ART IS FOR ALL AT NAF

Main programme launched at media function in Johannesburg.

The National Arts Festival, on from 20 June - 4 July in Grahamstown, launched its Main Programme at a media function in Johannesburg earlier this week. The pursuit of excellence, together with a spirit of innovation, change, growth and opportunity permeate the plans for the National Arts Festival’s bumper 2010 event. This year’s Festival will offer visitors a smorgasbord of national, continental and world premieres in theatre, dance, music and visual art. At the same time, some of South Africa’s best productions over the past year have also been included in the programme to give international visitors a window into what gives South African art its vibrantly pulsating heartbeat.

THEATRE: With a total of 15 theatre productions on the Main programme of the National Arts Festival, and drawing on the talents of artists from 15 different countries, the National Arts Festival’s 15 days of Amazing is certain to establish a reputation that Grahamstown is the one place in South Africa where the world’s best creative minds will gather to offer theatre lovers the escape from all other distractions.

“Our programme explores intersections between puppetry, digital images and sounds, workshop productions and newly written scripts, which together create a rich and vibrant 15 days in the theatre,” Festival Director Ismail Mahomed said. He added that the programme is crammed with South African premieres, continental and world premieres.

Heading the list of productions is Standard Bank Young Artist for Theatre, Janni Younge, whose Ouroboros, a visually rich and exciting contemporary puppet theatre production about life, death and … tea. Using puppetry, projection and movement, Younge paints images through time and space, weaving together the lives of its two main characters as they encounter themselves and each other. This is a story of love, dreaming, imagination and death.

Guaranteed to take South African stages by storm before it travels to Europe is South Africa’s internationally renowned Market Theatre’s presentation of the world premiere of Craig Higginson’s new gripping psychological drama, The Girl in the Yellow Dress, that centres on a love story set in Paris between two apparently disparate characters, one a UK teacher and the other her Congolese student.

Also a world premiere is the Cape Town-based Magnet Theatre’s Inxeba Lomphili (The wound of a Healer). Drawing its aesthetic from African traditions and urban rituals to explore the theme of identity and belonging, multiple stories of ordinary men and women, forgotten heroes, poets and freedom fighters are told through an interdisciplinary, multimedia production that takes place along the N2 road between Cape Town and the Eastern Cape. Pushing the boundaries about identity and geography is Jaco Bouwer’s award winning Afrikaans play Skrapnel, in which he presents a compelling portrayal of a generation of Afrikaans youth who grapple with the issues of identity, belonging and confusion in a global shopping centre of sex, drugs and visas.

Award winning director and designer Marthinus Basson collaborates with celebrated actress Antoinette Kellerman to investigate the life of a woman who, during the depression of the 1930’s in Germany, after her husband’s untimely death, disguised herself as a man to take over his job at the factory where he used to work as a crane-driver. Translated from Manfred Karge’s original German text by Anthony Vivis, Man to Man promises to be a worthy theatre experience.

The discerning theatre-goer will also be pleased that the National Arts Festival is bringing back actor Connor Lovett who mesmerised audiences last year in his interpretation of Samuel Beckett’s First Love. This year, Lovett will once again offer an astonishing jewel of a performance and an absolutely riveting experience as he interprets without scenery or props, extracts from Beckett’s great prose trilogy Molloy, Malone dies and The Unnamable. The visual simplicity of the productions reinforces Lovett’s reputation as the greatest interpreter of Beckett’s works which in this trilogy, he offers as a stripped-down solo performance of naked virtuosity.

Starting with the famous line, “now is the winter of our discontent …”, Fred Abrahamse’s The Really Small Theatre Company presents a production that will probably be remembered as the most innovative presentation of Richard III performed by a cast of only three actors. Marcel Meyer, David Dennis and Darren Aaujo are aided by the use of masks, headdresses, miniatures, puppets and audio visuals to engage the audience in a fast paced political thriller about despotic leaders who have risen to power; and which makes the play as relevant today as when written in its depiction of politics.

