It has been recognized that there is no comprehensive and complete archive on The Market Theatre that covers the years mentioned above, and this is a serious gap in historical recording of knowledge in South Africa. The archives that exist at present are housed in various places across the country. These include the Wits Historical Papers, The Star Newspaper, NELM and the State Theatre archive. This project proposed filling that gap by initially establishing what is missing in the various existing archives, negotiating with custodians of said archives in order to possibly bring original material together under one roof or to make copies of this material. The project also aimed at conducting interviews across the country with practitioners who worked at The Market Theatre during that time in order to compile a living memory that will be included in the archive, before this valuable knowledge is lost.
This archive will enable those researchers, academic or otherwise, to access knowledge on the art of that era, information on Apartheid and the arts, and The Market Theatre in general. There is no other archive that specifically addresses performance during the Apartheid era. It is thus vitally important that this history is readily available to anyone who might need to access it. It is also imperative that this history is recorded before it is lost. Innovation lies in the content of the archive.