THE THEATRE

The Theatre in the District

 

The Theatre in the District now stands in the old church building which was the original St Phillip’s Church with its high barrel vault ceiling which resonated with the songs and praise of the congregation when it was built in 1885.  It was built by the Cowley Monks who came out from England near the Oxford area. They ministered to the community here, which was very mixed indeed with inhabitants ranging from landowners to slaves.

It served as a place of worship till a new church was designed and built in 1934 about five buildings away by Sir Herbert Baker (an architect famous in South Africa for some iconic and historical buildings) the old church was deconsecrated and became a school. 
Lydia Williams was a founding member of St Phillip the Deacon Anglican Church when it was originally established. She was a slave woman who had lived in the area when it was a large slave-holding estate named Zonnebloem. Lydia had been born there in 1820. She was in her mid-fifties when she assisted the Cowley Fathers, missionary priests from England, in their work.  A freed slave herself she had founded a school for the children of slaves in her home. The Lydia Williams English Church School stood in the Dry Dock part of District Six until it was demolished in the 1970s

In 2003 the parishioners of St Phillip named another building after her to register their sense of victory over a past which had attempted to erase District Six from the memory of Cape Town and its people. For this reason the old St Phillips School and Chapel was named the Lydia Williams Centre for Memory and Healing.

Their decision was also a conscious reminder of the commitment to the arts of an ex-principal of the school, George Veldsman. Through the many dramatic performances enacted on the stage at this venue, Veldsman gave the many school children of the District a vision of the possibilities of freedom beyond the shackles of apartheid. It is said that he was responsible for mounting the first black Shakespeare production which was rehearsed in the old church building and presented in the Town Hall, just down the road.

In the 1960s District Six was flattened but the bulldozers never got to this building or the few blocks on this northern side of the freeway. Here life and the buildings have remained as District Six once was. There is a famous mural from this period capturing those elements typical of the District 6 life that once thrived.

During the eighties, for over twenty years, the building became the home of the Community Arts Project providing alternative arts education to the disadvantaged. It has always actively served the oppressed communities and has also always had a focus on the Arts whether a school under George Veldsman’s guidance or as a home for Community Arts Project. 
The building, empty for almost two years, once again continues the focus on education with Arts skills training for the youth with performances of Woza Cape Town for visitors to Cape Town.