Human relations in tough political situations is at the heart of the South African premiere of The Timekeepers. Voted by the British Theatre Guide as one of the top five theatre shows in London, The Timekeepers is a deeply humanist work about an outrageously camp German homosexual and a conservative elderly Jewish man in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where they seem to have little in common, but the humour they share is a great weapon against suspicion and prejudice and gives way to a touching friendship.

Drawing from her personal experiences as an aerobics instructor in a San Francisco City Jail, American artist Rhodessa Jones’s Big Butt Girls Hard Headed Women poignantly and courageously tells the tale about the lives and times of real women who are incarcerated behind bars. She is accompanied on stage by Idris Ackamoor, a multi-instrumentalist, composer, actor, tap dancer, and director whose signature performance is his uncanny ability to combine tap dancing with playing his saxophone simultaneously.

The images of a joyful Nelson Mandela that were televised across the globe as the announcement was made that South Africa will host the 2010 FIFA World Cup will be recalled when the world gathers on South African soil in June. The spirit of soccer will certainly make its presence felt in theatres during the National Arts Festival.

The Football Diaries is an engaging cross-disciplinary solo performance with Ahilan Ratnamohan, a young Australian / Sri-Lankan footballer who makes a direct and complex address to his intimate audience, taking them into a world where dreams and aspirations clash with jarring realities. He relates his endeavours to reach the games’ physical extremes whilst seeking and failing to gain a professional players contract in Europe. This will be the South African premiere of this Australian production which wowed audiences and critics alike at the Sydney Festival. Staying with soccer, the African continent’s premiere of Football Football captures all the vibrancy of the sport by combining dance, theatre, video, music and technology to allow the audience to be immersed in what is widely considered the most accessible game in the world. An international cast from Italy, Singapore, Bosnia, Slovenia and Singapore make a high-pitched artistic team for this vigorously profound and entertaining production.

Collaboration between some of the finest creative minds is also the rationale for Neil Coppen’s groundbreaking multi-media production Tree Boy as he employs a seamless mixture of stop-motion animation and shadow puppetry to produce a moving theatrical journey not to be missed. The musical score for Tree Boy is created and performed by Karen Van Pletsen and Guy Buttery.

Lovers of musical theatre will be delighted to experience a contemporary take of Dale Wasserman's Man of La Mancha which uses the classic novel Don Quixote as a jumping off place, as it originally told the story of Quixote's author, Miguel de Cervantes and his courage in standing up to the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. Under the acute directing of musical theatre maestro, Themi Venturas, Man of La Mancha is set in a in a new context where criminals and a few riotous students arrested after mayhem at the Ballito ‘rage’ are held together in the overcrowded backyard of the Ballito Police station.

No musical theatre programme could ever be complete without the inclusion of some South African legends. In the Market Theatre’s Songs of Migration, created by internationally acclaimed trumpeter, composer and lyricist Hugh Masekela and written and directed by award-winning director James Ngcobo, Songs of Migration features the multi-talented, soulful and dynamic Sibongile Khumalo to rewind the tape and tell stories about South African music and history drawing on rich musical scenes on the train that was seen as a separator of lovers, breaking up families as it moved raw materials to and from the ports for imports and exports.

COMEDY: During 2009, the National Arts Festival introduced comedy on the Main programme. The Festival continues this tradition by presenting comic ventriloquist Paul Zerdin who will have his audiences rolling in the aisles as he combines his skills of throwing his voice through the body of his stage puppet. Paul Zerdin was an outstanding success at the Edinburgh Festival. South African comedian Stuart Taylor who is well known on the Festival’s Fringe programme will be the supporting act on the Main programme.

DANCE: Dance enthusiasts are in for an equally enthralling visit to the Festival. Standard Bank Young Artist for Dance, Mlu Zondi, has been acclaimed on several platforms for his virtuosity to draw\inspiration from many sources. The premiere of his Cinema intersects with so many genres that it pushes the boundaries of what can traditionally be defined as dance.

In San, internationally celebrated South African dancer and choreographer Vincent Mantsoe magnetically draws his audiences into a mesmerising production which has its music inspired from the works of the Persian poet, Mowlana Jalaludin Rumi. The dance piece is an iconic journey into the soul of the San who are considered to be oldest inhabitants of the African continent.

