NAF DAY #7: JULY 6, 2012

artSMart Editor Caroline Smart reports from Grahamstown at the National Arts Festival

Hooray – the weather is still fine!

The day started off with a visit to Beverley Thomas, the head of the National English Literary Museum (NELM) which is the archival home of all South African essays, scripts, articles, reviews, these, etc written in English.

Last week 42 carefully-wrapped box files left my second office to travel to Grahamstown where they will be preserved at NELM for the benefit of anyone studying or researching South African theatre. The files belonged to the late Maurice Kort – who artSMart readers will remember from his many reviews for the website. He kept programmes of every single show he saw in South Africa, London and New York since he was about 15 years old.

On his death, his brother Norman Kort approached me to find a suitable archival home for this material and, thanks to the suggestion of National Arts Festival director Ismail Mahomed, I approached NELM who were delighted to take care of this valuable resource.

Then it was off to see Mother to Mother up at The Hangar.

What does a mother say to the mother of the daughter allegedly killed by her own son? Does she ask for forgiveness? Justification? Understanding? When the daughter is Amy Biehl, the American Fullbright scholar who was killed by mob violence, the situation resounds at an international level.

Thembi Mtshali-Jones gives a superb performance as Mandisa, a warm-hearted, upstanding and humorous woman who works as a domestic servant. She raises her three children single-handedly since her husband “fell out of love” with her and departed. One day, Mandisa’s employer insists she goes home early as there is trouble in Gugulethu. She arrives home to find the area in turmoil and her eldest son missing. As the story progresses, it turns out that he is accused of being the main protagonist in Amy’s death.

Mandisa now bears the brunt of public condemnation and is branded as the mother of a killer. She is torn between her motherly instincts and her natural revulsion at the events. The drama looks at how Mandisa would face Amy’s mother, Linda Biehl – my “sister mother” - were they to meet. Mandisa poses the poignant and telling question – “If your daughter had been black would there have been the same outcry?”

Immaculate direction by Janice Honeyman, Sindiwe Magona’s compelling script and forceful audiovisuals make this one of the finest drama productions on the Festival. The publicity describes it as “unforgettable”. I couldn’t agree more.

Fortunately, my next production was also at The Hangar so I was able to relax in my car and prepare for the next show. This was Sunday Morning, a one-man drama by the inimitable James Cuningham who can always be relied on to present something interesting, cleverly constructed and invariably heart-warming.

He didn’t disappoint. The basic story is about a successful photographer (Mat) who has just been hit by the bombshell that his girlfriend is pregnant, a condition he amusingly describes later as “a walking hailstorm of hormones”! He goes out running where he finds an abandoned baby in a tunnel.

That’s it. That’s the story. However, it’s what Cuningham does with the story and the levels he creates that make this production special.

Written by Nick Warren and directed by Jenine Collocott, the show sees Mat doing a lot of running in between telling us how he feels his life is at a crossroads and he has been too busy working to follow his dream. However, he isn’t able to articulate that dream. Perhaps, as he says, his life hasn’t started yet.

Just when you wonder where all this is going, he makes a gruesome discovery and the life he’s been searching for leaps into gear. Humour is ever present and there are some hilarious comedy lines but there’s also acute sensitivity and some beautiful tear-jerking moments.

I was able to take in Retinal Shift, the exhibition by this year’s Standard Bank Young artist Award winner for Visual Art, Mikhael Subotzky. It is presented in two venues at the Monument but unfortunately I only had time to check out the Monument Gallery.

This is a fascinating exhibition which investigates the history of Grahamstown, drawing on archival portraits from the last century. On the one side there are ten panels carrying a series of black and white photographs with one panel at the end carrying colour photographs. Subotzky scanned every passport-sized photo in 11 volumes of Who’s Who of Southern Africa from 1911 for every ten years after that. There are over 30,000 images and the colour portraits at the end feature contemporary personalities such as TV presenters Riaan Cruywagen and the late Fiona Coyne, former State President FW de Klerk, swimming star Penny Heyns and fashion designer Marianne Fassler.

The other wall carries a series of large colour photographs of a wide range of subjects such as an old lady in powder blue reading what looks like a bible, a child lying on a rock holding a small white dog as it gazes into the sky and an amusing image of two people taken from behind as they bend to pack a car for a journey.

As the festival enters its final four days, burn-out is often to be seen on people’s faces as they rush from one venue to the other. A standard question heard in the queues is “Do we know what we’re seeing now?” Good advice when booking shows for the festival is not to go into over-drive trying to cram in as much as possible. Unless, of course, you have the stamina of an ox! – Caroline Smart