26 June 2007
Four world premières and four South African premières lead a powerful theatre line-up at the 2007 National Arts Festival taking place in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape from 28 June to 7 July.
The world premières are Good Evening, a British play by the award-winning Roy Smiles; The Story of The African Choir, created and directed by British director Jane Collins for the Market Theatre Laboratory; and two new South African works: Interracial by Paul Grootboom and Dream of the Dog by Craig Higginson.
Pieces that have been seen elsewhere but never before in South Africa include Reach by Lara Foot Newton; Mark Fleishman's Every Year, Every Day, I am Walking; French mime artist Philippe Ménard's Ascenseur, fantasmagorie pour élever les gens
et les fardeaux; and David Harrower's Blackbird, which played to acclaim at the Edinburgh Festival.
The Baxter Theatre production of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf takes the place reserved for classics on the Festival theatre bill. Direction is by Janice Honeyman, with Sean Taylor, Fiona Ramsay, Nicholas Pauling and Erica Wessels as the foursome of inebriated intellectuals locked in a succession of vicious verbal games.
Self-evaluation and disillusionment are at the centre of The Story of The African Choir. The play is based on real events: a group of young black singers set off on a fund-raising tour of England and Scotland in the late nineteenth century. The reality of Victorian audiences, the hidden motives for the tour, betrayal and financial disaster all help to destabilise their notions of themselves as members of an educated black elite.
Pieter Toerien Productions' Good Evening is another show business story based on fact. It tells of how four men fresh from university - Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller - changed the course of British theatre with their revue Beyond the Fringe. Alan Swerdlow directs a cast headed up by Graham Hopkins and Malcolm Terrey.
Back on home territory, Paul Grootboom's Interracial suggests that contemporary connections over social lines are still problematic. White Mike thought he was liberal until his wife started an affair with black Melvin. Legions of old prejudices start rattling their chains in both camps.
Rattling her charm bracelets, Evita Bezuidenhout is back in a Pieter-Dirk Uys satiric confection: Evita for President! With the ANC's top job up for grabs, the freshly manicured and permed tannie flutters her false eyelashes at political folly.
Sexuality is the fulcrum of David Harrower's Blackbird, an investigation of a relationship between a man in his 40s and a 12-year-old girl.
Another foreign offering, In the Continuum, is the first theatre piece from the USA to play at the Festival for some time. But its subject matter couldn't be closer to home. Two young black women - one in Los Angeles, one in Harare - experience a darkly comic weekend of self-revelations in the time of HIV/Aids. It is directed by Robert O'Hara with writer/performers Danai Gurira and Nikkola Salter, both voices from the African diaspora.
Home has a complex meaning for the thousands of Africans displaced by war, famine and other traumas. This story is told from a child's perspective in a remarkable new physical piece from Magnet Theatre, Every Year, Every Day, I am Walking. Mark Fleishman directs Jennie Reznek and Faniswa Yisa, with music by Neo Muyanga.
Brett Bailey and Third World Bunfight tell an African version of Orfeus in an unforgettable outdoor, site-specific, interactive performance piece.
Performance itself is the subject of Philippe Ménard's Ascenseur, fantasmagorie pour élever les gens et les fardeaux. The French mime artist and juggler takes us on an imaginary elevator ride, introducing a range of different people through acting, juggling and film clips.
Free street theatre this year includes medea-m/other house (a dark take on the Greek classic), the feisty thespians from Eluxolweni Children's Shelter in Shark, and two North-South collaborations: Kruik (Jar), a Dutch/SA joint effort based on a Pirandello comedy of misunderstandings, and A Molière in Soweto, featuring a township youth group and two French directors.
At The Studio, young Eastern Cape groups present Trial of a Nation (on the Rivonia Trial) and Rest in Pieces, a comic thriller about an innocent lad in the toils of a shifty entrepreneur in the funeral business.
On the Fringe, a full theatre programme features big names and newcomers across every genre.
For more information, see the related articles on the right - and visit the National Arts Festival website.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
|