Former Standard Bank Young Artist winner Acty Tang noted for his avant-garde approach to choreography presents his dance installation Inscrutable in an unusually non-conventional dance space as he recreates what can be considered to be his most autobiographical work probing his search for identity in his journey from China to South Africa.

Festival favourite Dada Masilo returns with her firmly established dance signature to reinterpret the classics. From her eclectic Romeo and Juliet to her high powered Carmen, Masilo gives a fascinatingly refreshing presentation of the well loved classic, Swan Lake. Lovers of classical ballet will not be disappointed. The Cape Town Ballet Theatre, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, will offer Festival-goers a marvellously entertaining Sleeping Beauty.

The sounds of castanets and the sight of swirling dresses will be the scene in the La Rosa Dance Theatre Company’s Sentimientos. Just the word evokes moods of high passion and emotion that will sway from one extreme to the next. In a similar vein, but closer to home, stomping feet, hand-clapping and music from indigenous instruments will be the call that will beckon international visitors to take a peep into the rich cultural diversity of the tribes that lives in the Eastern Cape’s rural mountains. The Eastern Cape Ensemble is an armchair tour into the dances and the music of the AmaBaca, AmaGcalexa and the Ama Pondo tribes.

MUSIC: Classical music lovers are being well catered for this year. Samson Diamond, winner of the 2010 Standard Bank Young Artist for Music, will headline the programme with a recital of George Crumb’s dark piece Black Angel. Diamond will also perform with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra in the Gala Concert which has become a firm favourite Sunday afternoon event during the Festival. The Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra will also present a Symphony Concert conducted by the charismatic Richard Cock. South African pianist Jill Richards can be seen in a one-off recital in Mantra. Also giving a once-off solo recital is internationally celebrated piano virtuoso Florian Uhlig.

The Cathedral of St Michael and St George, at the heart of Grahamstown, will host a piano recital by Jeremy Joseph who will be returning to South Africa from the U.K. especially to be part of the bumper 15 Days of Amazing. Wessel Beukes and his accompaniment of highly skilled musicians will perform in the Bach Goldberg Variations. Operatic diva Michelle Veenemans will showcase her musical range in Bravura. Western classics and African Classics will be performed in programmes by the Piano Cello Duo while Duetonori brings together two talented voices from the Twenty Tenors to melodiously fill the Beethoven Music Room at the Festival.

From Malaysia, the band AkashA will be flown in to show just why this group of multi-cultural and talented musicians have become the new rage at world music events. From Mexico comes renowned harpist Celso Duarte and his ensemble. Building on the initiative started last year to introduce contemporary music onto Main stages at the Festival, this year sees rocker Karen Zoid perform in the Guy Butler Theatre. Vusi Mahlasela will be drawing on his vast catalogue of hits spanning a couple of decades in a “one night only” concert while the extraordinary and innovative duo BLK Sonshine will reunite for two special performances in Grahamstown, promising a set that is sure to grow their already significant base of fans.

VISUAL ART: Mexico celebrates two historical milestones in its political history this year. South African photographer Damien Schumann prolifically captures some of the contradictions on the border between Mexico and the US in his exhibition, Borderline. Issues of interrogating identity shaped by political ideology is also the essence of Mary Sibande’s exhibition, Long live the dead Queen. Rosemary Marriot’s exhibition Relaas … delves into memories.

Grahamstown-based artist Rat Western locates her exhibition Dead Media in the Albany Natural Sciences Museum. Whilst her work interrogates trends in the way museums curate their work, her exhibition is also intended to attract audiences into this part of the museum to which arts festival visitors rarely go. The Keiskamma Arts Project which has earned a strong reputation for its work with rural women, will produce the African Guernica, a symbolic take on Picasso’s Guernica. The Keiskamma’s work will focus on the way in which the AIDS pandemic continues to ravage through the Eastern Cape. Rural crafters and artists from the Eastern Cape will also exhibit and demonstrate their skills during the Festival.

