Category Archives: Arts

Words across time

Arts, Ideas,

In 1874, Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessey published a collection of poems called Music and Moonlight. Among them was a poem, Ode, that will be familiar to many, although most people know only the first couple of stanzas: We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams, wandering by lone sea breakers and sitting by desolate streams…

It’s a beautiful poem of perpetual change and the role of words and wordsmiths in revolution. This stanza, in particular, seems relevant to this year, these months, these days:

And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day’s late fulfilling;
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.

Fest is over

Arts, South Africa

Another Fest is over and I am sad. Not only because it is Fest in all it’s amazingness, but also because it feels as though this finally brings to a close my Korean year. I spent so much time in my last couple of months in Korea thinking about, planning for and anticipating Fest. And now it is past, as if it was elastic stretched to that point and now it is broken.

Fest, itself, was fantastic, of course. I missed 2009, so this year was a particular treat. I also found myself thinking a lot about future years. I think I have now reached the point in my life where I can official become one of those people who gets into the habit of taking a house in Grahamstown for Fest every year regardless of what else is happening. An annual injection of cultural joy.

Of course, there were some duds. One was the awful one-woman opera I mentioned earlier. Another was a particularly annoying production called ‘…Miskien’ that felt interminably like a 15-minute student piece (built around nothing but the supposed ‘shock-value’ of people being Afrikaans AND gay) stretched to fill an hour. Such a waste of time. Another was, sadly, one of the most talked-about productions at Fest. Everyone – from friends and acquaintances to reviewers and radio presenters – was calling it a ‘must-see’. I think they were wrong. It was called London Road and it was fairly sweet, I suppose, but the acting wasn’t great, the characters weren’t believable, they did nothing with the set and the story was bland. It wasn’t magical. It didn’t at any point make me want to forget that I was sitting in a theatre and watching a show. They even did annoying things like pulling full cups of tea out of drawers. I like my shows to make a little more effort, thanks.

The other dud was just bizarre. We later read an interview with the director who seemed to think they had presented a groundbreaking theatre piece that explored sexuality, power relations and transformation in South Africa. I don’t know what she was smoking because what we saw was a play about two women time-travelling in a freezer and eating children, that left us going ‘but why?’. You really can’t get that far and then do nothing with it – it just makes you look silly.

For the rest, we managed to pick shows that made us happy. Choosing a top show of fest is always hard, but I think this year’s was Karoo Moose. Lara Foot directed this stunning story of a young girl growing up in the rural Northern Cape. The cast was great and effectively managed to combine African music, choreography, movement, storytelling and acting to produce a piece that was funny, moving, heart-wrenching and so incredibly real, but without any of the annoying self-indulgent angst that plagues so many realistic South African stories. I loved it and would happily have seen it again had we not caught the last show.

A piece we did see again, and which stole my heart for its simplicity and magic was Hats with Richard Antrobus and Tristan Jacobs. It says something about this piece that, when we were talking about it after we’d seen it the first time, we couldn’t remember if it had any words or not. It doesn’t. It is a physical theatre piece that uses music and visual effects but it communicates so well that it feels like there are words. It was probably one of the saddest, most beautiful pieces on the Fest. It was also the exact opposite of London Road – the audience was drawn into the piece and had no choice whatsoever but to go with the performers on their journey through emotions and moments and friendship and loss.

Another excellent piece, which made me cry and verlang na Stellenbosch, was Dinsdae by Morrie. This is a stage adaption of the Afrikaans version of the best-selling book. I haven’t read the book. I don’t think I will. I’m scared it would spoil what was an exceptionally sensitive, funny, beautiful piece of theatre. This, unlike most of my favourites, didn’t use physical theatre but it did make use of music and captivated the audience as all good theatre should.

There were other favourites. Blood Orange was a very South African one-man piece with Craig Morris, who was so convincing that when the rocket took off to the moon (with no props to create the illusion) the entire audience looked up. Kaput was a delightful piece that, although it touched on some heavy material, was performed with such a light touch that you left feeling happy. Also, the seagull! Stilted, another delightful piece with Richard Antrobus and Tristan Jacobs, stunned the audience with excellent stilt-work (jumping on a trampoline on stilts and other feats of acrobatic insanity) and weaved a subtle tale so delicate it even laughed at itself. Nina Lucy Wylde was excellent in The Human Voice. Breed was a haunting and unexpectedly beautiful piece by Ubom! that I would love to see again. A lecture on the Eastern Cape made me fall in love with my country all over again. Plus several other lectures and a conversation with a travel writer.

