A less likely activist could hardly have been imagined than fine arts student Dawn Silver as she wafted around the Wits University campus in the early 1960s in bare feet and kaftan with flowers in her hair, saying that all she wanted was peace and brotherhood.
The fact is she was a fighter. No-one fought harder against censorship and racism in South African theatre. No-one fought harder to ensure that excellence in South African theatre was recognised and rewarded than she did when she started the Naledi Theatre Awards, and kept them going for 16 years with little or no state funding, having to beg and use her own savings. No-one fought harder to defend their integrity against critics who benefited from the international recognition they bestowed.
No-one fought harder to create platforms for newer managers to enter what for many years was a closed old boys’ club. No-one fought harder to keep South African theatre alive when audiences dried up.
In 1976, during a wave of forced removals, she sang “This land is your land, this land is my land, this land belongs to you and me”, the first and probably only anti-apartheid protest song ever performed on SABC TV. If the government had had the wit to understand the song, her performance would have been terminated immediately, she said.
Dawn Lindberg, who died at the age of 75 in a Plettenberg Bay hospital this week after contracting Covid-19, was born one of seven siblings in Durban on April 19 1945.
After matriculating at Parktown Girls in Johannesburg in 1961, she went to Wits where she met law student and folk singer Des Lindberg, who taught her to play the guitar.
They strummed their guitars and sang Bob Dylan and Joan Baez songs in the smoke-filled Troubadour Club in Doornfontein. When the apartheid government banned We Shall Overcome, they made a point of singing that too.
They married in 1965, started the first nonracial theatre production company in SA and hit the road for three years with their caravan, two guitars, two cats and a map of SA and Rhodesia. Ninety percent of their shows were sold out, often with people bringing their own chairs.
Their first album, Folk on Trek, was banned for obscenity because of dubious lyrics to Mary Had a Little Lamb, and the spiritual Dese Bones Gonna Rise Again. Their first big hit was The Seagull’s Name was Nelson in 1971. It was meant and widely understood as a protest against the incarceration of Nelson Mandela. It topped the charts for 20 weeks. Des’s Die Gezoem van die Bye was the other big hit that turned them into household names.
In 1973 they produced the gospel musical Godspell, the first show in the country with a mixed race cast. They had to rehearse it on the front lawn of their Victorian mansion on Houghton ridge because no venue in Johannesburg would have them.
“We were young and fearless and we had this mission that we wanted to make change, we wanted to make a difference,” said Dawn.
The Holiday Inn in Maseru built them a theatre and people drove 300km to see the show. It was sold out for five months.
This spurred them to open at the Great Hall at Wits. The show was banned before it started, on the grounds of blasphemy, which didn’t fool anyone.
They asked advocate Anton Mostert, who’d overturned all government attempts to ban Scope magazine, to represent them, and went to court. He won the case hands down. Later he became a judge and blew the Information Scandal wide open.
They toured for 18 months against constant picket lines, tapped phones, bomb scares and death threats. They were branded communists. Dawn’s father actually was a communist, but she didn’t tell the police that.
The threats became more serious when they performed The Black Mikado in Diepkloof, Soweto, less than a month before the 1976 uprising, the first West End musical to premiere in Soweto. Whites coming to see the show were stopped and spreadeagled across their car bonnets while police searched them. Among the performers was singing star Thandi Klaasen. It was sold out.
The threats became more serious when they performed 'The Black Mikado' in Soweto in 1976
They took it to township and other venues around the country, including a convent in Pretoria where the tyres of every car in the parking lot were cut to ribbons.
Andries Treurnicht, deputy minister of education, sent them a letter warning: “We have ways and means of making you stop.” They came home one night to find “Julle gaan vrek [You will die]” painted on their driveway.
Godspell and The Black Mikado spearheaded the opening of theatres to all races in 1978.
Next came The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. They got a telegram from the censorship board ordering them to take “whore” out of the title and use stars. They went to advocate Jules Browde, who’d acted for Mandela and Oliver Tambo. He won the case by arguing that without “whore” parents would take their children to the play assuming it was The Best Little House on the Prairie, and the full title was reinstated.
