FATC — 30 Years | 1995 – 24 October 2025

Today, 24 October 2025, we celebrate 30 years of making, fighting many good fights, and holding space. Born from a commitment to creative rigour and social imagination, The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative (FATC) marks three decades of arts practice rooted in urban Johannesburg and rural Mpumalanga — practice that has always been as much about people and place as it is about performance.

For thirty years, we have practised arts activism: making work that asks difficult questions, centres dignity, and insists on the human face of justice in a complicated democracy. Our choreography, festivals, training and community programmes have sought to strengthen citizens, open conversations, and create routes for voices too often pushed to the margins. That commitment remains our north star.

We have weathered storms — economic uncertainty, the pressures that confront NGOs and non-profit organisations in South Africa, and the everyday labour of holding a creative community together across distance and difficulty. That we are still here, together, is a triumph born of stubborn love, stubborn practice, and stubborn partnership. We celebrate this resilience not as an endpoint, but as living proof that collective care and cultural work matter.

We give our deepest thanks to the artists, elders, students, neighbours, funders, partners and audiences who have journeyed with us. You have sustained us with your labour, your trust, your criticism, and your applause. To every collaborator who has shared a stage, a studio, a story, a meal or a tent with us — thank you. You are the village that raised us.

We are honoured that our work has been recognised locally and nationally — acknowledgements such as the Adelaide Tambo Award for Human Rights in the Arts, among others, have helped to amplify the social justice thread that runs through our practice. These recognitions are not trophies but reminders of the responsibility we carry forward.

As we mark 30 years, we also look to the future with appetite and care: new productions, cross-border collaborations, deepened training, expanded community programmes, and festivals that continue to open up rural arts ecologies. We relish the potential of what lies ahead — of making more work that heals, agitates, celebrates and connects.

We have created a series of FATC 30 videos — short conversations and recollections where alumni, collaborators and friends join us to look back, laugh, and dream forward. We invite you to watch, share, and create your own video that celebrates what FATC has meant for you in your artistic journey.

Happy Birthday to us — and to our village.

With gratitude and resolve

The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative (FATC)

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