This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

5th July 2008

View online here

As a general rule, I don’t like standing ovations. They’re usually manifestations of a herd mentality rather than considered expressions of the highest acclaim for a performing artist.

Over the last few days, however, I’ve found myself joining the ranks of those who rise to their feet in enthusiastic tribute. Of the first ten shows that I watched at this year’s National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, at least half received standing ovations – and thoroughly merited them. Most of the rest were equally good. Indeed, it was only towards the end of my third day at the Festival that I saw my first mediocre piece of theatre (one that shall remain unidentified). This was almost a relief; every Festino worth his or her salt needs to be able to disrecommend at least one show when schmoozing with the bohemian see-and-be-seen crowds at drinking holes in the early hours of the morning. Bad-mouthing certain productions is a Grahamstown tradition.

But this critic has seen very little to criticise at the Festival so far: top quality performances, with full houses from day one – in the past, the first few days have been notoriously ‘slow’ – and participants on both sides of the proscenium arch evincing a range of ages and races and languages.

So, if the Festival is an accurate barometer of cultural activity in this country, then everyone in the burgeoning South African arts scene seems to be happy. Well ... unfortunately that’s probably too good to be true.

A prominent theatre practitioner, who debuted a show at last year’s Festival that went on to garner numerous awards, told me recently that he does not plan to return to the Festival city any time soon. “I’ll go back to Grahamstown when they put the ‘Art’ back into the National Arts Festival,” he complained, explaining that few independently-produced shows can expect to turn a profit (even when they have relatively good houses) because of the amount they have to pay simply to be allowed to perform.

Currently, the perception of many festival participants is that the Fringe Festival, which constitutes the largest number of shows by far, “subsidises” the events on the Main Festival programme – which are sponsored – even though, annually, there are any number of ‘Fringe’ shows both more popular and of better quality than some of the ‘Main’ offerings.

Whether such perceptions are accurate or not, there is a level of consensus that financial concerns to some extent dictate the kind of work that is performed. The formula looks something like this: comedy + music = bums on seats. Because shows with ‘lighter’ content are more likely to attract audiences, the argument goes, the amount of ‘substantial’ theatre is diminished. Insofar as this is the case, it probably represents a broader pattern of commodification in the South African arts and entertainment industries (the word “industry” is itself an indication) that, in turn, is a result of society-wide consumerist trends.

But the National Arts Festival is not, of course, just about theatre, dance, music or other performing arts. It also encompasses literature, film, the visual and plastic arts, seminars and lectures.

“WordFest”, a literary festival that falls under the Arts Festival Umbrella even though it is largely autonomous, has been running for nine years now and expanding each year. Chris Mann, the convenor, positions WordFest in terms of the “new literary festivals springing up all over the world”, describing it as “part of a global resistance to the glib barbarism generated by an over-commercialised hi-tech culture.”

Of course, although WordFest is older than both the Franschoek Literary Festival and the Cape Town Book Fair, the Western Cape-based events have achieved a high profile in the space of only a few years. Given the timing of the three (May, June and July), and their not entirely coincidental overlap with the announcement of some of the country’s major literary awards, authors whose books are published in the first half of the year can feasibly hold three separate launch events in the space of three months. One is tempted to draw an analogy with the professional tennis calendar, in which players move seamlessly from the French Open to the minor Stella Artois tournament and from there to Wimbledon. Yet if the Franschoek event finds its inevitable analogue in the clay-court Parisian competition, and the Book Fair in the strawberries and cream of Wimbledon, then where does that leave WordFest?

Mann affirms that the events have different goals. The Book Fair, for instance, may offer talks and panel debates but it is still primarily a publishing industry networking opportunity. WordFest aims to promote reading simultaneously as a leisure activity and as a vital part of individual and collective ethical or intellectual development; to foster the joy inherent in writing as well as offering a forum in which the “felt need” for poetry and other forms of creative writing (a need that is prevalent, Mann affirms, despite the barriers of illiteracy and non-literariness) can be met.

WordFest is there simultaneously for the literati and for the less highbrow, and at R10 for most events, it remains more accessible – and therefore enjoys more diverse audiences – than most festival performances. Indeed, even though essentialist notions of ‘white’ and ‘black’ theatre are woefully inadequate, the honest observer would have to admit that audiences remain, on the whole, divided along racial lines: a division attributable in part to varying ticket costs and in part to prejudicial preferences (on both ends of the racial spectrum).

