David Le Page
THIS year’s Grahamstown Festival once again looks likely to have the town bursting at the seams with debuts, premieres, installations, exhibitions and screenings.
Details of the line-up released this week reveal a myriad attractive theatrical possibilities. South Africa provides the context for an adaptation of a Brechtian classic — The Good Person of Sharkville comes from Janet Suzman and Gcina Mhlophe. Deon Opperman has written an epic about the rise and fall of the Afrikaner nation, entitled Donkerland, which follows a Natal family through seven generations, from the Great Trek to the present; while Charles Pillai’s 1949 is an one-man show, dramatising four short stories by Ronnie Govender. It’s set in Cato Manor and recalls race riots in the year of its title.
Andrew Buckland is workshopping a production called Human Race, with the President’s Award Gumboot Dancers and the Rhodes First Physical Theatre Company. He is not the only person presenting mime at the festival: Les Pietons are a French troupe who mix mime, dance, music and spectacular props in street theatre.
The line-up includes two South African premieres of Broadway hits. The first is Love! Valour! Compassion! from American Terrence McNally, the story of relationships between eight gay men sharing a country house. The Piano Lesson won a second Pulitzer Prize for African-American August Wilson. It’s about a black family struggling with racism in 1936 Pittsburgh.
One play likely to draw much professional curiousity will be The Crucible, an Arthur Miller work about the Salem witchcraft trials, directed here by the talented Lara Foot Newton. Established directors Janice Honeyman and Marthinus Basson premiere productions of A Tale of Two Cities and Macbeth.
Amahl and the Night Visitors is a African opera from Capab which leads a formidable array of choices for those who plan to stimulate their ears. Illinois sends us the Chicago Children’s Choir; Cambridge, an a cappella group called Henry’s Eight, and Roodepoort, the SDASA Chorale.
The visual arts celebrate the centenary of film, with an exhibition from France titled Magnum Cinema. And Santu Mofokeng has compiled an exhibition of black family portraits dating from between 1890 and 1950.
Visiting daubers include Angola’s Antonio Ole and mystic Dan Rakgoathe. Visitors may observe artists in residence Randolph Hartzenberg and Andrew Verster at work. The arts and crafts of Swaziland and glass-bead workers from Kwa-Zulu Natal also receive attention this year.
And don’t miss Kaffe Fassett at the Winter School — he is the only knitwear/needlepoint designer to have been accorded a retrospective by Britain’s Victoria and Albert Museum.
The 1996 Standard Bank National Arts Festival runs from July 4 to 14