Interview with Nik Rabinowitz

Nik Rabinowitz

A shorter version of this interview ran in the Mail & Guardian on 9 December 2011.

Interview with Nik Rabinowitz
Brent Meersman

Brent Meersman: Has Jewish comedy affected you?

Nik Rabinowitz: My Godfather was a comedian and he was also a Jewish. He was actually more of an actor, but he was a big joke teller and collector of jokes, many of which were Jewish jokes. I think it is about being an outsider, whether you’re Jewish or black or a woman or whatever – a gay Moslem. Jewish comedy goes back centuries, dealing with oppression and difficult circumstances.

BM: A survival mechanism?

NR: Perhaps it was, and in our current economic and political climate there is a lot that gets people down, so the role of comedians appears to be important right now.

BM: Jewish humour is also often self-deprecating.

NR: Can you prove you Jewish? Yes, ask me for a loan (laughs). I think that my Jewish comedy mirrors my own discovery of my Jewishness, because I went to a Waldorf school; it was a Christian environment . . . Until I was 11, I didn’t know anything about being Jewish. Suddenly I was thrown into cheider for six year olds and I was 12 – Gulliver’s Travels for Jews. You have this Bar Mitzvah and all this Jewishness descends on you. . . I didn’t really know how to speak about it in my comedy. Now in this show [Stand and Deliver] I talk of the new wave of Judaism which is black Jews, Afrikaans Jews, and coloured Jews. In this show I also talk about death for three minutes. Funny shit happens when people die. It took me a while to work it out, how to do it in stand-up.

BM: Why do you want to make people laugh?

NR: Humour is a good way of bringing people together. There is something transformative about people laughing for that amount of time. It’s a healing of sorts. Cathartic.

BM: In the way crying or laughing are almost the same?

NR: They often look [the same]. I have a friend who I sometimes can’t tell the difference, especially on the phone.

BM: You do a lot of political comedy. If you look at Bill Maher in the USA, Have I Got News For You on BBC TV and the News Quiz on BBC Radio, we’re not doing very well are we with political comedy?

NR: If you compare us to the USA or UK yes. But [not] if you compare us to Australia! Going and performing there was interesting because I went to see a fair amount of comedy – nothing political. The Late Nite News show [with Loyiso Gola on ETV] is trying, but it’s not as controversial as a puppet that looks like the president.

BM: How does political comedy work for you?

NR: The discipline of doing a weekly radio show [The week that wasn’t on Cape Talk / Radio 702] has made me a better comic. And the more I can say stuff to which people say ‘they are going to put a hit out on you’, the better. The [radio show creates the] building blocks of my stage show. . . Connecting the political to the personal I think is interesting.

BM: But what makes politics funny?

NR: John Cleese was talking about the tension around taboo topics – how the laugh is often in proportion to the tension. Laughter is a natural reaction.

BM: And humour is transgressive.

NR: Yes. It’s an amazing time to be a comic in this country, just the abundance of material! ZANews is a release for the tension we build up. We need that to be mainstream [ZANews is internet streamed]. I watch television news but I’m always looking at it from this [show material] perspective. I want it to be as fucked up as possible. [But] the other night, afterwards I felt anxious, distressed and oh my god where is the country going. Laughter defuses it, makes it palatable and we can laugh about it.

BM: What comedy do you like doing most?

NR: I’ve done a lot of stuff for the Jewish community. . . . I think intimate comedy clubs are the most exciting; when I’m doing something I haven’t done before and I have no idea if it will work and then it kills. And it kills me too. That is exciting. With corporates you do what you know works; people aren’t going to go with you on interesting tangents.

BM: I always disliked your braai cook, Jannie Olivier, the kaalgat kok, “master baster” sketch.

NR: Yes, I remember you wrote that. I don’t do characters anymore. I did it because I saw other people doing it. The only character I really enjoyed doing was the black kugel. I find it breaks my momentum and rhythm with the stand-up.

BM: Characters can also trap one into having to do them every time, creating an audience expectation.

NR: (Nodding) The Jewish-Xhosa persona I have created, I can find myself trapped in too.

BM: What are the tensions in this Jewish-Xhosa combo? It is just bizarrely unique or are their affinities, contradictions?

NR: It was a gimmick. I always wanted to say the Jewish-speaking Xhosa guy, but people would think it was a mistake on the press release. I use circumcision for one thing. But the interesting tension is between Jew and Moslem at the moment. But where is the comedy? I find myself in a position because I see how everyone feels about it – my mother in law who lost most of her family in the Holocaust, how she sees Israel . . . but I also appreciate my Moslem friends’ views, and [then] there’s the SA connection. I saw this thing on Carte Blanche with Afrikaans Jews living in Israel – the boere Afrikaans stereotype farmer interviewed and the racism was: “I had 195 sheep and ‘they’ steal ten a week, and it used to be the . . . and now its them”. He talks to his dog in Afrikaans; it used to bark at the blacks but now the Ethiopians are Jewish and he has to re-educate the dog. “And that Tractor over there is financed by the WesBank. Ha ha! Get it?”

BM: We live among a politically conservative Jewish community. Are you prepared to go there [Palestine issues] with your comedy?

NR: I’m often tempted to when I get riled up by stuff, but my wife is a sobering influence. What is it going to achieve if I start to rant? There are people in my own family; am I going to shift anyone’s attitudes? It’s about finding a way to say stuff. [Israel] lends itself to our own conversation about land and in this city too . . . I do this piece, coloured people converting [to Judaism] to get into gated communities in Sea Point.

BM: What does the private Nik do?

NR: This world that I operate in is quite full-on; being in front of people a lot and having to be funny all the time. One of my favourite places in the world is in the Cederberg mountains. My dad spent about 20 years documenting rock art. As a kid I grew up camping and visiting these amazing places. There is one magical spot in particular, way off the beaten track, and I like to go there and spend a week just camping out on my own. We [comedians] are observers; we need that time.

BM: What was your first job?

NR: I worked as a river guide on the Breede and later the Orange. I was a handlanger. I used to [have to] carry everything on the boat – the portable toilet and a bag of shit. I’d carry people’s shit for four days on the Orange River.

BM: Have you been booed on stage?

NR: Once I was told to get off the stage or words to that effect: ‘You’re not funny!’ When I started I had this black Zimbabwean character I used to do for my entire set. Then I realised I had to stop doing that and start being Nik . . . I stayed over at Hanover and met Mark Banks at the bar and bought his CD. That was the first stand-up comedy I’d ever listened to, and South African, and it was so funny I drove to Johannesburg all the way with it playing.

BM: What were your first theatre experiences?