Of course, there was also the ballet (which was lovely) and plenty of music, from the symphony and gala concerts to Vusi Mahlasela and Karen Zoid . We also really enjoyed Jeremy Quickfall in a show called My grand(ma se) piano and Lana English (and co.) in Belles and Beaux. It’s hard to remember what else. I keep having to go back to my list. We saw 32 shows.

And then, of course, there is Raiders. Raiders is hard to describe to someone who has never seen one. For starters, you have to like puns. I kept thinking of a friend from Daegu who would have been in punny-heaven. Puns of all shapes and sizes. In this particular Raiders, a box of lion matches becomes ‘he came across some Lions; they were no match for him’. Also, the audience is an integral part of every performance, in this case, for example, as ‘jim’ and ‘morrison’ – the doors. The shows are funny and magical and an integral part of the Fest experience. This year was also the 21st that Raiders has been at Festival so we had the absolute joy of going to their special 21st anniversary evening performance of Raiders of the Lost Aardvark. It was marvellous. I can’t wait to see what they do next year.

Next year. This is, of course, the other sadness of Festival – that we will have to wait a-whole-nother year before it happens again. Ah, well, next years dates are 30 June to 9 July so plenty of time to plan my life and make absolutely certain I don’t miss any of ‘AMAZ!NG’ next time round.

A quiet Sunday

Arts

Sunday was the first time I felt the Grahamstown magic. Grahamstown during Festival isn’t really Grahamstown and I have been struggling a little even to get into Fest. I think my brain is still not sure whether to believe that I’m finally, actually home. Of course, not staying in town makes a difference, too. But yesterday driving into town, I felt it for the first time. It. It’s really difficult to describe: a sense of excitement, a sense of relief, a sense of home. Grahamstown. Home.

Ridiculously well-timed, too. Silly, almost: we were on our way to a lecture called Spirits of the Past about the history of the Eastern Cape and particularly Grahamstown. Not really a lecture in the academic sense but one of the Fest’s Historical Encounters. The audience perches at Fort Selwyn (or in our case next to the Makana gallery to avoid the rain) as story-teller, Alan Weyer, weaves the tale of this areas history from the early San, the Khoi-Khoi, Nguni settlement, shipwrecked sailors, frontier wars and trekboers. This storyteller is very clear that his narrative is just that, one narrative, but he is extremely well-read and knowledgeable and knows this part of the world intimately. It made me happy.

It was also a quiet Sunday. Our only other show was the Gala Concert. The two major classical music shows at Fest are the Symphony and Gala Concerts. The Symphony is obviously the more serious of the two. The Gala Concert is more relaxed and occasionally a bit zany, especially when conducted by Richard Cock. This year was no exception. The programme ranged from the Triumph March from Aida (ironically for Italy) through Woza Waltz by Shannon Mowday to You’ll never walk alone, complete with audience pulling off an excellent approximation of a stadium full of footie fans. Shannon Mowday performed and was good as usual. She has been a regular guest artist at these concerts since she was Young Artist Award winner for Jazz in 2007. The 2010 Young Artist for classical music was the soloist. Samson Diamond is a tiny man from Soweto. I’m not even sure that he plays a full-size violin. When he plays, though, angels must weep. Beautiful. The violin is my favourite instrument and in his hands it sings. I’m sad that I’m not going to be able to get to his recital.

All the music in this programme was very loosely linked with the soccer, through the nationality of the composer or some other tenuous connection. This proved a marvelous way to keep the audience engaged and provided plenty of laughs. The show also had to finish on time because the orchestra wanted to watch the soccer. Which is how we ended up with Richard Cock emerging for the encore wearing a makarapa. Up until then, audience participation had been limited to clapping, clicking and at one point singing like football fans. For the encore, in honour of Brazil, he had the entire audience at a Gala Concert, in the Guy Butler Theatre, doing the makarena. And they say that classical music is boring?!

A delightful day and a nice, quiet Sunday.