Art’s more fun in the new South Africa, says Humphrey Tyler — who enjoyed the Main festival productions with the most double entendres and hobgoblins
THERE were some delightful contradictions at the Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown this year and the prognosis is that art could be more fun than before in the new South Africa, and not at all self- conscious.
While an earnest lecturer in the Settlers Monument Building harped on about the “logocentric” basis of drama (ie words), dozens of dancers all over town threw away words completely and revelled in non-verbal communication with their audiences. Maybe the male dancer who stripped down and waved what an elderly spectator called his “willie-winkie” at the fans was pushing it, but few seemed to mind.
How do you explain the extraordinary increase in the number of dance shows this year? They came from all over, even war-torn Mozambique. Is there a new interest in the simple physicality of movement? Is it a reflection on writers who don’t seem to be able to concoct enough meaningful words for actors to speak? It certainly seems true that there are many more accomplished actors (including dancers) in an arts world in South Africa populated only sparsely by good writers. But then how often do you get a Shakespeare, even in the whole history of mankind?
When it came to more formal dramatic productions, the best were those with the most fun, double entendres, fantasy, hobgoblins and seeming illogicalities, not to mention even a rather fancifully kind-hearted vampire (ugh!) and his victim, a weird cop who woke up (dead) in a mortuary, sat up (oh really?) with a start and immediately broke his nose on the shelf above.
Typically, it was British writer Tom Stoppard who dazzled his (packed) audiences with quarks, Big Bangs and mathematical theories about the need for chaos to explain any sort of order.
The most tedious productions were narrative monologues and shows that tried to raise a laugh through set-pieces and “funny” asides.
There was also at least one monumental parable acted out by Marius Weyers, with Dawid Minnaar as his classic foil, that left audiences deeply moved. It was On the Open Road by a Czech playwright Steve Tesich who lives in New York. Billed as a “dangerous comedy” it is sometimes indeed very funny, but “dangerous” is no understatement. Go and see it if it tours, which it should.
Another, though rather more minor, success at the festival was Sue Pam- Grant and DJ Grant’s Take the Floor. It was wry, sentimental, sad and funny — often all at once. There were several moist eyes when it finished — oh so neatly.
The lecturer in the Monument building had one piece of advice that should make huge sense to young playwrights. He differentiated between dramas and narratives. The essential ingredient of a drama, he said, is that it “unfolds before your eyes”.
It is astonishing how many playwrights miss this point and have their characters just tell about key actions that occur off-stage, instead of showing their audiences, here it is, watch it happening.
The classic error at the festival this year was a tedious monologue about the painter Goya and titbits about Spanish history that made for hardly any drama at all.
Sadly a naturalistic piece by Paul Slabolepszy which was keenly anticipated also failed to make the grade. It needed much tighter direction, cuts to the script and a more convincing plot. Slabolepszy was a huge hit last year with his show The Return of Elvis du Pisanie which premiered at Grahamstown two years ago. It would be great to see him produce another similar success soon.
The festival audiences responded with huge enthusiasm to simple fun. Graham Greene’s Travels with My Aunt (a Pieter Toerien production) could have been very boring if it had been played straight, with a multitude of actors presenting the more-than 20 characters. But half the fun was to see four male actors (Michael Atkinson, Roger Dwyer, Alan Swerdlow and Mauro Faraoni) play the parts — including the randy Aunt Augusta — with little mimsies and fluttering eyelids.
Ian Fraser, the red-haired terror of South African drama, returned to Grahamstown this year with The Accidental Anti-Christ, which has been on in Johannesburg already. It is interesting to see Fraser flirting with fantasy in a way he seldom has before. Is he getting kinder? God forbid, but this show is funny, doesn’t fall over itself to shock, and generally maintains dramatic tension.
More physical is Andrew Buckland’s (often very funny, though sometimes almost bilious) Feedback, a fierce allegory involving some very strange but thoroughly engaging characters reflecting a huge revolt against our consumer-mad society. Apart from the hero (anti-hero?), Buckland plays all four parts with enough energy to shunt the Blue Train across the Hottentots Holland mountains. This is black humour with a vast potential to heal.
Considering it was the first festival to be staged in the new South Africa it was fitting that there was also a nostalgic reference to some of the great days of black writing and reporting in the distinctly old South Africa of the 1950s. On the Main programme was one-time Drum assistant editor Can Themba’s play The Suit, a frequently tender evocation of bawdy life in Sophiatown and a photographic record of the times by various Drum magazine photographers, including Bob Gosani, Ernest Cole and Ranjith Kally.
It was interesting that some major talents opted out this year. Pieter- Dirk Uys, a regular hit in Grahamstown, did not put on a show, although he did pop into town for a short while to suss out the vibes.
The Monument lecturer was on the right track when it came to drama, even though in the end he overplayed his hand. Your audience at a drama production, he admonished his listeners, reacts with “all five senses” to what’s going on on stage.
It might be nice if it did. But, really, have you touched an actress lately?