NR: I was a handlanger for Nicholas Ellenbogen and Theatre for Africa. We drove around Africa and I did the lights and tents and I dug a long drop in Swaziland. I got malaria. . . Before stand-up I did corporate theatre. I did something for Coca Cola in Nigeria; I wrote this little show, the history of Coke in 15 minutes, but after 7 minutes they came to us and said, “Please can you stop. We are eating now”. On a makeshift stage next to a pool all the way to Nigeria to do that!

BM: Is there any question you wished interviewers would ask you but they never have?

NR: How did I meet my wife.

January 2, 2012 | Tags: , | Comments Closed

Waiting for Godot in Khayelitsha

Waiting for Godot performed in Khayelitsha


Photos: Damian Crook

One look at the sprawling shacks literally across the road from the O.R. Tambo Sports Centre in Khayelitsha and the seemingly endless agony of waiting for a better life is quite apparent. At a once-off performance here on a cold Monday evening (August 2), Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece and a watershed play in the history of theatre, struck an immediate chord.

The British production directed by Sean Mathias started at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London’s West End and is on a world tour, with a cast that includes Sir Ian McKellen. The renowned actor is well known to a wide audience for his role as Gandalf in the blockbuster film trilogy The Lord of the Rings.

Godot is perceived to be a notoriously difficult text. When first performed in London in 1955, it was greeted with incomprehension. The story goes that critic Harold Hobson left the auditorium, but was persuaded to go back inside and trust the experience. The legendary critic Kenneth Tynan, required a few weeks to understand the work, but then concluded: the play ‘forced me to re-examine the rules which had hitherto governed the drama’. Beckett went on to receive the Nobel Prize.

It might be a revelation for those who intellectualize Beckett, how the local citizens of Khayelitsha, many with limited exposure to formal theatre, enjoyed and understood the performance. After all, Athol Fugard directed a production of Godot in 1962 at the Rehearsal Room in Johannesburg with an all-black cast. One of the earliest productions was in San Quentin prison, where Beckett’s absurdity is still all too real.

Mathias and his cast were determined despite real logistical challenges to tour to Khayelitsha, if only for one performance. They describe it as a highlight of their world tour. McKellen has also been visiting schools in the area. He has now performed this production of Godot in 17 theatres.

When we arrive at the hall, they are still rehearsing, having re-blocked the performance for this one show.

An audience of around 600 gathered, about a third white, among all of them many recognisable faces from the arts community. People started queuing from 5pm; the play was scheduled to start at 6pm, but “curtain” – there was of course no curtain or proscenium arch – “went up” only at 6:30pm. A marimba band entertained patrons while they waited.

Admission was on a “pay-what-you-can” basis. The box office says tickets sold for as little as ten cents, while one person paid R1000. People continued to trickle in right up until interval, filling the stands at the back of the hall.

Dressed as a dishevelled tramp, McKellen (Estragon/Gogo) enters first, removing his boot to show a bleeding, suppurating foot. When Gogo says: “We’ve no rights anymore? . . . We’ve lost our rights?’, you can feel the audience’s ears prick up.

Soon he and his vagrant cohort, Vladimir (Roger Rees) are talking of hanging themselves from a tree, which will give them the added benefit of an erection. There is loud laughter. The entire evening is punctuated with applause and laughter. Gasps when Lucky (Brendan O’Hea), with his sad face, enters with a rope lead noosed around his neck, weighted down with a huge leather bag, wicker-basket and folding chair. His master, Pozzo (Matthew Kelly), has all the comic horror of the child-killing clown in the film of Stephen King’s It. When he demands of the homeless men: ‘Waiting? . . . Here? On my land?’, a series of ‘Yo! Yo! Yo!’ is emitted by a woman sitting behind me. There are protests as Lucky is called “pig”, “hog”, and obediently holds Pozzo’s whip in his mouth – the subjugated complicit in his oppression; dead silence when Rees shouts: ‘It’s a scandal! . . . To treat a man like that!”; loud chuckles and pointing as McKellen gnaws Pozzo’s discarded chicken bones from the floor.

More applause after Lucky’s avalanche of a monologue ends with his collapse; belly laughs when the exhausted Lucky topples over again and Gogo says, ‘Oh, his doing it on purpose’.

Near the conclusion of Act 1, a follow-spotlight accompanied by an eerie sound effect falls on the two tramps. Someone in the audience mutters, “Ooh! Police!”

In the second half when the characters all crumple in a heap, children squeal with delight.

The performance ends to whistles, cheers, and synchronised clapping. The actors exit the stage into the audience, shaking hands, posing for photographs on cellphones. It has been a success.

Waiting for Godot closes at the Fugard Theatre on August 14.
Tel: 021-461 4554.

August 13, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Comments Closed

South African Theatre: The Decade

In the first decade of the 21st century, the most obvious shifts in mainstream South African theatre followed world trends. Stand-up comedy burgeoned into several annual festivals dedicated to telling jokes; Broadway style, lavish musical spectacles, mounted in our state of the art new theatres, dominated ticket sales; and the devolution of the playwright continued.

Audiences are at last showing some signs of demographic shift, but mostly in the province of entertainment. The coloured audience is now the most significant theatre audience in the Western Cape, filling runs that often last for months. The Lion King broke all previous box office records. 656 000 people saw it, at least 25% from the burgeoning black middle class. What is still to be seen is a South African musical that can rival the imports.

The demise of the well-written play pace Athol Fugard is much lamented by critics like me. The decade saw the sad constriction of Fugard’s voice. His plays have shrunk to dramatized short stories, tripping over headline-grabbing issues such as crime, AIDS and xenophobia. Living overseas and no longer working with local actors in workshop, his interactions with his home country are to their detriment now filtered by the mainstream media.

Comparisons are odious, but abroad, there is a healthy clutch of old bards, still prolific, on the mark, some sharper than ever: Alan Bennett at 75, Tom Stoppard (72), Michael Frayn (76), David Hare (62), David Mamet (62), Edward Albee (81). It was always thinner on the ground here, but our playwrights do appear to have unusually short careers. Partly it’s a vector of the tumultuous times South Africa has seen, but it is also that the sheer difficulties of mounting work has dried up many pens.

Eurocentric or not, the straight play is a valuable cultural medium for a society, especially one as complex as our own, to reflect upon itself, to articulate personal moral and ethical dilemmas where these intersect with the public space, and above all to renew us against the emotional toll life takes on us.

Much of our theatre would be far better served to us as a radio play, a short story or as an episode in a television soap opera. Hardly any local playwright seems to be able to show rather than tell or to be capable of sustaining a single scene beyond five minutes. They can’t deal with matters in real time, but imitate television. What we get are blackouts that wince on and off like migraines, and endless, tedious explication.

We are also it seems still stuck with the limitations of the one-person show; the poor man’s theatre practiced not for aesthetic or artistic reasons, but by economic default, which is not a good enough reason at all. A hopelessly overtraded genre, it has encouraged a legion of unimaginative scripts that attempt material not suitable for this treatment.

The primary medium remains English, but African languages are increasingly used on stage. Magnet Theatre’s Xhosa production ingcwaba lendoda lise ankwe ndlela (“the grave of the man is next to the road”) was a riveting and groundbreaking work.

Stylistically, where we do seem to be succeeding is in plays that are less text based, more a hybrid with physical theatre, marked by innovative direction, fair sized casts, and a synergy between European and African creativity.

That grey zone between theatre, ritual, performance art, installation, dance and fine art, is perhaps the most exciting area currently in South African theatre. Among the rising stars here are Nelisiwe Xaba, Mlu Zondi, and Ntando Cele. The annual Infecting the City (formally the Spier Arts festival) focuses on multi-disciplinary collaborations, site specific works, held anywhere but inside a theatre.

Thematically, plays have moved with the emotional trajectory of the country. One of the first works I reviewed for this paper (2003) was Fanon’s Children written by Lesego Rampolokeng. It was unrepentant protest theatre, but heralded a promising liberation from political correctness, from simply blaming the legacies of apartheid and colonialism. In this regard, theatre has continued to keep ahead of the national debate.

At the start of the decade, exile seemed the logical entry point to explore the moral complexities of the struggle, a changing society and disappointments in post-apartheid South Africa. Zakes Mda’s Bells of Armersfoort (2002), Athol Fugard’s Sorrows and Rejoicings (2002), John Kani’s Nothing But the Truth (2002), all dealt with exile; much of the conflict as much generational as racial.

Black dramatists started to unlock new themes (some previously taboo), such as homosexuality, xenophobia, the tacit complicity between traditional African beliefs and its expression as violence against women in a deeply patriarchal society.

Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom, rose to fame with a play set in a Hillbrow brothel, Cards, starring nudity and violence. His Relativity: Township Stories was elegantly choreographed, but the story quickly degenerated into a crude, predictable B-grade Hollywood serial killer thriller.

Towards the end of the decade, the dominant theme seems to be the legacy of the TRC, which uncovered more in the way of truth than it accomplished in reconciliation. Yael Farber’s MoLoRa, Lara Foot Newton’s Reach, Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother, REwind: A Cantata by composer Philip Miller, and Truth in Translation by director Michael Lessac, all explored forgiveness.

What one senses now as we enter 2010, is a new confidence emerging in the voices of our young theatre makers. The decade ahead I predict will only get better.

(Note: this article does not discuss Afrikaans theatre, which is such a vast field it deserves extensive treatment in another article)

Phenomenally Successful:
The Handspring Puppet Company (Adrian Kohler, Basil Jones)
Pieter-Dirk Uys
David Kramer
Djamaqua (Oscar Petersen, David Isaacs, Heinrich Reisenhoffer)

Pick of the Decade:
medEia (Oscar van Woensel, directed by Brett Bailey)

Not the Pick of the Decade:
Fangs (Revival)

Most overhyped:
Umojo – export, curio performance art for foreign audiences
The Tempest – the RSC’s “Africanized’ version
Relativity: Township Stories – Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom

Most underwhelming:
Mark-Dornford May’s iKrismas Kherol

Most Rewarding:
The decade saw thousands of new seats added in brand new state of the art theatres.

Most overpaid:
Mbongeni Ngema for Lion of the East

Most under-appreciated:
Echoes of our Footsteps (Itumeleng Wa-Lehulere)
ingcwaba lendoda lise ankwe ndlela (Mandla Mbothwe)
Stoutgatpassie (Dario Fo’s Mistero Buffo reworked)

Most prolific:
Mike van Graan (10 new plays in the last 10 years)

Theatre makers in the vanguard:
Brett Bailey (Orfeus, medEia, Blood Diamonds)
Yael Farber (MoLoRa)
Mcendisi Shabangu (Ten Bush)
Lara Foot Newton (Karoo Moose, Tshepang)
Mark Fleishman and Jennie Reznek (Onnest’bo, Cargo, Every year, Every Day I am Walking)
Sylvaine Strike (Coupé, The Travelling Players)
Helen Iskander and James Cuningham (Black and Blue)

Straight plays worth noting:
Nothing But The Truth (John Kani)
The Shadrack Affair (Fiona Coyne)
Green Man Flashing (Mike van Graan)

Great Revivals
Sizwe Bansi is Dead (Fugard, with original cast)
Mooi Street Moves (Paul Slabolepszy)
Hello and Goodbye (Fugard, directed by Mark Graham)

One Man Brilliance:
Andrew Buckland
Graham Weir
Rob van Vuuren
James Cairns
Aldo Brincat
Craig Morris

Pick of the New Divas:
Chuma Sopotela
Faniswa Yisa
Mwenya Kabwe
Pumeza Rashe
Andrea Dondolo
Lebogang Modiba

New promise:
Ntshieng Mokgoro – Thursday’s Child (2007), The Olive Tree (2009)
Omphile Molusi – Itsoseng (2007)

Still Going:
Nicolas Ellenbogen

January 1, 2010 | Comments Closed

On Transformation in South African Theatre

As he takes over the Market Theatre’s training and development Laboratory, Matjamela Motloung has written a flippant but provocative article for Applause magazine lamenting the lack of transformation in the performing arts. “I know,” he writes, “because I am one of a few at the dinner table”. He calls upon someone – presumably himself – “to be a champion of our cause, yes, our cause, black people’s cause”.

The problem as Motloung sees it are parasitic “middle age white” directors, writers and choreographers who overshadow more talented black artists; white administrators who favour the mediocre talents of their white brethren “ahead by virtue of their race”; white managers who resist giving black artists opportunities outside of ‘community theatre’; and the endless rounds of meetings, indabas, makgotlas and other “developmental crap that is designed to slow us down as a race”. Finally, Motloung exhorts black artists: “Let’s do it because we CAN, just like our fellow white practitioners” [his capitalisation].

Perhaps it was no more than a call to action and a statement of pride and faith in black talent Motloung wished to make, but it has been ill received by his colleagues such as Craig Higginson and by arts writer Robyn Sassen. In an emotional open letter, she describes his views as a “bitching” “tirade” and suspects “the arts are being used as a thinly disguised veil to crusade political agenda”.

Higginson, alluded to by Motloung as a “mediocre white writer”, comments, “I am sympathetic to the frustrations of any theatre practitioners, of whatever colour, who feel they are not emerging fast enough. What I am not sympathetic to are those who think it is below their dignity to learn and develop their craft – as if craft is somehow some sort of imperialist plot.” Higginson fears the position represented by Motloung “is often to simply get rid of anyone who is ‘other’”.

Higginson, a dramaturge at the Market’s Laboratory, offended by the attack on that institution cites Motloung’s own appointment as evidence that transformation “is happening at the Market Theatre far quicker than we are often given credit for”.

