THERE’S barely a bed to be had in the university town of Grahamstown, where hundreds of arts lovers from across the country have taken over almost all the accommodation in hostels, hotels and lodges.
It is, after all, that time of year again – the annual National Arts Festival.
And it’s not only the accommodation that this popular event affects; it plays out in almost every nook and cranny of the town, from bowling clubs to school halls and historic churches.
Festival organisers are boasting of 628 different productions with a total of 2 498 performances over an 11-day schedule.
As usual, the festival is a theatre-lover’s paradise, taking in all the major disciplines – comedy, dance, drama, film, music, physical theatre and jazz. Other traditional art forms like visual arts and performance art also have a big presence at the festival.
Today marks the grand opening of the exhibition of Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year for Visual Art, Kemang wa Lehulere. Called History Will Break your Heart, it’s on at the Monument Gallery.
Fellow Capetonian Athi-Patra Ruga, the Standard Bank Young Artist for Performance Art, is performing his work Elders of Azania in the 1820 Settlers Monument.
This year’s festival accolades took an interesting turn by “personifying” a genre, and naming satire the 2015 Featured Artist of the Year. The accolade celebrates the works of the likes of Pieter-Dirk Uys, Conrad Koch’s naughty puppet Chester Missing, and the new production Three Blind Mice, directed by Tara Louise Nottcutt.
Despite freezing morning and evening temperatures, festival devotees are out on the town late into the night.
The Cape Town Comedy Club has taken over the bowling club venue, presenting its stand-up format nightly at 11pm. The venue is in the Fiddler’s Hub, a part of the festival’s fringe which is also getting attention for its funfair and market.
In festival style, every spare space in the town is plastered with posters. Traditional flyer marketing by artists themselves is common. They even go to other venues to punt their offerings.
The Village Green has streaming banners with shows competing for visual space.
These traditional marketing methods have crossed over into the world of social media too. Singing comedian Deep Fried Man has flyers going around punting a selfie challenge: if you spot him at the festival, take a selfie with him, post it and tag it, you could win tickets to his show Deep Fried Man Kills.
One artist who has successfully managed to cover Grahamstown with his image is Cape Town comedian Dalin Oliver.
He is performing his one-man show I Came, I Taught, I Left at the Bowling Club, directed by Stuart Taylor.
“This is my second year performing on my own in Grahamstown, and I am very visible this year,” he said.
His show, which tells the story of his short stint as a high school teacher, runs until next Saturday.
“We get a lot of teachers. It is a clean show, there is no swearing. It’s about what happens in the classroom.”
Knowing how to get around the festival is also changing. The official festival newspaper, Cue, is still produced every day by Rhodes journalism students, and sold for R5 in hostels and on the street. The university students attend almost every show, constantly feeding reviews into the publication.
The festival has gone hi-tech, making an information app available on the App Store and Google Play.
There are a lot of ways to get around the festival on the cheap. There have been buy-one-get-one-free specials, free opening-night shows and half-price tickets available daily from the Half Price Hut. On the last day of the festival, next Sunday, every show on the festival fringe is half price.
For convenient transport for festival attendees, the festival has created the Hopper system, which commutes between various festival venues and hubs late into the night. It is not always reliable but is useful, if it arrives, to get to distant venues.
Weekend Argus