The extraordinary breadth and variety of the Standard Bank National Arts Festival is both its strength and a disadvantage, writes Alex Dodd from Grahamstown
Try putting the contents of the Internet onto a piece of A4 paper and you’ll get a feel for the Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown 1998. Eclectic is a hopeless euphemism for what’s going down here – the place is a jiving mass of in-your-face options, with artists themselves having to use Bill Gatesian marketing tactics to get bums on seats.
Even the Hare Krishnas are getting a little too ardent about their publicity these days. One devotee (cleverly disguised in a baseball cap and sneakers) even threatened to call the police on my friend Kevin who was innocently trying to take in his next dose of art at the 4.30pm open gig at that hotly-contested monument on the hill. When Kevin expressed his unwillingness to be an audience for the servant of the great godliness of everything, the devotee proceeded to get hectic and bolshy, aggressively blocking Kevin’s path of access to the fruits of art and culture.
So the politics afoot at the Standard Bank National Festival of the Arts aren’t exactly what they used to be.
But back to eclecticism … This year there have been: mobile masseuses, a million chicken-mayonnaise sandwiches, a visiting Russian film-maker, body- piercing in even newer, more exciting parts of the anatomy, enough comedy to laugh yourself to death, hi-art, lo- art, street-art, retro revivals, international big wigs, drum’n’bass, opera and imbongis, beggars, drunkards, dilettantes – and a disturbing abundance of empty parking bays. I hardly had to queue for a single pie or ticket.
It’s no secret: attendance is down. At the most recent official count on Sunday, ticket sales on the main festival had dropped by 15% and by a whopping 23% on the fringe. Festival director Lynette Marais has cited a number of reasons for this: the decrease in South Africans’ discretionary income, competition in the form of World Cup soccer (woe is me), the existence of other festivals that have sprung up over the past few years …
The line I’ve heard, from artists and art-lovers alike, is that the festival has lost the crazy, whimsical spirit that used to pull them to Grahamstown like moths to a paraffin lamp in years gone by. The most frequently touted justification from people who haven’t bothered to trek down for the festival is the “shopping and shopping” one – too commercial, too sanitised, they say.
In response, I’ve always argued that you’ve got to get with the times. Look at the festival of old as a characterful old delicatessen offering rare and unexpected delights. Admittedly the festival of the now is more like a hypermarket, but think of all the choices on offer at the hypermarket. And think how much more accessible a hypermarket is to the whole population. Not just caviar for the few, but a huge variety of options for the masses.
But even I can’t deny that what’s missing is the deli’s great charm. I remember nights of jazz and conviviality at the old Grand Hotel. You’d walk out of the bitter winter and into a madly busy room filled with jazz-loving types warming their hands in front of the fire, smoking cigarettes, drinking too much whisky, being pompous and “political” and wearing silly hats. A pianist in the lounge tickled those ivories into the wee hours and the gigs kicked butt. People danced so much the old wooden floors nearly caved in.
This year, I’m told by some officious woman in the VIP box up at PJ’s (the current jazz festival venue) not to smoke in the auditorium. Everybody sits there in regimented rows in a hall that reminds me of assembly at school listening, in a well-behaved fashion, to some of the hottest jazz on the planet. Weird.
So there’s the absence of that vibe which is, admittedly, as intangible and fleeting as love – so nobody’s pointing fingers. There’s also the problem of the scale of the festival. Trying to work out what you actually want to see (from a Czech cinematic masterpiece like Closely Watched Trains to a superlative photographic exhibition like Obie Oberholzer’s Now and Then: Photographs of the Seventies and the Nineties) makes you want to order out for a heavy dose of St Johns Wort.
There’s so much on offer that, no matter how much of a vark you are for art, you’re left with the feeling that you’re destined to snack eternally on the hors d’ouevres. To be crippled by choice is a distinctly Nineties affliction. One wishes the festival could be a supremely orchestrated structure, like Veronique Malherbe’s acclaimed installation Preserving Purity (part of the Bringing Up Baby exhibition), that takes you by the hand and leads you to the epicentre and out again.
You’re entertained and challenged by concepts, confessions and contradictions every step of the way. Malherbe’s work (which explores the ambivalence of single motherhood) is a huge form, but you never for a second feel like you’re losing grip on what she’s trying to say.
Meanwhile, content-wise, it’s possible the festival is at its best ever. The diversity of work on offer seems finally to be organically reflecting the multiplicitous jamboree that is South African culture. There really is something for everyone – and even better, something of quality.
Two of the most challenging works I saw were Brett Bailey and Third World Bunfight’s Ipi Zombi? and Standard Bank Young Artist award winner Aubrey Sekhabi’s Not with My Gun. Of the two, Bailey’s festival crowd-puller was the more problematic play. For starters, it needed someone to take an axe to it – far too long. It also lacked suspense.
You knew from the outset what was going to happen in the end, so no amount of funky, gender-bending, form- breaking Afro-cabaret or chanting could keep you on the edge of your chair, which is where every theatre- lover longs to be. Despite its witty political post-modernity, the play also comes dangerously close to feeding into European stereotypes about dark, wild, mysterious and savage natives. Its exoticisation of aspects of rural African culture are discomforting at times.
There’s no denying Bailey’s genius. He’s had us all in awe of his originality and inventiveness since his smash hit iMumbo Jumbo. Yet, with this latest production he seems to favour stylistic impact over emotional impact. The originality of costumes and sets had a far deeper effect on me than the potentially gutting story about witch-killings in Kokstad.
On the other hand, Sekhabi’s play, which takes a nasty turn when a white thief enters the home of a young black mover, left me weeping. From the moment the lights went out, I was totally immersed in the world he creates. It’s colloquial and it’s real – down to the messily consumed phutu and the LiquiFruit boxes. It allowed a predominantly white audience access to social spaces that historical divisions have denied us. It bravely gave us a chance to witness how black people speak about white people when they’re among themselves, unfettered by public rainbow-nation politeness. It forces the audience to grapple with notions of race and identity that we’d sometimes prefer to avoid (or have been told by commercial powers that be that we’d prefer to avoid).
It’s a big up -yours to the glossy surface of Simunye. The acting is passionate and believable – free of the artificiality and trashy pomposity common to too much television drama in this country. In short it’s a seriously affecting and burningly topical work that’s crying out to be seen by national if not international audiences.
This is the spirit of theatrical innovation that is worth trekking miles and miles for and that has always been the true engine of our ever-evolving national arts festival.