These regrettable exchanges, as with the brouhaha around Lebo M’s outburst at the Naledi Awards, create imaginary battlefields yet litter them with real bodies – resentment and hurt feelings that close down debate.

The bigger picture is that as the Mbeki government has failed to deliver on its socialist manifesto, the movement has shifted from Mandela’s over compensatory policy of reconciliation to Africanist speech-making. This is a particularly disempowering rhetoric. It undercuts liberalism and leaves the white left, which constitutes the vast majority of white artists, stranded. Motloung has hit this nerve.

Non-blacks feel racial fighting talk obscures and over simplifies, since they know black as well as white administrators who are doing precious little for emergent artists, and they see talented white artists also struggling among those emerging.

Yet it must be acknowledged that Africanist opining is born of anger and tremendous frustration among a broad swathe of black artists. They face more than a little cultural arrogance from producers and critics and – here’s a term for the new South Africa – “unreconstructed whites”.

Theatre managers need to be proactive and sensitive to these concerns, not simply defensive. There must be an admission, regardless of the reasons, that on the developmental side theatre has not delivered satisfactorily. Apathetic administrators, who rest complacently on their theatre struggle credentials (Motloung dismisses this as “sentimental bullshit”), stand warned.

If one seriously wishes to address the failure of transformation in the arts, hammering on about how the industry reflects the broader South African reality is a soft target. Of course, the greatest beneficiaries of the demise of apartheid and the macro economic boom that followed were the already empowered, be they advantaged minorities, elites from the homelands or overseas-educated exiles. How could it be otherwise?

The real culprit is government’s poor implementation of a flawed arts and culture policy and gross under funding for the first decade after democracy. Cultural institutions and resources remain concentrated in the urban centres in previously white Group Areas; the highly subsidised state theatres under commercial pressure favour the already empowered rich producers; white administrators were told to transform, penalised and then left to their own devices; the funding bureaucracy ignores grassroots realities and entrenches the status quo; inscrutable application forms and the requisite registered non-profit companies with audited financials for three years exclude emerging artists, who turn to existing ‘white’ companies for administration. The list goes on.

And if government is to be pilloried, so perhaps should big business, private patrons and foundations that fund the arts without much imagination or research.

Theatre doesn’t exist outside of its audience, and black theatre will see its heyday once audiences transform themselves, as is happening with coloured theatre in the Cape. This is where the commercial reality (who is going to the theatre?) serves as an impediment to transformation blamed on administrators. If plays have to engage with audiences at many of our festivals and theatres that remain stubbornly white, well then, educating the elite is also a worthy pursuit.

The pressure is mounting because transformation has taken too long. Opportunities are scarce, resources are hard to access, be it funding for an artwork or obtaining a child grant from government. In a climate of growing impatience, our society is re-tribalising. Where this leads is clear from the recent xenophobic violence which destroyed the rainbow illusions that have sustained us to date.

In reviewing transformation in the arts, a distinction should be drawn between administrators and creative artists. There is no diploma or MBA for creative talent. Talented artists throughout the world struggle for years to gain recognition, and once given the chance, the only recognition that counts is their success with audiences, their peers and the critics.

In the 1960s, Ben Masinga didn’t sit back for producer Ian Bernhardt and the Union Artists, but struck out on his own. Sam Mhangwane toured for twelve years with his own musical. Gibson Kente left Dorkay House and without subsidy and in the dark days of apartheid managed to sustain three touring companies in continuous employment through the 1970s paying his best actors handsomely. Ironically while these legendary entrepreneurs were running successful black theatre companies in the townships, the more ideological Black Consciousness theatre was foreign funded and under white tutelage, and often performed overseas.

Motloung’s critics believe he is the vanguard of a resurgence of Black Consciousness theatre in the service of the national democratic revolution. The very idea fills them with horror.

Has the persistence of the status quo derailed the attempt to achieve a rainbow South African theatre arising from the artistic collaboration of artists, whoever they are, rooted in their creative synergy? Surely, it will never be too late to give up the vision of a non-racial society with a non-racialized theatre.

July 18, 2008 | Comments Closed

Foreign Perspectives on the National Arts Festival

As a nation, South Africa has long overcome local cultural cringe and the need to emulate Anglo-America for artistic validation. We do however still tend to look to overseas for accreditation. Not unlike the misunderstood and marginalised village artist who must seek city fame, local artists are notoriously ignored until they receive global praise. Accumulating foreign kudos to gain national recognition is of course not unique to us.

For the first time in its 52-year history, the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC), a body that embraces members from over sixty countries, was officially represented in South Africa at the National Arts Festival (NAF) in Grahamstown.

The invited critics were chosen from countries with which we have weak historical links. The idea was not to see how our performing arts measure up, but to gain fresh, diverse perspectives and hold creative discussions about the works at the festival and the role of theatre criticism.

During the course of a week in which the critics saw all the main festival dramas and a half dozen fringe performances, Yun-Cheol Kim, President of the IATC and professor of drama at the Korean National University of the Arts, found most of the shows to be simply staged, even naïve. He was moved by the integrity and sincerity of the performers. Violence, and especially the stark depictions of rape, was a disturbing theme.

Matti Linnavouri from the Finnish Critics Association too was struck by how many plays dealt in some way with young girls finding themselves forced to assume adult responsibilities. He observed that women theatre practitioners were concerned with social issues, while male directors were preoccupied with conceptual work.

Tiago Bartholomeu Costa, editor of Portugal’s Obscena performing arts magazine and a voting member for the European Union’s prize for New Theatrical Realities, said he’d had never seen so many political plays in such a concentrated space. He particularly praised black women performers, finding in them a depth of emotion and a strength of portrayal that is quite uncommon.
He noted how the experience of seeing a South African play with a South African audience was quite different.

Costa said that some of the best performances he has seen in the past year in Europe were South Africans such as Steven Cohen, Nelisiwe Xaba and Robyn Orlin. He had been hoping for more works of this calibre.

The only performances which the critics unanimously praised at this year’s festival were Ten Bush and Batracien, l’après-midi. There was however praise for John Allen and the First Physical Theatre Company’s Ozymandias.

The IATC had hoped to establish the first national section in Africa at this year’s festival.

July 14, 2008 | Tags: | Comments Closed

Ismael Mahomed new Executive Director for NAF

The National Arts Festival has been in the custodianship of Executive Director Lynette Marais for the past 20 years. She can retire now with peace of mind and her legacy intact. This landmark cultural event is in excellent shape. From a logistical point of view it is one of the most efficiently run festivals you’ll attend anywhere in the world. Besides the 500 odd shows starting on time, the festival is bigger than ever, financially secure and poised for greater things.

Her job is a daunting one. The festival is run by a skeleton staff that has to micromanage every detail while still balancing the big picture. Teamwork gets them through.

