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/ 4 October 2002

Mixing tongues at Aardklop

This year’s Aardklop festival, the fifth — stretching over five days last week — attracted to villagey, leafy Potchefstroom no less than 120 000 people to attend some 90 shows. My report of an attendance filling only two of those days, with a mere seven of those shows, must be understood to be an under-embrace of that most pleasant of spring rituals. Still, seven new, worthwhile plays are more than one gets to sample in Johannesburg these days in a month.

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/ 4 October 2002

In search of the new

Nobody ever suggested that the search for a new South African theatrical identity would be complete within a decade of democracy. But no one could have imagined that the process of moving beyond conventional protest theatre would take us through nauseatingly static, linear and pedestrian experiments that pass for work addressing present day issues. The current programme at the Market Theatre offers new directions with a play featuring seasoned talent, and four new plays at the Fifth Barney Simon Young Writers Festival.