BGMC South Africa Tour Committee Membership Blog

BGMC's Communications guru and keeper of the public blog, Susan Ryan-Vollmar traveled to the Middle East with BGMC to document the journey and maintained a media archive of that trip.  Susan will be travelling with us  to South Africa and making posts to BGMC's public blog before, during and after the tour regarding our activities.  Susan has c omposed this timeline of LGBT history of South Africa in the last 50 years.   Like the United States, the progress toward LGBT legal and social equality in South Africa has been a long struggle—and it continues to this day, as the country works to combat widespread anti-LGBT discrimination and violence. Here is a timeline of major events in South Africa’s LGBT history: 1907     Taberer Report Published J. Glenn Leary, a magistrate, and Henry M. Taberer, a member of the Native Affairs Department, are tasked with determining levels of “unnatural practices” among African men working in mine compo...

Adapted from the hit animated film set in the fictional Pride Lands, the stage adaptation is rooted in South Africa by its music, much of it by the composer Lebo M., using South African languages and choral stylings. Almost every cast — and there have been many — has included eight to 12 South Africans among approximately 50 performers. Over the last two decades, 263 South Africans, many with little formal training in singing or acting, have been dispatched all over the planet to “Lion King” productions staged in Dutch, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese and Spanish. “I felt very strongly that we had to have South Africans in it from the beginning” said t he show’s award-winning director, Julie Taymor while in Durban in June . She was there for a round of auditions, which continued through the summer, to assemble a largely South African-cast tour that will begin in Manila in March 2018 and then set out across Asia. Follow this link below to the ful...

Editor’s note: As we prepare for our tour to South Africa next June, we are recalling the effect that HIV and AIDS has had on our chorus. We will be meeting with groups and individuals in Johannesburg and Cape Town who continue to be effected by the global pandemic, where about 20% of the adult population are fighting the disease and medical help is not always available. This is the story of former baritone Bill Williamson, whose love of life and passion for the arts is recalled by his dear friend John Strumwasser. John tells a story that takes us from Bill’s first rehearsal in 1982 to his death more than a decade later and even to seeing his family members at concerts in subsequent years. Bill’s story reminds us of how much we as a community and we as a chorus have lost. There was a lot to take in on meeting Bill Williamson the first time, which for me was when he joined the BGMC in 1982, after our first concert. He was very handsome, he loved to laugh and he was warm and...