Among no less than three performing arts festivals this week in Cape Town is the innovative Darling Voorkamer Fees. Visitors buy a ticket for a route which includes three stops in local homes where performances are staged. Who exactly is on the route is not known beforehand, but the carefully balanced program includes artists as diverse as Sowetan-born songwriter Neo Muyanga, Nicholas Ellenbogen’s Theatre for Africa and Pieter Tredoux singing French chanson.
The problem often mooted about performing arts festivals in South Africa is that they fail to engage with the broader community and consequently struggle for credibility. But the Voorkamer concept appears to hold some solutions, chiefly because it goes far beyond simply spreading the economic benefits around. Sure, the local community is involved in the planning of the festival, there are casual jobs, the taxis, the concomitant food and craft stalls and bed and breakfast accommodation, but vitally important is that this festival also engages with its community participants on a cultural level.
The punters experience unfamiliar places in safe conditions. They meet not only strangers from their own community, but from communities they are normally unlikely to enter. But this is far more than a township tour, it’s a tour of the town of Darling, and the hosts are themselves exposed to what are for many untried experiences – cabaret, mime, classical music, puppets, modern dance – all performed by professionals right there in their living rooms. It also goes further than other arts’ ‘outreach’ programmes, as the residents have more control, introducing the shows and welcoming the audience, even sharing their accommodation with the artists.
The artists work hard – performing their thirty minute pieces twelve times over the three days to audiences not always familiar with the nature of their craft. It’s the honesty and freshness of the response they get, together with the intimacy – the average audience size is 20 (sometimes leading patrons to interject and converse with the performer during the show!) – which seems to invigorate the performers, and in some cases has turned out to be a life-changing experience.
Many artists also do workshops at the three local schools the week before the festival. These include activities such as making puppets, writing a script – then filming and editing it, and producing a daily newspaper. Last year remarkable results were achieved surpassing all expectations with a documentary made by a fifteen old girl on drug abuse and another on gang warfare. Dutch film-maker Mark Timmer gave the children digital video cameras and sent them into the field with sensational results. While Dutch theatre director Tom de Ket produced a soap opera written and performed by the local kids, who clearly demonstrated keen insights into – and even satirised – the television formats of the weather report, the business stats and the news.
Visitors do not know beforehand who they will get to see. They purchase a route ticket, taking them to three shows, carefully balanced and chosen by the producers. This encourages people to experiment. Not all the artists are announced and a few mystery guests turn up pleasant surprises. Unlike the usual solitary interval experience of the formal theatre, here audience members and complete strangers find it easy to chat among themselves between shows in the minicab taxis, sharing their perceptions and enjoying a cultural debate.
Naturally, the choice of work is restricted to what can be performed in a makeshift theatre. Stripped of complicated sets, sound and light effects – pure dramatic styles are encouraged. It’s not possible to stage a classical ballet or a full opera, but the Voorkamer Festival is doing something quite different. It’s high in concept, and as such easily replicated and versatile.
“I hope that festivals like this spring up all over the country,” says producer Inge Bos.
“It’s not idealistic or simplistic to say that this kind of festival bridges divides in society, enrich communities, and allows even the inhabitants of a small rural South African town, to enjoy and have a stake in world culture,” adds producer Wim Visser.
