The Fiësta Awards, the biggest for the best productions (theatre, visual art, music and dance) at last year’s Afrikaans festivals around the country, were awarded last week, with Nicola Hanekom gloriously blazing as the star of the night with her landmark production Land van Skedels.
The piece was commissioned about Emily Hobhouse and the Anglo-Boer War concentration camps. She wrote, conceived and executed this site-specific work (which will be seen again at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival at the end of next month) and was rewarded with Best Director, Theatre Design, Original Afrikaans Production and finally the big one, Best Production Overall.
This remarkable woman has been reeling them in with almost everything she puts on her particular stage, which is usually the great outdoors. She is a remarkable talent who has shown her brilliance as an actor but only in these past few years has she emerged as a writer/director of exciting originality.
The other heavyweight was Marthinus Basson’s macbeth.slapeloos which collected three of the four acting prizes with Anna-Mart van der Merwe, and Dawid Minnaar rewarded as Best Actors and Charlton George as Best Supporting Actor for the same production.
Among the other winners were: