10 DAYS OF AMAZING FESTIVAL

Innovation flirts with tradition at The National Arts Festival, Grahamstown from July 2 to 11.

When the going gets tough, the arts get going, judging by the full and varied programme for the National Arts Festival taking place in Grahamstown from July 2 to 11.

Now in its 35th year, the National Arts Festival has proved its sustainability and has grown to be one of the leading arts festivals in southern Africa. Its objectives are to deliver excellence; encourage innovation and development in the arts by providing a platform for both established and emerging South African artists; create opportunities for collaboration with international artists; and build new audiences.

“Come and be amazed!” is the open invitation extended by artists and organisers. Inspiration, dreams, music and sheer tomfoolery are the best antidotes when the world is out of kilter.

With CEO Tony Lankester and new director Ismail Mahomed at the helm, the successful basic programme recipe has been maintained with a few extra thrills and frills and the innovations that festinos have come to expect as the norm.

The Winter School lecture series has been re-branded as Think!Fest and the format changed to include far more audience participation in the series of open conversations. The popular Transnet Village Green Market has been relocated to a spacious site on the Rhodes University Campus.

Festival favourites like dancer/choreographer Dada Masilo, unplugged opera diva Zanne Stapelberg, theatre man with a rapier-sharp pen Mike van Graan are back, all loaded with surprises. The new crop of Standard Bank Young Artist Award winners and the even newer crop of community and student performers will do their best to impress.

For many, the biggest show of all will amaze and roll non-stop for ten days in the streets, foyers and eateries. The cast includes performers and audiences and the script is anyone’s guess.

This is an African festival and our end of the continent is increasingly a place the rest of the world needs to experience. So partying with all sorts of creative visitors is very much the African way.

As a prelude to the 2010 influx of visitors to South Africa, the governments of France, India, Ireland, Philippines, Spain, Belgium and USA have made it possible for their artists to join the party. The international flavour is enhanced by a number of visitors on the Fringe Festival.

The Fringe is an open space which is very much part of the Festival’s mandate to provide a platform for the expression of the arts. Aspirant and newcomer Fringe artists have benefited this year from a series of free advisory workshops round the country. The programme rewrites the meaning of multi-media, including drama, dance, musicals, physical theatre, poetry, comedy, music, film and visual arts. Responding to the Festival’s open invitation, participants will home in on Grahamstown from all over South Africa as well as Nigeria, Botswana, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Malawi, the UK, USA, Argentina, and The Netherlands. Professionals, students and community-based artists share the Fringe spaces, often defying the orthodoxies of so-called “high art” and lowering the entry threshold for experienced and rookie audience members alike.

For many visitors, the Transnet Village Green Market is the heart of the festival, and this year it pulsates with renewed vigour with a new format in a new home adjacent to the Steve Biko Building on the Rhodes University Campus. The tempting plethora of stalls will be augmented by a sports café and beer garden and a dedicated performance space. A Wi-Fi enabled, licensed restaurant will be open adjacent to the Box Office. Additional stalls will be open at Fiddler’s Fair, the Church Square Container Village, relocated to Fiddler’s Green along with the mobile Transnet Stage with its free performances.

A new Children’s Play Area is part of the Village Green Market, but first port of call for young festinos is still The Children’s Arts Festival which offers a hands-on creative programme with round the clock adult supervision for youngsters between the ages of four and 13. Situated in the safe environment of St Andrew’s Preparatory School, the daily programme includes a healthy lunch, workshops in drama, music, dance and craft arts and visits to carefully screened performances on the Main and Fringe programmes.

Social responsibility, which is at the core of the National Arts Festival’s mission, will broaden accessibility to the arts for more South Africans and build their capacity as a new generation of arts practitioners. The Festival’s ARTreach programme will take a select number of productions to local prisons, hospitals and children’s homes. The Festival’s Hands On! Masks Off! programme will continue its series of workshops where emerging artists can rub shoulders with their more experienced counterparts and engage each other in shared learning experiences.

The Remix Laboratory will kick off this year as a ten-day residency for 65 artists who will engage each other with their art and try to discover why the muses attract audiences to the Festival. The Arts and Culture Trust and National Arts Festival Fringe Development Project will assist artists from a number of fringe productions to reap the benefits of a fuller, more inclusive Festival experience. Other exciting development arts initiatives will unearth locals who have been trained as stilt-walkers and storytellers and who will sprout up surprisingly in unexpected places in Grahamstown.

More detailed stories are available on the artSMart pages for dance, drama, film, music, visual arts, etc.

The “10 days of amazing!” at the National Arts Festival will run from July 2 to 11, 2009, in Grahamstown. For more information visit www.nationalartsfestival.co.za

The National Arts Festival is sponsored by Standard Bank, The Eastern Cape Government, The National Arts Council, The National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund and The Sunday Independent.