Eleven new and recent plays, all written by Southern Africans, feature on the theatre programme.
The productions span a broad range of drama’s geography, mapping an emotional adventure replete with laughter, tears, suspense, polemic and brain-gym. There are five world premières, and the South African premières of two works that have already wowed British critics, says festival director Lynette Marais.
‘We didn’t deliberately seek out African work, but the fact that our search for relevant, provocative and important productions came up with an all-indigenous result is a marker of South Africa’s increasing cultural maturity.”
From the dark heart of classical tragedy, one of SA’s most powerful directors brings home new wisdoms for the here and now. Standard Bank Young Artist award-winner Yael Farber has based her new play on Sophocles’ Electra and Sartre’s The Flies.
Farber’s work probes the meaning of living with violence, grief and bereavement in the aftermath of September 11 when ‘no nation can be excused from its darker impulses”. Its showing on the festival will be a world première.
‘Otherness’ informs the tragedy in that quintessential homegrown classic, Alan Paton‘s Cry, the Beloved Country. You’ve seen the movie and now, at last, it’s been adapted for the stage – by none other than Roy Sargeant. Direction is by Heinrich Reisenhofer who can be relied on to create an unforgettable world première.
Two other South African writers will also première a new work at festival 2003: Pieter-Dirk Uys and Mothobi Mutloatse.
Auditioning Angels, Pieter-Dirk Uys’s first play since 1991 (Die Vleiroos), tells of a family that is brought together by the rape of a child – a familiar echo of what has become a national trauma. Working through the catharsis of pain and anger, they learn angels can appear in the most unexpected places. Presented by Pieter Toerien Productions, Angels is directed by Lynne Maree.
Mothobi Mutloatse‘s Tailormade is the textual equivalent of a tap-dance, but his characters move in counterpoint rather than sync: a motley troupe that jumps the time warp in a multilayered radio play within the stage play. Direction is by Yizo- Yizo dynamo Teboho Mahlatsi.
British critics referred to Uys in the same breath as Greig Coetzee when they raved about Coetzee’s new spykerbek comedy, Happy Natives – a hit on the Edinburgh Festival and in London. Coetzee and Sello Sebotsane play all the parts in this edgy satire on the commercialisation of South African culture for commercial gain.
Reza de Wet‘s mordant humour lends an ominous gleam to Crossing – originally Drif, which made up a trilogy with Mirakel and Mis – now translated into French and directed by Caroline Benamza for the Amandla Theatre Company.
English subtitles will be part of the Grahamstown showing. In this darkly gothic fantasy the four characters – twin sisters and the dead couple they call up in a séance – play out a psychological nightmare. A waking nightmare hovers in the real-life context of a courageous contemporary production from Zimbabwe about what it means to have been born African.
Cape Town dramatist Nadia Davids in At Her Feet contemplates the additional dilemma of being born a Muslim woman in Africa. In a virtuoso performance, Quanita Adams gives earthy voice to Davids’ ensemble of characters.
Funny, sad and so much more, Xoli Norman‘s Ma’s Got the Blues can only be described as blues theatre — with a catch in its voice. Full-throated gospel mingles with Afro-jazz and Blues in a story about a preacher’s family, a golden-voiced shebeen mama, a pair of musical lovebirds aching for escape, with commentary from a chilled-out Sotho Rastaman.
And to round off the programme: sheer celebration when Janice Honeyman boogies with Nelson Mandela‘s favourite African stories. In her sparkly story-theatre event, Madiba Magic, Honeyman’s cast romps through a selection of stories from a book of the same name: a collection of Madiba’s top tales, published by Tafelberg and presented by the Baxter Theatre and National Arts Festival.
Information supplied by National Arts Festival