It should be added that the atmosphere of community at WordFest was almost interrupted when, after a series of ecologically-themed talks and launches about which everyone was able to agree, local political concerns were brought to the fore and had a more divisive effect. Mrs Epainette Mbeki, the president’s mother, spoke at the launch of her biography: a book that obviously favours the Mbeki family, so much so that the Premier of the Eastern Cape considered it politic to attend the event with a substantial entourage. In the same venue the next day, Xolela Mangcu spoke about his To the Brink: a book that, as is widely known, is not sympathetic to the presidential faction.

No such frisson is evident at the numerous art exhibitions housed in temporary and permanent galleries around Grahamstown, where a quietly congenial mood prevails as most artists make themselves available to discuss their work (and, hopefully, to sell it). An Art Meander Map is available to guide those whose preference is for painting, sculpture or photography – but this remains a peripheral Festival phenomenon, which is a pity, given the range and depth of art on display.

Most Festinos are more likely to have a casual glance at the ubiquitous crafts and curios on display at every corner than they are to visit a gallery (in fact, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who see little of the Festival other than the events and stalls located on the Village Green downtown). But the artists don’t seem to mind; I asked one how she thought “art” and “craft” could be distinguished and she rapidly put me in my place with a bemused, “Does it matter?”

At the Carinus Art School, for instance, local painters whose work depicts the people and places of the Eastern Cape offers visitors an insight into the region: the textured oils of Peter Midlane drawing hidden narratives out of the landscape, the bright geometries of Tess Lovemore reinvigorating scenes from rural life, or the crisp realism of Diane McLean’s portraits and still lives. Obie Oberholzer (also an inveterate Grahamstonian) is one of the better-known artists exhibiting work, along with Andrew Verster and Nontsikelelo Veleko, the 2008 recipient of the Standard Bank Young Artist award for Visual Art.

One can’t go too far in Grahamstown in July without hearing that name – “Standard Bank” – a phrase that has been almost inseparable from the Festival for more than two decades. It is hard to tell which has gained more from this relationship; certainly, the Festival organisers’ anxiety over a big-name corporate sponsor to replace the bank (should it choose not to extend its current sponsorship beyond the next three years) suggests that they depend on Standard more heavily than they do on non-corporate national entities such as the Arts Council or the Lottery Fund. Yet, as someone who has worked with the Grahamstown Foundation reminded me, “The media coverage Standard gets out of the Festival is ridiculously cheap at the price.”

Nevertheless, straight-talking new Festival Chief Executive Tony Lancaster insisted at a media function that, as there’s no reliable measure of how much marketing bang Standard gets for its sponsorship buck, the bank’s ongoing involvement cannot be based solely on self-interest.

Having said which, they did get MC James Ngcobo to blow the corporate trumpet long and loud at the “African Celebration”, which brought together no fewer than eight former and current Standard Bank Young Artist Award recipients: the glorious voices of Sibongile Khumalo (1993), Sibongile Mngoma (1997) and Zanne Stapelberg (2008), the remarkable jazz talents of Concord Nkabinde (2006), Shannon Mowday (2007) and Mark Fransman (2008) and a dance troupe choreographed by Debbie Rakusin (1998), all under the direction of self-styled “oldest Young Artist” Janice Honeyman (1982).

They were joined by the suave Bala brothers (Zwai and Phelo), the vocally gigantic Nicholas Nicolaidis and an equally impressive backing band in what can only be described as the perfect antidote to South Afropessimism.

Those of us who are wary of the dangers of trite ‘rainbow nationism’ occasionally forget just how remarkable the cultural fusion in this country is. We also tend to take for granted the transcendent gifts of those artists who move comfortably between these spheres and help to bridge the gaps between language, ethnicity and cultural heritage. But as the stellar performers of the African Celebration segued flawlessly from baroque opera to “Nkalakatha”, or demonstrated why it is that South Africa is renowned internationally for its rich jazz tradition, I was awed into a vague, ineloquent but powerful patriotic state.

Suffice it to say I rose to my feet and applauded. Our best artists deserve no less.