Heading the visual arts exhibition line up at the Festival is Standard Bank Young Artist Michael MacGarry whose exhibition Endgame punctuates just why this dynamic young artist, whose creativity has no boundaries, puts contemporary South African art so respectfully in international galleries.

STREET THEATRE: “Arts for all” is going to be the rallying cry at this year’s bumper festival where five exciting street theatre productions promise to offer a rich cultural experience in which all can join freely and come together in a shared and positive celebratory event. Kicking off this year’s Street Theatre programme, is Amathole, a magical mixture aimed at family audiences and the artistic cognoscenti alike. It brims with high energy, dance, music and song and will be staged as a procession with vibrant costumes and brilliant puppetry to create more than just a carnival. It is a theatrical event on the move where the normal boundaries of performers and spectators become blurred.

After stomping their huge feet firmly in the Grahamstown soil last year, a group of giant puppets will once again return to the Festival with the support of the French Institute of South Africa. This year, the amplified group of 32 giant puppets, each measuring up to four meters high, masks and objects, will spice up the atmosphere and entertain the crowds. The Giant Match is created as a South African allegory of Romeo and Juliet, with its story of two young lovers kept apart by the feud between their two families, culminating in an epic and comic football match, before the two parties are reconciled and the couple happily wed.

Two South African artists whose signature style is performing in public spaces, Ellis Pearson and Sdumo Mtshali, will bring out their uncanny skill of enchanting the audiences in Man Up a Tree. And in Undoing, avant-garde artists Frauke, Givan Lötz and Vincent Truter will use costumes designed by Black Coffee to produce a Japanese butoh performance series that will pop up unannounced in various public spaces. Adding to the excitement in public spaces will be the Festival’s home-grown Phezulu Stiltwalkers and the Arkworks Eco-Puppets.

This year’s Festival will close with a massive spectacle presented with the support of the Italian Institute of Culture. Angeli e Demoni is a spectacular show with lighting effects, pyrotechnical orchestrations and smokescreens to create a dark fairytale that is suitable for both children and adults. Knights, ogres, humanoids, warrior maidens and mercenaries of the underworld will travel uncharted roads and throughout create fiery images of serpents, dragons, gigantic marionettes, gateways, mirrors, swords and edged weapons of all types, flaming walls, crowns, skirts and fans, claws and wings appear drawn in fire. This South African premiere of Angeli e Demoni is the work of Pietro Chiarenza, an internationally celebrated Italian theatre director, playwright and designer who specialises in street, circus and open-air theatre.

Street theatre is a vital art form at the National Arts Festival. This year’s programme is a colourful celebration which challenges the pre-defined structures of walls and stages. It offers a place to re-invent the relationships between art and their audience and it will most certainly be the place where the audience gets to perform, dance, sing along and celebrate with the artists. Street theatre is where it's going to be at!

That is still not counting the buzz that is created at the Standard Bank Jazz Festival whose highlights this year will include not only Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner Melanie Scholtz, but also Robbie Jansen’s Cape Jazz Spectacular, Darius Brubeck, Marcus Wyatt, Feya Faku and a rare acoustic set by Judith Sephuma. The Jazz programme has developed a reputation for presenting cutting-edge and exciting collaborations, and this year it features a reuniting of South Africa’s own Sibongile Khumalo with Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez in what is sure to be a scintillating performance.

FILM: Film fans will be thrilled to know that expert film curator Trevor Steele Taylor is behind this year’s programme which once again will include premieres, discussions with film makers, late night esoteric and sensual cinema. Trevor’s uncanny ability to put together a successful film programme always attracts an audience whose debates and discussions after the screenings often continue into the wee hours of Grahamstown’s nights. Standard Bank Young Artist winner for Film Claire Angelique will be showcasing her latest work Palace of Bone in her characteristic controversial style. Indo-Pakistani-French film maker filmmaker Jamil Dehlavi, known for films like Passover, Godforsaken and The Guitarist, is one of the names on this year’s film line-up.