In 1998 Dawn produced Popcorn by English comedian and playwright Ben Elton. It was very funny but contained shocking violence. A woman was shot and her head exploded. Dawn insisted that Des, in charge of the special effects, make it as realistic as possible. There were gasps of horror from the audience, which she loved.
She wanted to cast acclaimed actor Sean Taylor but he was known to be “trouble” and directors were scared of him.
She took him to lunch and said she wanted him to act in her production, “but don’t give me shit. I just can’t deal with actors who give me crap,” she said. He promised to be on his best behaviour, and was “brilliant”.
It received nine Vita Award nominations.
In 2003 they put on the Vagina Monologues after the writer Eve Ensler, who’d heard about Godspell, gave Dawn the commercial rights. It opened to a sell-out audience at the Grahamstown arts festival.
Then they took it to Bloemfontein where their poster, a Modigliani nude, was banned.
Asked about the furore it created, Dawn, who acted in and directed it, was typically unapologetic. “Yes, it has been highly controversial,” she said cheerfully. “The word vagina is used 136 times and there are 16 orgasms.”
Larger than life, powerful, charismatic, glamorous and energetic, she was the driving force in the famous Des & Dawn partnership. She was the one who made things happen and took the risks.
In spite of the fact that most of their productions played to sold-out audiences, they were shockingly expensive and never made them any money. She said it was because they never had any managers or lawyers advising them, but whether she would have listened was another matter.
During the cultural boycott in the ’80s they couldn’t get the rights to any productions so they went into corporate theatre, working for big companies. Sol Kerzner was their best employer. When he built Sun City and the Lost City the Lindbergs put on extraordinary productions for the roof-wetting and the opening of the Valley of the Waves.
They’d been warned about Kerzner but got on well, though he didn’t take kindly to Dawn, ever the producer, telling him how to do his job.
“Don’t shout at me,” he said angrily during one of her lectures. But he loved her.
For the first time they were given a budget and there was no risk involved. She, as always, created and directed all the shows. Des did the lyrics. Kerzner, who was seldom effusive, was over the moon.
Then, in addition to their famous Sunday soirees, they started doing corporate dinners at their mansion on Houghton ridge. They did the cabaret. One November they did 22 functions, booking scores of performers.
They lived in their 100-year-old Victorian mansion for 35 years, until they could no longer afford the upkeep and moved to Parktown North and a year ago to Plett.
Dawn created the Naledi (shining star) Theatre Awards in 2004 so that excellence in South African theatre would continue to be recognised and rewarded, after FNB closed the Vita Awards.
They became the biggest theatre awards event in SA. She had a panel of judges but made a point of seeing every single production, sometimes up to 70 a year, herself.
She fought for years to get the SABC to broadcast the awards ceremony, but they refused to pay for screening what became one of the most-watched shows on TV.
Dawn had to come up with the money for these productions, which were then gifted to the SABC, which made millions selling advertising around the event, not a cent of it coming back to Naledi.
When she decided it was no longer affordable and was about to bring down the curtain, kykNET came to the party, and paid to air the event.
Among the more than 300 artists, producers and directors who won awards were Ladysmith Black Mambazo, murdered musician Taliep Petersen and actress Gaynor Young, who wasn’t expected to live after falling 18m backstage at the State Theatre. The Lesedi Spirit of Courage Award was created for her.
On one occasion all the winners were black and they were all performing overseas so their awards had to be collected by whites. For Dawn nothing more aptly epitomised the success of transformation in South African theatre, which she drove with unyielding energy and commitment.
Her deepest regret towards the end of her life was that, just when local theatre was producing more world-class storytellers and actors than ever, the audiences in SA had dried up.
Her advice to anyone thinking of a career in theatre was to “take every single job that comes your way. Just say yes.”
Dawn is survived by her husband, Des, and sons, Joshua and Adam.
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