“You feel like an octopus and everybody is pulling one of your legs. And you know octopi have only got little brains,” laughs Marais as I interrupt her multi-tasking.

“I know what it is to stand on that stage and I know how the artist relies on having that support. The confidence that there is somebody there and they have you in the palm of their hand and they will get you through it.”

“I have always tried to make it as good, as easy and as pleasant for the artists.”

Marais is looking forward “to not have the stress I have carried for however many years. I will help my friends and do everything I can, but it will be a relief knowing I’m not carrying the can.”

Fortunately for all involved, the succession has been well managed by the board. Ismail Mahomed, who takes over the reins, is in the office with Marais for this year’s festival.

“Are we looking for change?” I ask Mahomed.
“I think change is inevitable by the very nature of the arts,” he replies. “The way we generate new kinds of audiences. We have to be at the pivot of making things happen. I think the expectation in the arts community is that with any kind of change in management there will be a change in direction.”

Mahomed is trying to encourage artists and stakeholders in the festival to be vocal and “kick our butts”.

“We as management need to go into meetings informed by the aspirations of the arts community so that we direct change to meet those changes. There has to be open and honest debate throughout the year engaging with management.”

The impression created by Mahomed and the newly appointed CEO Tony Lancaster, is that the festival is coming to be seen as a national resource for the artistic community of South Africa. This year sees the launch of the ‘Hands On! Masks Off!’ project, a programme of workshops, discussion forums, networking opportunities and seminars for artists run by the doyens of the industry.

“Its fine to say we need to develop new audiences, but as an arts community we must take responsibility for growing those audiences. The approach we are taking with this years festival is lets first skill the practitioners so that the practitioners can be partners with us in developing new audiences,” says Mahomed.

“The main festival has developed very strongly but I think we need to look at how we meet the challenges of the independent theatre sector which is what largely comes to the festival hoping that someone will see their work and take it further.”

Having participated in the festival in various capacities for 23 years, Mahomed feels “I have paid my dues”. His approach should reassure artists that the festival is still in good hands. He sees himself as “a passionate artists who wants to do things and a manager who has to give consideration to a whole range of logistics. I am somehow able to look at things through both lenses. I can empathise with artist as I have come the route the majority of artists have come.”

July 1, 2008 | Tags: | Comments Closed

Tony Lancaster appointed CEO of the NAF

Whereas many organisations are moved to introspection at a critical juncture – self-examination staving off an autopsy – the National Arts Festival (NAF) is a healthy, irrepressible outfit going on now for 34 years and in no imminent danger of losing centre stage. There is nothing on this continent close to it in terms of diversity, the number of arts events (532 this year), and the range of art forms presented. Attendance is satisfactory and sponsorship appears secure, together injecting over R50 million into the local economy. Yet the festival has embarked on some serious rethinking and a rejuvenating energy is detectable. You need only go to their useful new website at www.nationalartsfestival.co.za to see change is in the offing.
The Board, which carries overall responsibility for the direction of the Festival, has almost doubled in size since 2004. The Festival Committee, which determines what works are performed, is now chaired by Sibongile Khumalo who took over in 2007 after the time-honoured Mannie Manim stepped out. But the greatest focus of change is the creation of a CEO, installed in the enthusiastic personage of the very recently appointed Tony Lancaster.
Lancaster says the NAF wishes to be “the most polished, the leading arts brand which is more than staging a great festival for ten days…What we do for the artists and audiences and the arts in general must extend beyond”. The idea is that “everyone leaves with something that is useful to them…and are richer for it”. The Festival is even contemplating road-show workshops across the country.
Lancaster sees his challenge as “how to harness the legacy [of the Festival] and turn it into something that takes the Festival to the next level. I would not say there is a lot wrong with the Festival but there is plenty of scope for growth and scope for opportunity.” The motivation seems to be to do even better, an ambitious and proactive response to the ever-changing social and economic landscape of South Africa.
The Festival appears on track to do this. Government is at last a key stakeholder, with the Eastern Cape Province and the National Arts Council contributing substantial amounts. An educated guess (the figures are not public) places the combined contribution of various government agencies at over 50% of total sponsorship. South African business in general should be shamed by this.
With an operating budget of R16 million of which 60% is allocated to productions, the festival though not cash-strapped isn’t yet in a position to fulfil all its noble aspirations. Of Lancaster’s many first tasks then, growing audience numbers will probably be the most crucial. “I don’t think we can economically sustain more productions, but what we can sustain is bigger audience houses…My focus is getting more audiences in and making it more economically viable for the productions that do come here. There is obviously a link between those two.”
One innovation is funded by the Arts and Culture Trust with sponsorship earmarked to assist community theatre groups. Says Lancaster: “We are not just going to hand out cash, but we will do matching, so for every ticket you sell we will buy another ticket for someone else, which puts pressure on these groups to not just come and do shows for each other but to market themselves”. The festival plans to buy around 5000 tickets for local school, church and community groups.
Business Arts South Africa (BASA) has also stepped up to the plate. They are funding Cue, the Festival newspaper, to enlarge its daily Fringe coverage significantly. Better-informed festival-goers are more likely to book for productions on the sprawling and qualitatively uneven Fringe, which in Lancaster’s opinion “is very strong this year”.
In terms of the nature of the works on at the Festival, there is scope for something of a reversal in programming. Over the years, the Fringe has steadily lost its appeal for commercial producers. The risks are high and the financial rewards far from lucrative for the big names. The Main has therefore been about balancing reliable draw-cards and artistic quality, since these properties often conflict. But a robust Fringe that could support commercial work with broad appeal would allow the Main to concentrate on artistic merit first, satisfying its core constituencies of artists and patrons of the arts. This would bring the Festival more in line with European Festivals, where the emphasis is on the avant-garde and creating a highly subsidised and supportive space for the Continent’s leading artists to grow and develop.
The importance of the arts to the vitality and survival of a healthy national psyche, which can only be attained through the artistic vanguard, cannot presently be over emphasised.
The new CEO and his team are well positioned to do this and have great prospects ahead of them. New vision and new energy in such a major cultural institution will be a boon to the nation.

| Tags: | Comments Closed

Interviews National Arts Festival 2008

Saartjie Botha
One of Afrikaans theatre’s leading playwrights is the author of Untitled.
I understand the work is developing in rehearsal at present. Is this not a text-based work?
No, in essence it is a play about the failing of language, where we live in a country with eleven official languages and people don’t understand one another and they don’t have the ability to formulate in a third or a fourth language.
People struggle to express themselves not only from language constraints but also emotionally. Secondly, it is about fear and how it manifests in terms of language. On the third level, it is about the death of a woman in a crime situation.

Does the work speak to the xenophobic violence of recent?
It wasn’t conceived that way, but it’s interesting because suddenly there is this new thing that is forcing its way inside. It wasn’t intended, but this is an organic process.

