Tag Archives: fest

Fest begins

Arts

Began, really. First show last night. Sie Weiss Alles. Really interesting piece – surprising even. Don’t think the write-up does it justice. Worth seeing and entertaining as well as serious.

Today begins with breakfast at the booking tent – can’t wait. Then at least 4 shows. Maybe 5. I am sad to be have to choose between shows. The disadvantage of only being around for the weekend. Also dinner with a good friend.

Have I mentioned that South Africa’s National Arts Festival is amazing? AMAZ!ING even :)

A developing multi-culturalism for South Africa – Rhythms of the Eastern Cape

Arts, Ideas, South Africa, ,

Something special is happening in the Eastern Cape. Or at least, something special is happening at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown later this month/early next month: the beginnings of the disaggregation of the catch-all categories, that have plagued and defined South Africa’s history, into self-selected, fluid, fascinating groupings.

For years (decades? generations?) South African people have been categorized – assigned to different groups by outsiders. Whether it was the British Government in the 1800s or the Apartheid government last century, and probably long before that. Groups were considered static, inflexible and uniform. Of course, the largest of these unbending group categories was race. South Africa, under Apartheid – and still today because of employment equity – had 4 race groups: Black, White, Coloured and Indian, further designated ‘white’ and ‘non-white’. All people were assigned to one or other of the race groups (whether or not they fitted) and their future would hence-forth be determined based on that race. The classification was so important that even ID numbers indicated a person’s race.

In the new South Africa, things have relaxed a bit and there has finally been a recognition that race is not a real indicator of the group to which a person belongs. But a society used to classification does not move easily to a flexible multi-culturalism. For many, the 11 official languages present a neat set of categories to replace race in the country. But the 11 drastically oversimplify the complex multi-cultural society that is South Africa. The idea that there are 11 distinct and internally homogenous groups in the country is laughable. These 11 groupings, while based on language are seen by many as a mirror of 11 (or at least 9) black ‘nations’. But this is a completely inaccurate picture of the country. These supposed ‘nations’, these static, homogeneous classes of people do not exist. People don’t fall neatly into 11 distinct ‘nations’.

The country is far more complex than that and is home to many more cultures.  Some of these cultural groupings are being explored/exploring their own existence through their distinctive music and dance at this year’s National Arts Festival. Through a series of lunchtime concerts – Rhythms of the Eastern Cape – the music and dance of five groups of Eastern Cape people will be presented: AmaMphondo, AbeSuthu, AmaKhoisan, AmaBhaca and AbaThembu. These groupings are not categories sustained by the imposition of an external labels; they are created and recreated on an ongoing basis by people who self-identify as part of the groups. They have distinct cultures in the sense of culture as a way of being and expressing identity. Their histories are necessarily complex, incorporating many influences, from the groups their ancestors met and interacted with on their long journey, over millennia, from the heart of Africa to their Southern home – a history often predating the recorded or recognised existence of the specific group – to the people they met on arrival in the Eastern Cape and the settlers with whom they shared their land and later a country. All these interactions influence the development of each distinct music and dance style.

True multi-culturalism is not simply attempting to assign each person to a pre-defined group in order to make it possible for these people who have different (static, unchanging) ‘cultures’ to work together. It requires a mental shift from externally imposed categories to the recognition that cultures are eternally adapted, adopted, created and recreated by the people who self-identify with those cultures, who view that culture/those cultures as an intrinsic part of their identity as ‘self’. It requires that each person be treated as a unique individual because generic categories imposed on others are never enough to explain or understand the cultural identities of individuals – crude stereotyping as illogical as assuming that all women or all people from the continent of Asia will think and act the same.

Multi-culturalism is the pioneering work of the groups performing at the National Arts Festival, not as activists, but in celebration of their cultures. Through sharing, exploring and enjoying their own ways of being, they will begin to reject the crude categories that were once imposed by others and implicitly celebrate the kind of multi-cultural society that will (and should) be.

Rhythms of the Eastern Cape will be at ILAM at the following times:

Friday 1 July 13:00 AmaMphondo
Sunday 3 July 13:00 AbeSuthu
Tuesday 5 July 13:00 AmaKhoisan
Thursday 7 July 13:00 AmaBhaca
Saturday 9 July 13:00 AbaThembu

Duration: 1 hour                  Tickets: free

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.