Grahamstown National Arts Festival
From 20 June 2010 to 04 July 2010.
THIS year’s 15-day National Arts Festival, taking place from June 20 to July 4 in Grahamstown, features a total of 15 theatre productions on the main programme.
And, it seems, 15 is the magic number as the festival this year draws on the talents of artists from 15 countries. The programme also features several South African, continental and world premieres.
Created, designed and directed by 2010 Standard Bank Young Artist award winner for theatre, Janni Younge, Ouroboros is a story of love, dreaming, imagination and death. Using puppetry, projection and movement, the play weaves together the lives of two main characters as they encounter themselves and each other.
The RStC (Really Small Theatre Company) explores the theme of despotism through history in The Tragedy of Richard III, written by William Shakespeare, starring Darron Araujo, David Dennis and Marcel Meyer. The play is a fast-paced political thriller utilising the talents of this small company of three actors aided by inventive design concepts, striking visuals, masks, costumes and puppetry.
Drawing its aesthetic from African traditions and urban rituals to explore the theme of identity and belonging, a new work from Magnet Theatre, Inxeba lomphilisi (The wound of a healer), directed by Mandla Mbothwe and Faniswa Yisa, tells multiple stories through an interdisciplinary, multimedia production set along the N2 road between Cape Town and the Eastern Cape.
Ocean of Sugar presents Dan Clancy’s The Timekeepers at the Festival this year. Described by the British Theatre Guide as one of the top five theatre shows in London, it is a story of men in a concentration camp who bond through lessons in watch repairs and a love of opera.
The South African State Theatre presents Rivonia Trial, written for the stage by Aubrey Sekhabi, Mandla Dube and Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom, directed by Aubrey Sekhabi. This is the story of the infamous trial that led to the long imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and others.
Catalina Theatre and TheatreBIZ brings Man of La Mancha, the Story of Don Quixote to the main stages of the festival. With a cast of 17, including Cobus Venter as Don Quixote and Liam Magner as Sancho, directed by Themi Venturas, Dale Wasserman’s script uses the classic novel Don Quixote as a springboard. It originally told the story of author Miguel de Cervantes, and his courage in standing up to the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. TheatreBIZ has set the musical in a new context, where criminals and a few riotous students arrested after mayhem at the Ballito “rage”, are held together in the overcrowded backyard of the Ballito police station.
The story of Tree Boy, written and designed by Neil Coppen and directed by Libby Allen, is set in the South Africa of the 1960s. The relationships between three men are explored employing a seamless mixture of live performance, stop-motion and digital animation and shadow puppetry.
TEATERteater presents Manfred Karge’s Man To Man, with celebrated South African actress Antoinette Kellerman in a one-woman show directed and designed by Marthinus Basson and produced by Hugo Theart. It investigates the life of a woman who, after the untimely death of her husband during the economic disaster of the Weimar period, takes over his identity to make a living as a crane-operator at the factory where he used to work. Man to Man is a co-production by the National Arts Festival, Absa KKNK and Woordfees.
Gare St Lazare presents the South African premiere of The Beckett Trilogy, compiled by Conor Lovett and Judy Hegarty Lovett from the novels Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett. Molloy, a crippled tramp, tells of the hilarious attempt to visit his mother. The Beckett Trilogy is presented by the National Arts Festival with support from Culture Ireland.
In a year dominated by soccer, the African premiere of Football Football, written and directed by Haris Pasovic, explores through dance, theatre, video, music and technology the art of the “beautiful game”. It is co-produced by East West Theatre Company (Sarajevo – Bosnia and Herzegovina), Napoli Teatro Festival (Italy) and Singapore Arts Festival, in partnership with Les Ballets C de la B and in association with Flota (Slovenia).
Urban Theatre Projects presents The Football Diaries, written and performed by Ahilan Ratnamohan, and is a meditation on art and sport. It is presented by the National Arts Festival with the support of the Australian High Commission, South Africa.
Tripletake Productions presents Athol Fugard’s Hello & Goodbye, with Michael Maxwell as Johnnie and Dorothy Ann Gould as Hester. Set in the kitchen of a railway house in Port Elizabeth in 1963, the play tells of an encounter between brother and sister that all but destroys any vestiges of familial love. Hello and Goodbye is classic Fugard set in the environment in which he grew up.
South Africa’s internationally renowned Market Theatre’s presents a world premiere of Craig Higginson’s new psychological drama The Girl in the Yellow Dress that centres on a love story set in Paris between two apparently disparate characters – one a UK teacher and the other her Congolese student.
Pushing the boundaries about identity and geography is Jaco Bouwer’s award-winning Afrikaans play, Skrapnel, in which he presents a compelling portrayal of a generation of Afrikaans youth who grapple with issues of identity.
Drawing from her personal experiences as an aerobics instructor in a San Francisco city jail, American artist Rhodessa Jones’s Big Butt Girls Hard Headed Women tells the tale of the lives and times of real women who are behind bars. She is accompanied on stage by Idris Ackamoor, a multi-instrumentalist, composer, actor, tap dancer, and director whose signature performance is his uncanny ability to combine tap dancing with playing his saxophone.
South African legends Hugh Masekela and Sibongile Khumalo appear in the Market Theatre’s Songs of Migration, created by internationally acclaimed trumpeter, composer and lyricist Masekela and written and directed by award-winning director James Ngcobo. This production is set on a train, seen as the separator of lovers, breaking up families.
And, it seems, 15 is the magic number as the festival this year draws on the talents of artists from 15 countries. The programme also features several South African, continental and world premieres.