Why has Afrikaans theatre retreated from Grahamstown?
It’s not financially viable. It’s the most expensive festival to attend from a production point of view. The fringe festival can’t compete with the main in terms of ticket prices. It’s a difficult festival if you’re not on the main programme. Also in terms of the Afrikaans festival calendar, the week before is the InniBos festival in Nelspruit [25 – 29 June] and then the week after it’s the Volksblad-Kunstefees in Bloemfotnein [8 – 13 July] which is a fantastic festival because you only perform in theatres.
However, for many Afrikaans [theatre practitioners] Grahamstown is still the festival to be. I like to attend it, but not partake.
But even in Cape Town, you don’t see a lot of Afrikaans theatre. It’s safer for producers to go to Stellenbosch, because they know they have an audience.
Festen was the only full-scale production in Afrikaans last year [in Cape Town]
I don’t know why it is happening that Afrikaans theatre is not part of mainstream theatre in South Africa anymore.

Chuma Sopotela
This young actress is now one of the Western Cape’s most sought after performers. Her “the foot has no nose”, an avant garde performance piece inspired by the deaths of five of her family members, caused a sensation at Spier Contemporary 2008. She won the Fleur du Cap Award for Best Actress this year. Sopotela will perform in Untitled at the festival.

Your work is wide ranging from character roles and physical theatre to performance art. Where do you see your future as an artist?
There is always a reason. In each project I discover something about myself. I want to work with as many directors as I can. Sometimes I do clowning work for kids, but it is all part of personal development. My ultimate goal is to go and teach so I’m gathering tools for teaching when I’m older and wiser.

You used to do performances for the Treatment Action Campaign. Is your work motivated by social issues and social concerns?
The works I have done have always been personal stories that are effected by the things that happen in my society. These are personal stories that resonates with other people. My life has been a guided journey.

I know the work is Untitled, but if you had to give the work a different title what would you call it?
Moments of stillness.

Neville Engelbrecht
K Sello Duiker’s novel The Quiet Violence of Dreams about a young black man’s tortured rite of passage and his life as a rent boy has been adapted for the stage. Engelbrecht directs.

Is black homosexuality still taboo?
Talking to the cast, yes, among their friends the reactions they’ve had, especially for the straight guys. Some have had quite heavy reactions. It is not as bad as it was, but still definitely a stigma. The cast are very brave, obviously around the intimate scenes.

What do you see as problematic specifically for black homosexuals?
It is still a cultural taboo. It is still not talked about. White colonials are still blamed for bringing what is almost seen as a disease to Africa. African maleness is very specific.

How did K. Sello Duiker cope?
From what I know, he would not have admitted to being gay. He himself was never open about it, but I see lots of Sello in the book. His bouts of depression for instance.

How do you find self-actualisation in prostitution?
The way I see it, it is a life journey into manhood. The kind of messed up broken people he meets along the way informs him. He has to go into that underbelly world in order to see. In the creative arts, we understand that drama draws on the suffering, and that is also how the self-actualisation for him happens.

Nadia Davids
After the spectacular success of he first play (At Her Feet) Davids latest work examines the life of activist Cissie Gool in the play Cissie.

Biographical plays are notoriously hard to pull off. They easily turn into lecture theatre or dramatized essays. What techniques have you employed to avid this?
A diversity of characters speak offering different insights. I have people who are dismissive of her [Cissie Gool] legacy alongside people who ‘pedestalize’ her. Of course the truth falls somewhere in between. I saw Waren Beatty’s Reds recently and that for me was an extraordinary piece. How to avoid eulogising and mythologizing people whilst still celebrating their greatness. The use of tiny snippets of people speaking.

What phrase comes to mind when you think of Cissie Gool? If you had to write an epitaph to her what would it be?
Courage. “She led a rich and autonomous life.” Someoen who creates unbelievable possibilities in her life

How did you come across Gool’s story?
She has been in my consciousness from an early age. She was a friend of my grandfathers. I had an incredible hitory teacher Gail Weldon who encouraged us to find sotries. The archives were silent on Cissie Gool. So I spent time in the Cape Town archives going through newspapers and started interviewing people.
She led an unchartered and different life but was still claimed by everybody.
In the end it is an imagined piece. This is my Cissie, its not going to be everybody else’s.

What is the significance of Gool’s life?
The play is about Cissie Gool but it is also about District Six and forced removals. I’m interested in issues of performance and memory and performance as an act of history. What is the way in which we can talk about exile? about forced migration? There’s a poem by Mahmoud Darwish where he writes “we are the country of words speak speak so we can know the end of this tale”. Its about how story can rebuild place and rebuild people.

Rehane Abrahams
Performer and theatre practitioner Rehane Abrahams plays the role of Cissie Gool in Cissie.

You are co-founder of the women performing artists collective The Mothertongue Project for healing and transformation through art. How does Cissie relate to your work?
It’s about holding your power as a woman. A lot of words about power are being bandied about, but people don’t realise how deep and meaningful that is, and what a journey you have to go through as a woman to feel you stand in your own power and it’s unshakeable. It’s not something that comes from an aggressive or a defensive place, but from a true place with a lot of integrity

There’s a line in the play that says “she lives inside her beliefs” not next to them. There wasn’t a single part of her life where she wasn’t committed to her life. She is representative of an incredibly bravery. She buried her father. I don’t think it has ever happened in Cape Town before or since. She refused to stay at home. She went to the graveyard and buried her father with 300 men. She said there was no Koranic injunction forbidding her to do so.

Why was her story lost for so long?
None of the activists of that time (1940s – 50s) came to the fore. The people who were trying to resist the government at the time especially in Cape Town
exist in private narratives and personal histories. I have a brilliant photograph of my grandmother from that time [1940s] striding through the streets of Johannesburg with a massive hammer and sickle on her arm and a stern look on her face. We always wondered what was that about.

Mncedisi Shabangu
A versatile director and a star performer, Shabangu is co-writer and director of a mysterious new play Ten Bush.
How did you come across this strange and wonderful story?
We were originally going to rework Theatre de Complicite’s The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol but then we changed. I was working with a community theatre group in Komatiepoort. They were doing a story that was irrelevant to me at the time so I asked them to tell me a story. They told me this story and said it came from a farm called Ten Bush and I loved that name. I dreamt this story of a place where my people come from and they need a leader.

Did you find the unmarked graves?
The place used to be full of animals but a certain chief’s son hunted until he actually destroyed all the animals. He started killing people and burying them in unmarked graves, until he committed suicide. When it rains, you can find bones in the morning. I can relate the problems of that area to that story.

Ten Bush broke my heart. It is in the middle of a huge sugar plantation. There is no electricity, no tarred roads, just donkey carts. There are millions of snakes. But the people survive. It is far removed from modern civilisation. With this work, I want to give attention to this place.

