Joburg Theatre, Performance arts complex in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, South Africa.
The Joburg Theatre is a performing arts complex in Johannesburg with three main performance spaces: the Nelson Mandela Theatre with about 1,000 seats, a smaller Fringe Theatre, and the Spaces Theatre. The facilities feature modern stage technology to support different types of productions.
The theatre opened in 1962 as the Johannesburg Civic Theatre with a production of Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. It was renamed in 2001 and became the only theatre worldwide named after Nelson Mandela.
The theatre took the name of Nelson Mandela in 2001 and transformed from a venue that once excluded Black audiences into a space for South African performing arts. Today it presents local productions and works with international artists to bring different perspectives to its stages.
The complex has multiple entrances and differently-sized performance spaces that make it easy to attend different types of events on the same visit. Its location in Braamfontein is accessible by public transport, but parking should be checked ahead, especially for evening shows.
The venue welcomed over 145,000 visitors in its opening year, showing how much Johannesburg audiences were hungry for live theatre at the time. This remarkable attendance reveals how important the venue was to the city's cultural life from the start.
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