The work at this year’s Grahamstown Festival rejoiced=20 in cultural freedom — and shied away from socio- political issues, writes Justin Pearce
FOUR African men speaking algemeen beskaafte Afrikaans,=20 while a rainbow-nation audience convulses with laughter=20 as they impersonate traffic cops, tsotsis, and the Paul=20 Kruger statue. It all adds up to a vision of Pretoria=20 that would scare the khakis off any volkstater who=20 claims the city as the spiritual home of white=20 Afrikanerdom. Such a moment — from JM Productions’=20 Daar is Pretoria — was hardly representative of what=20 this year’s Grahamstown Festival was all about. But it=20 did sum up almost everything that was good and exciting=20 about the gargantuan annual theatre bash.
It was funny. It was up-to-the-moment without pushing a=20 political line. It appealed to an audience that varied=20 in colour, class and age almost as widely as South=20 Africa itself. And, above all, it challenged the=20 territorial distinctions that South Africans have been=20 wont to impose on language and culture.
It is still hopelessly naive to talk about a single=20 South African culture. But the lesson from this year’s=20 festival is that the old, essentialist notions of=20 culture — which equate culture with ethnicity and=20 allow something to be dismissed because it is “not part=20 of my culture” — are disappearing. The task of artists=20 now is not so much promoting a single culture as=20 creating a new one, using whatever raw material seems=20 appropriate, regardless of where it comes from.
It’s now okay to use dance and music rooted in the=20 African continent as part of a production which also=20 owes much to Western forms — as happens in Tone=20 Brulin’s stage adaption of Wilma Stockenstrsm’s novel=20 Abjater wat so Lag, presented at the festival by Die=20 Koninklike Nederlandse Schouwburg.
Antoinette Pienaar, classified white in the old South=20 Africa, can now portray a Khoi woman in Krotoa without=20 seeming incongruous — and in so doing she hints at the=20 intertwinement of Afrikaner and Khoi history which is=20 central to the production’s concept. Capab’s Medea went=20 a step further, drawing on the languages and heritages=20 of at least three continents in its recreation of a=20 story from Greek mythology.
But if the work at this year’s festival rejoiced in the=20 cultural freedom made possible by the vision of a non- racial society, it was shy about engaging with the=20 realities of life after the elections. The new=20 orthodoxy of “culture is not a weapon of struggle” has=20 been interpreted as “thou shalt not touch socio- political issues with a bargepole”. Could it be that in=20 this era of compulsory optimism no one dares spoil the=20 party by suggesting that things aren’t as happily=20 rainbow-nation as conventional wisdom will have it? The=20 fascinating contradictions of South Africa 1995 were=20 left largely unexplored — one exception being a=20 Univeristy of Zululand student production, Yakhal’=20 Inkomo, in which an angry character confronts the fact=20 that Madiba’s presence in the Union Buildings hasn’t=20 granted him the opportunities that he was denied by=20
The most cutting accusations against the hypocrisies of=20 contemporary South Africa came from two very different=20 productions. One was William Kentridge’s highly=20 accomplished Faustus in Africa (reviewed opposite),=20 which ends by placing the discourse of truth and=20 reconciliation very tellingly in the mouth of=20 Mephistopheles. The other was Cancer by the off-the- cuff comedy duo Programme Fluoride, the alienated white=20 boys who in a recent Mail & Guardian interview railed=20 against that old folk-demon called “political=20 correctness”. In Cancer, Roger Christian leads the=20 audience in a “responsorial psalm”, making them respond=20 “who gives a shit?” as he reads out statistics of=20 murders and road deaths. It’s a disquieting experience.
Satirical institutions Pieter-Dirk Uys and Soli=20 Philander showed they’re still on the ball, Uys with=20 his character Bambi Kellerman, a figure from the=20 fascist past of Afrikaner nationalism who makes a=20 devastating comment on the new South Africa simply by=20 showing that she can be a part of it; and Philander=20 with his homespun philosopher fruit vendor.
Myth Phalluth, by Rhodes drama students under the=20 direction of Andrew Buckland, was a riotous send-up of=20 patriarchy, rugby and television. And yet, on the=20 whole, satire at the festival was disappointing. Far=20 too much of the stand-up comedy consisted of less-than- hilarious jokes about the pressures of being a woman=20 oppressed by men, or a man oppressed by women.
But if South Africa today is a subject that artists=20 prefer not to handle, South Africa’s past enjoyed more=20 attention than ever. The Grave, presented by the=20 Ikhwezi Players, seemed at times like a piece of hack=20 1980s struggle theatre — but it’s subtly different.=20 For one thing, you can now make comedy out of=20 situations like security police interrogations that 10=20 years ago were too close for comfort. For another, you=20 no longer have to present activists with shining haloes=20 — this play was not polemic, but history. Similarly, a=20 22-year time-lag has turned The Island from protest=20 into history — and it has survived the transformation.
More common at the festival — and more intriguing –=20 was history from further back, often exploring the=20 colonial encounters that formed the germ of the society=20 that we live in now. Faustus in Africa put the Faust of=20 legend into a colonial context. Abjater wat so Lag and=20 Krotoa had similar intentions, and it’s no coincidence=20 that these productions which had cross-cultural=20 encounter as their themes were the most interesting in=20 the way they drew on a multinational cultural heritage=20 in their form.
The same was true of the Junction Avenue Theatre=20 Company’s Marabi, probably the best piece of musical=20 theatre on the festival, even if its plot could have=20 done with some editing. The play dug up hidden history=20 by examining the tensions experienced by first- generation black migrants in inner-city Johannesburg=20 early this century. It too dealt with the interface=20 between cultures (in this case, urban-rural rather than=20 black-white), with much of the show’s character arising=20 from the rhythms of the then-new marabi music.
But, if most South African dramatists seem to have=20 changed courses from sociology to history, psychology=20 has also taken a prominent place on the curriculum.=20 Quantum Productions’ Wolfboy was a tight, understated=20 examination of masculinity, presented in the story of=20 two young men whose failure to negotiate their way=20 through social expectations has had them classified as=20 mentally ill.
Frida Kahlo’s Eyes, directed by Sandra Prinsloo and=20 performed by Helene Lombard, was an extraordinarily=20 beautiful examination of a personal crisis resolved by=20 the intervention — in true Latin-American magic=20 realist style — of the dead Mexican painter.
Then there was the controversial Journey by the Hearts=20 and Eyes Theatre collective, conceived over a 5 000km=20 trip though South Africa and presenting six personal=20 stories that also provided a rare critique of South=20 Africa now.
Journey drew the accusation that its attention to=20 process left audiences choking in the dust-cloud of its=20 rapid narrative development. But erring on the side of=20 inventiveness was a criticism that could have been=20 levelled at much of the material at Grahamstown 1995.=20 It was a festival which could perhaps have done with a=20 few more drop-dead amazing productions, but which=20 showed no hesitation in playing with forms and=20 processes. The contrast with the sterility of the old=20 South Africa’s institutionalised Culture/Kultuur was=20 complete — and was summed up by a character in Daar is=20 Pretoria, upon seeing the State Theatre: “Is dit rerig=20 Pretoria se grootste polisiekantoor?”