Over the years I have watched many student productions at Wits University, host of the fourth edition of the Wits Arts and Literature Experience (Wale).
One lesson I have extracted from the scores of hours of sitting in the theatre is that student productions, especially theatre, require dollops of fortitude (a vial of painkillers is sometimes advisable).
There were times when I sat in the theatre wondering how these people were going to make a living as actors and directors. That’s a tad harsh, I know; students should be allowed to mess up and learn from the experience.
But there have been times when I was forced to re-evaluate my preconceived notions about student productions. A few years ago I saw Nat Ramabulana — this year’s Naledi award-winner for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Girl in the Yellow Dress — in a production in which he co-starred with his friend Athandwa Kani. I could see that, sooner or later, the two were going to make it on a bigger stage and I said as much in the review I wrote.
These were the thoughts at the back of my mind when I spoke to Tawana Kupe, the dean of the faculty of humanities and founder of the festival. “We have doubled the number of events,” he says. As the festival was hosted by a university, there was a conscious effort to include a significant number of acts from the university itself but also to showcase some of the country’s best productions.
Zim Ngqawana, who died suddenly this week, was scheduled to perform but his show hasn’t been cancelled — not altogether, anyway. In its place there will be a memorial service for the saxophonist and pedagogue. He was the founder of the Zimology Institute, a hatchery for jazz talent. He would have found Wits University’s scholarly ambience all too familiar.
One of the festival’s highlights is Smoke and Mirrors, a new piece by the renowned choreographer and performer Athena Mazarakis, working with the Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative. ” We live our lives negotiating an endless series of smoke and mirrors, in societies administered by political subterfuge,” she says.
The work explores issues such as what lies beneath human interaction, how fine the line is that separates illusion and reality and how complicit people are in the “deception” that is always taking place.
Wale has a literary component, including performances, readings and writing workshops, hosted by the Wits Writing Centre. On Friday a translation of Dumisani Sibiya’s book, I Will Forget When I Die, will be launched and later that day there will be the launch of an electro acoustic poetry CD featuring, among others, Allan Kolski Horwitz, Lesley Perkes, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, James de Villiers, Khanyi Magubane and Myesha Jenkins. Some of those featured on the CD will perform live.
Although a significant number of the country’s literati has flocked to Franschhoek for its literary festival, there are events at Wale to look forward, to including book launches and discussions. One of the highlights will be a tome by Anton Harber about Diepsloot. It is a post-apartheid study of the township, which is home to about 200?000 people.
Harber spent months there — located in the north of Johannesburg – talking to the locals, interviewing its officials, drinking in its bars and patrolling with its neighbourhood-watch teams.
Some of the questions he asked were why so little progress was being made in developing the township and why, despite high crime levels, the building that is meant to shelter the police remains unfinished.
Shaun de Waal, the Mail & Guardian‘s film editor and former books editor, will host a discussion on the state of book reviewing in South Africa. The discussion will try to address some of the many questions raised by critics, publishers and academics in the pages of this newspaper a few weeks ago.
Some of the works to be showcased are genuinely fascinating, so I assure you that there won’t be a need for painkillers.
For a full programme go to www.wale.co.za