THINK! FEST: Debates about censorship of the arts, the legitimacy of solo theatre as an art form, state of the nation and issues of social and cultural identity are only some of the themes that will be explored in this year’s Think! Fest programme. Amongst some of the participants will be Albie Sachs, Riaan Manser, Chris Harvey, Ali Hlonwane and Shamiel X. Richard Callan, Salim Badat, Christina Bentley will discuss constitutional sovereignty and citizenship. Think! Fest will also host two exhibitions, Nandan Sooben will present his sport cartoons and The Makoya Makaraba company will present an exhibition and offer demonstrations on the makaraba craze that will be swaying through the country during the soccer season.

FRINGE: The Festival’s Fringe programme will offer about 350 productions which will go across all the genres. Many successful Fringe festival artists will be back this year to entice audiences to take a chance and unearth some of the real artistic gems that often lay embedded in the Festival’s Fringe programme. It’s for this reason that most South African mainstream artists give credit to the Festival’s fringe for launching their careers.

Family entertainment is going to be abundant as the newly revamped Transnet Village Green Fair continues to be a space where festival goers take refuge looking for the finest South African crafters and an opportunity to relax amongst the myriad of food stalls. Additional craft will be found at Fiddlers’ Green which this year will host a newly created venue, the Urban Lounge. This new venue will be the gathering point for Spoken Word artists, emerging music bands, street performers, stilt-walkers and fire dancers. The Urban Lounge is sure to become the new signature space where festinos come to chill at night.

Also new at this year’s Festival is a concept which will bridge the divide between the Festival’s outstanding Main programme, and its pulsating vibrant Fringe programme. The newly launched Arena will feature some of the artists who over the past years have presented some of the most successful productions on the Festival’s Fringe. Headlining the Arena’s 15 productions is cutting edge writer, director and performer Peter Hayes, the Cape Town-based FTH-K theatre which integrates disabled artists in the mainstream of the performing arts, and sassy director Zinzi Princess Mhlongo who is fast earning a reputation as one of the most promising new women directors in the country.

Also making its debut this year at the Festival is the Standard Bank Ovation Award which will give accolades to some of the most exciting work presented on the Festival’s Fringe programme. South African arts critic and theatre historian Adrienne Sichel will head a panel of reviewers who will highlight those productions on the Fringe which truly deserve an ovation and hopefully an extended in other theatres in South Africa.

As a trendsetter for South African festivals, the National Arts Festival will continue to demonstrate its strong commitment to being a socially responsible and environmentally friendly festival. The Festival’s Hands On! Masks Off! Programme sponsored by Business Arts South Africa and the National Arts Council will once again present a series of workshops aimed at strengthening the entrepreneurial capacity of the arts community.

The Festival’s Remix Laboratory will increase its residency from 65 artists in 2009 to 100 community-based artists in 2010 who will be exposed to a series of performances and creative workshops led by some of the country’s most finest arts practitioners.

The Festival’s home-grown Phezulu Stilt-walkers and the Arts Factory coupled with the Festival’s ARTReach Project will lead a number of productions that will travel from the festival stages to present performances in Grahamstown’s clinics, hospices, prisons and old age homes; and thereby reinforcing the festival’s Mission to articulate the “Arts for All” campaign in real terms.

This year’s bumper 15 Days of Amazing is going to be a meeting place of artists coming from America, Mexico, Israel, Demark, Sweden, Netherlands, the UK, Ireland, Malaysia, Australia and from the African continent with artists coming from Malawi, Zambia, Botswana and Swaziland.

“In 2010, the world is coming to South Africa but there is going to be only one place in Africa where the world will come to sing, dance, play together, inspire each other and engage each other’s hearts and souls. Grahamstown will be the cultural centre of this continent during this important time,” Mahomed said. “We look forward to opening the doors of the city to the world.”

Bookings for this year’s “15 Days of Amaz!ig” open on April 26. Tickets are available through Computicket. Booking kits available from selected Standard Bank Branches, selected Exclusive Books and all Computicket outlets. For more information on the programme, accommodation and travel options visit www.nationalartsfestival.co.za Also join the National Arts Festival group on Facebook for all the latest competitions and news, or follow us on Twitter.

The National Arts Festival, now in its 36th year, is sponsored by Standard Bank, The Eastern Cape Government, The National Arts Council, The National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, The Sunday Independent and M Net.