How is it to co-write a work?
It is always difficult yet interesting. I know the story and every day I retold it to Craig [Higginson]. We make discoveries in the process. I come from a place about 30 minutes from there. We went to Ten Bush and we sourced some of the stories in the place and interviewed people.

Craig Higginson
Author Craig Higginson’s latest work deals with an extraordinary tale from the Limpopo.
What is the story of Ten Bush?
In our version, Ten Bush was built on the graves of the nine Swazi chiefs who were betrayed by the tenth chief, Ngomane, during a battle with the Sothos hundreds of years ago. Since then, the area has been cursed with poverty and famine, and the first daughter from Ngomane’s line has been barren.

Martha, Ngomane’s heir, is tasked at the beginning of the play to lift the curse by sacrificing her unborn daughter to appease the departed ancestors who still haunt Ten Bush. But Martha is barren and so orders her sister to sleep with her husband instead – a decision that has consequences neither Martha nor any of the other inhabitants of Ten Bush could have foreseen…

How does co-writing work? What are your roles?
This is the first time I have co-written a play. Potentially, it’s a minefield. The fact is that I would never have written this play alone – it comes from a deeper place in Mncedisi than it does in me. Mncedisi, after all, is more or less from the area and culture described in the play. As a white, English-speaking person, I wouldn’t have had the presumption to write this play alone.

How does the story speak to us in the here and now?
What is interesting about the people we met around Ten Bush is that they are as much concerned with events that happened three hundred years ago as they are with contemporary politics – in fact, I would argue that some of them are even more so. The village of Ten Bush also looks exactly as it must have fifty years ago.

What does the festival do for you? What do you wish the festival would do?
My play Dream of the Dog was on the Main Festival last year, but that is the first time I have had a play on at the festival. Before that I was working in the theatre in the UK. I think it’s a great festival – really as good as many other arts festivals around the world. For me, it exposes our work to audiences who wouldn’t necessarily see it in our home towns – both nationally and internationally – and it means that interesting new tensions and conversations start up between the different plays. The fringe is still going strong and is genuinely diverse. I think the Main festival faces the same challenges that all other theatres and festivals do: diversity and transformation are always issues. But I would also like to assert that most of those involved in the theatre community are forward-thinking people who provide an example that other citizens in our land should follow. The Market Theatre is going through a very good period, and is, I believe, as much a place of integrity and good quality theatre as it ever was during apartheid.

Martin Koboekae
Martin Koboekae has written and is directing a play about the life of Stephen Bantu Biko.
The blurb in the programme gives the impression this play will deal with Biko in a new way.
People know a lot about his writings and his political comments but not about his relationships with his colleagues, his girlfriend, the social moments he shared with other people. I want people to understand his ideas but also to understand the man behind the icon, who obviously like everybody else has flaws. It is a social and political perspective on him.

What was your artistic ambition for this work?
Like every playwright I hope people respond well, even those vocal BCM opponents will understand that Biko never regarded himself as a politician. He was a community activist. I designed the play to bring forth the ideas he spoke for but also his human side.

It is a dangerous thing to take on an icon.
I am aware of the risk I am taking. I will have opposition, but I have artistic license. I am entertaining, educating and bringing forth the risks Biko took as a person and not forgetting his youthful indiscretions.

The title is enigmatic Biko: Where the Soul Resides. What do you mean by this?
When I coined this title, I was thinking of the BCM, where black people found where they could be accommodated with comfort, dignity, where the black identity should reside.

What do you feel about transformation at the festival?
Last year I took a conscious decision not to go. I have been going to the festival with productions since 1992 for 14 consecutive years. I was not happy with how things were panning out. Only black people associated with mainstream theatres are considered. I tried four times for the Main. This is the fifth time and now I have been accepted.
People do not understand the difficulties a black artist is faced with in this country when he wants to do a black themed production. A white playwright, a white director will go to the township and produce a very ritualistic play about black people and they will put it on the Main. But if a black playwright does this then he is said to be alienating white audiences. Black ritualistic plays are only accepted if driven by white people. Black theatre practitioners are not given enough chance. Their artistic merit and quality is questioned.

June 30, 2008 | Tags: , , , , , , , | Comments Closed

The Future of the NAF

The most sensible thing for anyone who has a sincere interest in the lifeblood of South Africa’s arts and artists is to seek out ways to build on the 33-year legacy of the Festival. One would think that those organisations and bodies who ought to have the national interest at heart would gladly step forward.
Who are they? The SABC springs to mind first. Under the Broadcasting Act of 1999 Policy Mandate (Section 10f), the SABC is meant to “enrich the cultural heritage of South Africa by providing support for traditional and contemporary artistic expression”. The Festival gives the SABC the single best opportunity in the year to deliver on this mandate. It is after all the official media sponsor of the Festival, a title it has not done enough to earn. Its parsimonious coverage and participation is well shy of what one expects from a national broadcaster who neglects the arts throughout the year. The Festival is faraway still the most representative festival we have of national talent, and it has the best potential if correctly managed to shape the future of our arts. It is the biggest event and most diversified in terms of sheer numbers of productions and the range of art forms available to festival-goers.
The private sector, big business in particular, is another. South Africa’s corporations still view the arts as social investment. Unfortunately, a charitable approach will never lead to the kind of investment required. According to the last survey undertaken by the Performing Arts Network of South Africa, in a year business when spent roughly R236 million on arts and culture sponsorships including leverage, it lavished R3,2 billion on sports sponsorships. Sport sponsorship is hellishly expensive in comparison to the arts, but the paucity of business leaders with an affinity for the performing arts means that these opportunities are missed through ignorance. The Festival is in urgent need of at least one more key sponsor. Let us hope some enterprising captain of industry will realise there’s a golden opportunity here.
Government is another key player. Tentative at first, hopefully blaming the Festival for the problems of the country is past. Pieter-Dirk Uys, who starts his satirical revue, Evita for President, by entering as Adriaan Vlok with a bucket and sponge to do penance, says he struggled at most performances to find black feet. In one case, he resorted to slipping off the shoes of a newspaper photographer shooting from the aisle. Audiences are still largely white, but it’s not Festival’s fault that the economic divide in the Eastern Cape runs roughly along racial lines. The demographics of the festival have shifted substantially and they will continue to shift in line with the country. It was however high time the Festival opened closer to the disaffected and this year the event at the Stadium Mickey Vili in Joza (which we reported on June 28) makrs an important milestone.
Political window dressing with subsidised audiences for instance is all very well, but much of it is wasteful and meaningless. Sharing creativity with more free concerts held in the areas where the majority of the population live makes better sense.
The economic spin-offs from the Festival are numerous, from temporary jobs to a spike in retail for shops. The local government should be desperate to keep this annual R50 million injection to the city’s economy. They should be offering rates rebates to address the accommodation shortage; the town planners should be looking at ways of developing infrastructure that assists at Festival time. Were the national arts festival to be held in a major city, it would dissipate – one needs look no further than at the dismal failure each year of Cape Town’s International Festival of the Arts.
Festivals develop organically, the outcome of the interests of numerous parties, yet there are custodians, in particular, the festival committee, who must come up with the necessary vision to keep the event vital. Our cultural landscape has shifted radically in the past decade, and the Festival has to respond with imagination. Longevity helps, but is not enough. Curatorship as opposed to custodianship is the missing factor. Nothing is possible if the Festival does not have a clear vision of what it is and should be. Creative excellence must be the guiding star of the Festival. Except for the benefits to loclaised audiences, everything else can be had in superior circumstances elsehwere. To attract an audience from across the country, the Festival must be the acme of arts in South Africa.

