This year, the current team at the helm of the National Arts Festival has entered its third year of steering the festival’s course. On bridge duty in their offices at the 1820 Settlers Monument are chief executive Tony Lankester and festival director Ismael Mahomed. The festival is a big ship, the largest arts event in Africa, if not the southern hemisphere, and for many in the arts at times a life raft too.
Lankester says that this year’s budget might top R25-million. Of that, R16-million goes directly to artists and technicians. Of all the arts institutions, this makes it one of the largest, most widely spread channels of money to the arts.
Of that amount, R4-million comes from the Eastern Cape government and R300?000 from the Makana Municipality, but 80% of its budget is covered by the private sector, the National Lottery Distribution Fund and ticket sales. As the festival was about to start, the National Arts Council had still not finalised its sponsorship — although it appears as the “presenting sponsor” on the cover of the official programme.
Lankester and Mahomed should be congratulated for the raft of initiatives they have created.
The arts encounter project distributes tickets worth R300 000 to community groups, including old-age homes and women’s groups, who arrive in their busloads.
Lankester says that, overall, “the audience is getting younger and blacker — without alienating the ‘traditional’ theatre audience”. While Swan Lake ballet dances on at the Guy Butler theatre, at the time of writing, the festival had 13?282 Facebook friends and 1?603 followers on Twitter.
Ticket prices are reasonable and advance bookings are sound. This year sees the launch of Art Bucks, a free card that accrues 20% of spend value, which can be used as credit for tickets to next year’s festival or at partner theatres elsewhere.
International opportunities
The festival has entered into two alliances — one with Senegal and Tanzania to build capacity within African festivals, and the other with eight international festivals, including Edinburgh, Adelaide, Amsterdam and Los Angeles, with the idea of attracting global sponsors (shades of Fifa perhaps). This year, a local production will be chosen for the Amsterdam Fringe.
The Standard Bank Ovation awards are made by a panel of judges from productions nominated by accredited arts journalists. A daily list is published, which generates interest and promotes attendances, and at the end of the festival the productions are given cash prizes and are invited to apply for entry to the festival’s Arena, a stepping stone from the Fringe to the festival’s Main stage.
Mahomed says that creating opportunities for artists is a guiding principle and the concept of the Arena is pivotal to this.
“We have many strong artists working independently who, if given the necessary resources, could do really well — One of the strongest success stories we have is [theatre company] FTH:K, which has been on the Fringe for a long time, [which] came on to the Arena, and is now going to be on the Main [with Benchmarks] for the first time. It is a test case.”
A fourth tier is the Remix Laboratory working with “community-based groups who are at entry, emerging, or lowly resourced level”. They get a 10-day residency under two mentors during which they perform and get feedback. They are also exposed to 15 productions selected from the Main, Fringe and Arena.
“Very often community-based groups create from what they see from each other,” says Mahomed, “yet they rarely get the opportunity to see what is happening in the mainstream and in established theatre.
“We constantly complain we don’t have enough writers. We do have writers, though not enough mentoring and skills training programmes. The writing programme allows writers to test their work with stage readings.”
The festival has also broadened its focus to equip artists based in Grahamstown with skills that will make them employable. Mahomed says: “Instead of giving funds to do another badly produced Aids play [for example], we have put them through intensive technical training with a practical and a written exam. Those who excelled will be employed at the festival to work in our venues alongside professionals as stage hands and technicians.”
This year productions from the Eastern Cape have been drawn together to showcase their talent that “becomes the capital — to send a strong message to government officials to realise we have an emerging arts economy in this province.
“We are taking audiences and artists on a journey — we listen to the feedback we get and the following year integrate that feedback into the model we create, a vision continually informed, inspired and challenged by the experiences of each year.”