parents performed "The Rugby Match", an operetta written for the occasion, using music by Sir Arthur Sullivan and some of the words of W S Gilbert. Mr Mike Bird kindly directed this mammoth production.

 

Mr R Houghton involved small groups of boys in various plays festivals – the old TED Festival (including some plays in Afrikaans), RAPS (Jeppe rejoined after several years’ absence) and EADS. In addition, he took boys (and sometimes girls as well) to perform on the fringe at the Grahamstown Festival. "Boys in the Picture" played at the National School of the Arts Original Works Festival, and ran for a week at the Pieter Roos Theatre in the Civic Theatre Complex in 1997. Mr Houghton directed several musical variety shows over an extended period, and breathed new vitality into the inter-house house plays. He was particularly good at training boys to handle the sophisticated equipment required in a modern theatre. He also directed a number of full-scale productions including "Oliver" (at Jeppe Prep, 1995), "The Mikado" (at Jeppe Girls’, 1999), "Wanted one body" (2000),

 

Ms C Kreutzfeldt-Bossert kept the festival tradition going for a few years after Mr Houghton left.

 

More recently still, Mrs S Doubell-Robins has directed "Antigone" and "Macbeth" in the Payne Hall. The House Plays’ Festival staggers on, and we still enter the RAPS and EADS Festivals regularly.