“Arts for all” will be the rallying cry at this year’s bumper National Arts Festival, where street theatre productions will take over the streets of Grahamstown.
“Arts for all” will be the rallying cry at this year’s bumper National Arts Festival, where street theatre productions will take over the streets of Grahamstown.
“Street theatre is a vital art form at the National Arts Festival. This year’s programme is a colourful celebration which challenges the pre-defined structures of walls and stages,” said Festival director Ismail Mahomed.
“It offers a place to re-invent the relationships between art and audience, and it will most certainly be the place where the audience gets to perform, dance, sing along and celebrate with the artists.”
Kicking off this year’s street theatre programme is Amathole, produced by the UK based Dodgy Clutch Company, together with artists from the Eastern Cape.
This magical production will be staged as a procession with vibrant costumes and brilliant puppetry to create more than just a carnival.
It is a theatrical event on the move where the boundaries of performers and spectators become blurred. Festival’s home-grown Phezulu Stiltwalkers and the Arkworks Eco-Puppets will add to the excitement in public spaces.
It is not just the streets of Grahamstown that will be filled with the energy of the arts. The walls and exhibition spaces throughout the city will also be adorned with works of top national and international exhibiting artists.
Heading the visual arts exhibition is Standard Bank Young Artist Michael MacGarry whose exhibition Endgame represents contemporary South African art in international galleries.
Grahamstown-based artist Rat Western’s exhibition Dead Media will be in the Albany Natural Sciences Museum.
Her work interrogates trends in the way museums curate their work, and her exhibition is also intended to attract audiences into the science part of the museum.
The Keiskamma Arts Project, which has earned strong reputation for its work with rural women, will produce the African Guernica, a symbolic take on Picasso’s Guernica.
The project’s work focusses on the how the Aids pandemic continues to ravage through the Eastern Cape. Biko: The Quest for a True Humanity is presented at the Festival in co-operation with the Apartheid Museum and the Steve Biko Foundation.
In Films Must be Physical, the camera lens is sharpened on the work of filmmaker Werner Hertzog. The Festival’s film programme will include two of his features.
Sigwesile is the brand name of the Eastern Cape Department of Sports, Recreation, Arts & Culture’s 2010 visual arts exhibition. Rural crafters and artists from the Eastern Cape will exhibit and demonstrate their skills during the Festival.
