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The spirit of the National Arts Festival – go to feel the shattering

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Jo-Ann Bekker is the author of Asleep Awake Asleep (Modjaji Books, 2019).

The ghosts of Makhanda’s slaughtered warriors stalk the streets along with donkeys and cows. And Grahamstown’s youngest mime artists have abandoned their frozen poses and are openly begging because too many warmly jacketed people like me walk past with cards instead of cash. And flea market traders complain they haven’t covered their costs. And you might see actors who play to empty halls weeping, while the stars of successful shows look on helplessly.

I’ve gone to the National Arts Festival five years in a row for one reason.

I felt it most strongly during Tony Miyambo’s The Cenotaph of Dan wa Moriri. I can still hear his lisp, see him shifting scenes and moods with a table of small wooden blocks. Afterwards, I sat on a low wall in the Makhanda winter sun. I felt shattered.

Sometimes it’s a slow burn. I watched Neil Coppen’s NewFoundLand critically, aware of the revolving stage props, the way scenes repeated and altered, fascinated by the exploration of anaesthesia. And yet when I walked out into the icy wind, the same thing hit me: shaky legs, disorientation, flashbacks.

Sometimes the shattering makes you scream with laughter. Jemma Kahn’s The Epicene Butcher and other stories for Consenting Adults – an incredible combination of narration, Japanese kamishibai and nipple tassels – was so unlike anything I had experienced I had to see it again.

Sometimes it makes you squirm: Mamela Nyamza’s Black Privilege does not end. The audience trickles out as her gold-painted torso slithers across the floor, changing direction as instructed by a Google maps voice. I hung back with the stragglers, the dancer met our eyes one by one, with contempt. Unless we left, she would remain belly down on the floor.

Sometimes every aspect of a production is shattering. In Jade Bowers’s Jungfrau, based on Mary Watson’s short story, the knitted costumes and blankets covering the walls and floor of the set mirrored the poisonous web of incest ensnaring the cast of brilliant actors. I could have watched every performance from a different spot in the audience each time. Dada Masilo’s Giselle completely reinvented the ballet. The dancers had noisy conversations and Masilo danced half naked in an aching journey from love to betrayal to revenge, saturated with contemporary themes.

Sometimes bits and pieces stay with you: Dancer Shaun Oelf gliding down steps like mercury in What Remains. Neo Muyanga’s music in I Turned Away and She was Gone. Aisha Mohammed’s performance in The Crows Plucked Your Sinews.

The NAF is overwhelming. It is too much. It is impossible to do it justice.

You can go just for the jazz festival. Just for films. Just for visual art – I won’t forget Lerato Shadi’s Noka Ya Bokamoso: the river of blood she sat knitting from red wool; the videos of her stuffing a ball of wool into her mouth; forcing herself to chew and swallow a ball of clay; passing salt and sugar between her mouth and her mother’s.

You can go just for the music and nightlife. Just for comedy, classical music, dance, performance art.

You can go and spend very little. Visual art exhibitions are free. There is no charge for the short performances held daily in the Monument auditorium. Rhodes University’s creative writing students and teachers stage free Live Writing readings by poets. Many fringe productions do not charge for opening nights.

Or, like me, you can book a few shows beforehand, and spend each day pouring over the hefty programme, as your fomo spirals out of control and you catch festival flu and cough your way through shows. And even when you mix up venues and miss something you were desperate to see, you can’t forget the way sex and rape were danced in the University of Johannesburg’s production of Lorca’s Blood Wedding you saw in its place.

Makhanda gets a bad press, but challenges with resources, crumbling infrastructure, corruption and the chasm between the well-off and the starving aren’t restricted to the city of saints.

The nearest airports might be more than an hour’s drive away, but there are an abundance of churches and schools which provide ideal venues for shows and affordable accommodation – many within walking distance of one another. And yes you can buy good coffee, artisanal bread and vegan, carnivore and carb-free meals as well as curries and soup.

And even though the ghosts of Makhanda’s slaughtered warriors stalk the streets along with donkeys and cows. And Grahamstown’s youngest mime artists have abandoned their frozen poses and are openly begging because too many warmly jacketed people like me walk past with cards instead of cash. And flea market traders complain they haven’t covered their costs. And you might see actors who play to empty halls weeping, while the stars of successful shows look on helplessly.

Even through all this pain – and because of it – art will help you understand and remember and, sometimes, forget. And you’ll leave wishing you had seen at least one of Mhlanguli George’s Theatre in the Backyard productions, and taken more chances on lesser-known plays.

You’ll go home a bit different, having heard legends like Madala Kunene, King of Zulu blues; having watched Tiisetso Mashifane wa Noni’s haunting dissection of adolescent masculinity in Sainthood; having experienced Steven Cohen’s utterly unique put your heart under your feet… and walk.

You’ll have felt the shattering. DM

The 2019 National Arts Festival runs from 27 June to 7 July. www.nationalartsfestival.co.za

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