Created, designed and directed by 2010 Standard Bank Young Artist award winner for theatre, Janni Younge, Ouroboros is a story of love, dreaming, imagination and death. Using puppetry, projection and movement, the play weaves together the lives of two main characters as they encounter themselves and each other.
The RStC (Really Small Theatre Company) explores the theme of despotism through history in The Tragedy of Richard III, written by William Shakespeare, starring Darron Araujo, David Dennis and Marcel Meyer. The play is a fast-paced political thriller utilising the talents of this small company of three actors aided by inventive design concepts, striking visuals, masks, costumes and puppetry.
Drawing its aesthetic from African traditions and urban rituals to explore the theme of identity and belonging, a new work from Magnet Theatre, Inxeba lomphilisi (The wound of a healer), directed by Mandla Mbothwe and Faniswa Yisa, tells multiple stories through an interdisciplinary, multimedia production set along the N2 road between Cape Town and the Eastern Cape.
Ocean of Sugar presents Dan Clancy’s The Timekeepers at the Festival this year. Described by the British Theatre Guide as one of the top five theatre shows in London, it is a story of men in a concentration camp who bond through lessons in watch repairs and a love of opera.
The South African State Theatre presents Rivonia Trial, written for the stage by Aubrey Sekhabi, Mandla Dube and Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom, directed by Aubrey Sekhabi. This is the story of the infamous trial that led to the long imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and others.
Catalina Theatre and TheatreBIZ brings Man of La Mancha, the Story of Don Quixote to the main stages of the festival. With a cast of 17, including Cobus Venter as Don Quixote and Liam Magner as Sancho, directed by Themi Venturas, Dale Wasserman’s script uses the classic novel Don Quixote as a springboard. It originally told the story of author Miguel de Cervantes, and his courage in standing up to the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. TheatreBIZ has set the musical in a new context, where criminals and a few riotous students arrested after mayhem at the Ballito “rage”, are held together in the overcrowded backyard of the Ballito police station.
The story of Tree Boy, written and designed by Neil Coppen and directed by Libby Allen, is set in the South Africa of the 1960s. The relationships between three men are explored employing a seamless mixture of live performance, stop-motion and digital animation and shadow puppetry.
TEATERteater presents Manfred Karge’s Man To Man, with celebrated South African actress Antoinette Kellerman in a one-woman show directed and designed by Marthinus Basson and produced by Hugo Theart. It investigates the life of a woman who, after the untimely death of her husband during the economic disaster of the Weimar period, takes over his identity to make a living as a crane-operator at the factory where he used to work. Man to Man is a co-production by the National Arts Festival, Absa KKNK and Woordfees.
Gare St Lazare presents the South African premiere of The Beckett Trilogy, compiled by Conor Lovett and Judy Hegarty Lovett from the novels Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett. Molloy, a crippled tramp, tells of the hilarious attempt to visit his mother. The Beckett Trilogy is presented by the National Arts Festival with support from Culture Ireland.
In a year dominated by soccer, the African premiere of Football Football, written and directed by Haris Pasovic, explores through dance, theatre, video, music and technology the art of the “beautiful game”. It is co-produced by East West Theatre Company (Sarajevo – Bosnia and Herzegovina), Napoli Teatro Festival (Italy) and Singapore Arts Festival, in partnership with Les Ballets C de la B and in association with Flota (Slovenia).
Urban Theatre Projects presents The Football Diaries, written and performed by Ahilan Ratnamohan, and is a meditation on art and sport. It is presented by the National Arts Festival with the support of the Australian High Commission, South Africa.
Tripletake Productions presents Athol Fugard’s Hello & Goodbye, with Michael Maxwell as Johnnie and Dorothy Ann Gould as Hester. Set in the kitchen of a railway house in Port Elizabeth in 1963, the play tells of an encounter between brother and sister that all but destroys any vestiges of familial love. Hello and Goodbye is classic Fugard set in the environment in which he grew up.
South Africa’s internationally renowned Market Theatre’s presents a world premiere of Craig Higginson’s new psychological drama The Girl in the Yellow Dress that centres on a love story set in Paris between two apparently disparate characters – one a UK teacher and the other her Congolese student.
Pushing the boundaries about identity and geography is Jaco Bouwer’s award-winning Afrikaans play, Skrapnel, in which he presents a compelling portrayal of a generation of Afrikaans youth who grapple with issues of identity.
Drawing from her personal experiences as an aerobics instructor in a San Francisco city jail, American artist Rhodessa Jones’s Big Butt Girls Hard Headed Women tells the tale of the lives and times of real women who are behind bars. She is accompanied on stage by Idris Ackamoor, a multi-instrumentalist, composer, actor, tap dancer, and director whose signature performance is his uncanny ability to combine tap dancing with playing his saxophone.
South African legends Hugh Masekela and Sibongile Khumalo appear in the Market Theatre’s Songs of Migration, created by internationally acclaimed trumpeter, composer and lyricist Masekela and written and directed by award-winning director James Ngcobo. This production is set on a train, seen as the separator of lovers, breaking up families.
Venue: Grahamstown
Location: Grahamstown
Admission fee: enquire
Contact: Nkululeko Mhlaba
Telephone: +27 (0)84 4966513
Email: Nkululeko@axxess.co.za
This event is listed under the following categories:
• Arts and Culture
• Food and Wine
• Music and Entertainment
Location: Grahamstown
Admission fee: enquire
Contact: Nkululeko Mhlaba
Telephone: +27 (0)84 4966513
Email: Nkululeko@axxess.co.za
This event is listed under the following categories:
• Arts and Culture
• Food and Wine
• Music and Entertainment