July 14, 2007 | Comments Closed

National Arts Festival 2007

To profess to be the ‘National’ festival for the arts is quite a claim to maintain and live up to. South Africa is still grappling with the very notion of a national identity, a debate that seems increasingly to thrust itself to the fore as an ambitious and hopeful country faces down its societal challenges.

In what sense then is the annual festival in Grahamstown national? Certainly, it is far the most varied artistically, including a literary and even a religious music festival. It is also the biggest in terms of the number of events, though no longer so in ticket sales. And it draws artists from across the country. But that’s the same as saying I’m a national because I have citizenship. Is this sufficient to define it as the ‘national’ event? Is this all we mean by and expect from such an appellation? After all, the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees carries the same tag.
It’s a question that has of late been vexing the National Arts Festival (NAF) board of directors, who take overall responsibility for the festival, and the festival committee, who select the work we finally see on the main programme. They commissioned Ernst & Young to begin the process of developing a strategic plan. One of the new driving forces on the board behind this is Paul Bannister. He says: “There has been a rebirth in the arts, the landscape is changing…We have to build on our foundation, we can’t live on the past for ever. We are taking stock of what role we need to play.”

It’s a shrewd move. The cash injections festivals bring to local economies means many communities want a chance to dance on the bandwagon. What Grahamstown has is know-how and intellectual property, particularly in the personage of Lynette Marais, the Executive Director and stalwart whose Herculean efforts have kept the event going and earned it its long-standing reputation.

The town does not have the greatest infrastructure. The accommodations are infamous, the seating makeshift, and the technical equipment mostly hired. Its position is therefore hardly entrenched and there’s no room for complacency.

Aware of this, the Eastern Cape government quickly stepped up to the plate and this year will match the Standard Bank’s considerable sponsorship, a commitment they will need to renew and improve upon. The National Arts Council too is supportive of the event’s national status. They have doubled their direct contribution to R2 million and having at last it seems seen the light, have put the money up in advance.

When the NAF started, it was the only major arts event in the country. In the past decade a plethora of performing arts festivals have sprung up. These tend to focus on a single art form or express either a regional or a specific identity, such as the gay Pink Loerie Carnival or Die Suid-Ooster Fees, which draws largely on the coloured community in the Cape. Surprisingly, there is currently no significant festival that primarily articulates the work of contemporary black artists or for that matter African heritage. The NAF has by far the most black artists. On the fringe programme, gradually, more works are performed in African languages, in part at least.

Bannister, astutely, believes that “one should see the other festivals as complimentary not competitive; more collaboration is needed”. National to him means, “the best of the best gets to come”. The NAF will need financial muscle if it is to lure first-class acts. Several other festivals, especially on the fringe, are proving much more lucrative for producers.

To differentiate itself NAF radio adverts this year are running with the line that it’s the arts festival with international recognition. But part of the equation for international recognition requires that not only tourists attend but that artists from abroad apply to perform. There is hardly any presence from elsewhere in Africa – an Ethiopian dance group, a play about Sudanese refugees living in South Africa.

Sibongile Khumalo, committee chairperson, recognises this as a deficiency that needs to be rectified: “It doesn’t make sense when South Africa is a leading light in so many areas on the continent.”

This year’s opening ceremony is at the Stadium Mickey Vili in Joza. Khumalo sees this as “a vote of confidence, an important statement by the Eastern Cape government that they are serious about this event”.
Participating artists participating come from the all over South Africa. But as a national event, it is even more important that the festival pulls its audience from the far corners of the country. What will attract them is a major challenge facing the NAF.
Sibongile Khumalo, chairing the National Arts Festival (NAF) committee for the first time, puts it this way: “It is a balancing act…What is qualitative may not be accessible…And what has entertainment value is not always the kind of art that enhances the quality of life.”

Board member Paul Bannister says that although “popular work is a dimension that needs to be accommodated, by the same token we must not disregard the more classical and esoteric”. The festival he says is still bent on showing work that is on “the cutting edge”, and maintaining its “diversity of art forms”.

A look at the main programme bears out his sentiments, particularly in dance, which includes Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Ballet, Acty Tang’s Chaste about Oscar Wilde’s Salome, and Jazzart/Magnet Theatre’s contemporary dance production about slavery, Cargo. You’ll have to go to the fringe however to see Athena Mazarakis mapping her body in Coming To or this years’ other FNB Dance Umbrella sensation, 6 Minutes, which has an age restriction of 16.

The most active theatres in the country premiere their star works here. The Baxter has brought Edward Albee’s modern masterpiece Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Lara Foot Newton’s Reach. The Market presents Craig Higginson’s Dream of the Dog and the true Story of an African Choir, about a group of young black choristers who were marooned in England in the 1890s. Brett Bailey returns with Orfeus, a site-specific work performed outdoors in the old quarry. Except for the State Theatre, which is staging Paul Grootboom’s Interacial, once again the other highly subsidised state behemoths are a negligible presence, even on the fringe.

Exhibition highlights include photographers Pieter Hugo – with trenchant portraits from Messina, and David Goldblatt’s penetrating, documental Some Afrikaners Revisited. Refreshing is The Caring Namibian Man, compiled from a project that involved distributing 100 disposable cameras to rural areas in Namibia.
The musical programme is tame and rather conventional. That there is no new musical indaba this year, Khumalo hopes is “only a hiatus”. There is little relief on the fringe either, which is dominated by commercial entertainment.

Cinema buffs will be homing in on acclaimed Russian director Karen Shakhnazarov, who will attend the screening of four of his films.

The Studio for several years now has been a dedicated space for Eastern Cape community theatre, inventively described as a “melting pot of clan cultures and traditions, old and new”.

The Winter School has taken an unusual turn with a section on ‘personal spaces’, including heritage roses and emerging décor trends in London and New York.
The festival may not be able to be all things to all people, but they are certainly trying hard to make sure there is something for everyone.

June 30, 2007 | Comments Closed
« Older Entries