Maynardville Open-Air Theatre

The Maynardville Open-Air Theater is an outdoor theatre in Maynardville Park, Wynberg, Cape Town, South Africa. It seats 720 people and is known for its annual Shakespeare in the Park plays.

Before it was named Maynardville, the land where the park now sits was government ground, first administered by the Dutch East India Company and, after 1795, by other British authorities. In July 1807 two young officers of the Cape regiment, Lieut. Louis Ellert and Lieut. Ernst Egger, married two sisters named Gertruida and Catherina Baartman. Just prior to his marriage, Ellert was granted a piece of land adjacent to the camp, where he built a cottage named Rosendal. The uneven ground was levelled and cultivated by slaves on either side of a stream known as the Krakeelwater, which flowed through the small estate. For several years Ellert and his wife shared the house with her sister and husband until, in 1810, Egger decided to purchase a piece of ground adjacent to Rosendal for his own use. Ellert was later killed in the war on the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony, but because he had transferred ownership to his wife, the widow Ellert continued to manage her small farm after her husband's death.

Her brother-in-law was not so efficient in his farming operations and this, coupled with his extravagant life style, forced him into bankruptcy. His land was not lost to his family, however, because his sister-in law purchased his property. To do this and to support her large household, the widow Ellert took a bond on the property from a Cape Town businessman named James Mortimer Maynard.

In 1836, Maynard took over Rosendal from the widow Ellert, who had become insolvent. He later bought another property from her to make up the site for his home, Maynard's Villa. Maynard died on 9 September 1874. As he failed to produce an heir, his estate went to his nephew, William Mortimer Maynard Farmer, who was already an established business man.

Farmer married the daughter of Major Richard Wolfe, then resident magistrate and civil commissioner of Wynberg. Their daughter Enid married John Bernard, a major in the Royal Marines; they had two sons, Gerald and Brian. Enid Bernard died in 1949 and Maynardville was immediately sold to the Cape Town City Council, to be preserved as a public park. The historic but dilapidated homestead was demolished by the municipal authorities in 1954.

The theatre had its origins in late 1949, when a local philanthropist, Margaret Molteno, submitted an application for municipal permission to convert the little-used park into an open-air theatre for ballet performances. She had been inspired by a recent visit to Regents Park Open-air Theatre in London, and intended to use the project as a means of funding schools and teacher-training colleges for underprivileged children on the Cape Flats.

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