CURRENT EVENTS OUTRUN SOUTH AFRICA THEATER

Events in South Africa are moving so swiftly that the theater can’t keep up. That’s the assessment by Johannesburg theater impresario Barney Simon.

“The real problem is that things are happening so fast that it’s like dealing with running water,” Simon told The Times by phone this week. The artistic co-director of the Market Theater in Johannesburg--a complex roughly akin to Joseph Papp’s New York Public Theater--is also an artist in his own right. He collaborated with South African actors Mbongeni Ngema and Percy Mtwa in the development of the explosive comedy “Woza, Albert!,” which he brought to Los Angeles in 1982. (It dealt in part with absurd official reaction to the coming of Christ to South Africa.)

“Ngema wrote and performed a play in Durban last year that’s excellent,” Simon said. “It’s very strong, and it’s going to travel. It’s called ‘Asinimali,’ meaning ‘we have no money.’ ”

The rapidly accelerating strife in South Africa, however, has made it impossible for him to gain a focus on new work, Simon said.

“I was going to do a play here about solitary confinement--so many people are arrested. But it’s outmoded by the energy of what’s happening now. I’m meeting with my multiracial cast to decide what to do. It’s not that we’re trying to be ‘relevant.’ We want to do something with a gut feeling.”

Since the threat of censorship is much greater in South Africa than in the United States, one might expect that the commercial theater would be reluctant to risk government reprisal. Simon reports that that is indeed the case. But the silence from the more “serious” theater exists for a different reason.

“You must remember that the whites are untouched by the violence you’re seeing and hearing about, even though they’re feeling anxiety that the government isn’t attempting a solution” Simon said. “It’s all happening in the black townships. A lot of people who oppose the government are feeling deep despair, though a lot of creative whites are determined to stay.”

Simon is one of them.

“These are not easy times,” he said. “It’s an exceptionally bad scene here. Things are moving so fast, so terribly. Blacks are burning down their own houses; they’re burning each other. There’s an enormously destructive energy happening, a frustration. Lord knows, they need guidance, but the government isn’t entering into a dialogue.

“It’s a moving landscape here. You can’t find clarity and specifics. The other night I saw a very talented white cabaret singer named Jennifer Ferguson who sang songs that touched on the pain. ‘She’s so heavy,’ someone complained. I thought of the line, ‘Nothing is more appalling than ignorance in action.’ ”

Last week’s Stage Watch noted the (then) upcoming contract negotiations between Actors Equity and representatives of the League of Resident Theaters. The meeting began Tuesday at Equity’s New York headquarters. At issue was the reclassification of theaters (which in turn would affect salary levels); housing expenses for actors working away from home; greater employment for ethnic minorities, and stage managerial staffing.

Before the talks got under way, both sides were said to be significantly apart. At press time Wednesday, the meeting was still in progress. The contract deadline is Sept. 1. If terms aren’t reached by then, Equity has threatened a strike.

LATE CUES: The correct number for the AIDS benefit performance by S.T.A.G.E. at the Variety Arts Center Oct. 7 is (213) 851-3771. . . . Pipeline artistic director Scott Kelman says the Wallenboyd Theater, site of the “Angel’s Flight” series, seats 70, not 870, as erroneously reported last week.

The Tony Award-winning musical “The Tap Dance Kid,” with the astonishing Hinton Battle, moves into the Pantages on Sept. 20 for a limited engagement. . . . “Lisa and David” is holding a benefit performance at the Marilyn Monroe Theatre on Saturday for “Victims for Victims,” the organization funded by actress Theresa Saldana. Saldana plays Lisa in the musical.