Another milestone on Foot’s the

Lara Foot is a stalwart of South African theatre and has been honoured as the featured artist at this year’s National Arts Festival in Grahamstown

It is more than 30 years since Lara Foot first immersed herself in the cultural sights and sounds of the National Arts Festival, held annually in Grahamstown. But it was an experience she nearly missed out on.

“It was on a school-organised trip to the arts fest,” explains the former Pretoria Girls High School student. “But I almost didn’t go because my parents could not afford to send me. The headmistress at the time asked if I was going and, embarrassed, I mumbled something about not having the money for the trip,” Foot says.

But her luck soon changed when the school offered her a bursary to be able to attend that year’s schools’ festival. “We went from one brilliant piece of theatre to the next and I soaked it all up. It was incredible,” Foot recounts.

The year was 1985 and she was hooked. Ten years later, Foot received the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award. And now, the acclaimed playwright, director and producer has been named the 2016 featured artist at this year’s festival.

In the three decades since she first experienced the convergence of the best in South African art at a small town in the Eastern Cape, Foot has appeared on both the stages and in the wings of Grahamstown’s theatres. As a student at the University of the Witwatersrand, she appeared in workshop pieces performed at the festival and then returned as a director.

“I am much happier behind the scenes,” she says. “I’m a quiet person and I enjoy the process of working with actors, sharing and sculpting something new. The making. I love the experience of exploring a work with the actors and finding surprises along the way.”

And with more than 50 professional productions under her belt, her director role is second nature.

As the chief executive and artistic director of the Baxter Theatre Centre in Cape Town for the past six years — the first woman to hold the position — Foot is constantly surrounded by the best in South African theatre. The featured artist nod is another feather in her already decorated cap and a milestone she is proud of.

“I come from years spent at the Grahamstown Festival — I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been — and am incredibly grateful to have been named this year’s featured artist. Especially since it is 20 years since I won the Young Artist Award. I guess it’s a reminder that I’m getting old!” she adds, laughing.

“But it is also a reminder of my responsibility to the Baxter and our commitment to developing work of a high standard”.

The theatre centre would ordinarily send one production to Grahamstown a year, but 2016 will see three Baxter productions under the spotlight. In her role as the featured artist, Foot will stage the world premiere of her latest play, The Inconvenience of Wings, and restage two of her mo s t f a mo u s a n d mu l t i - a w a r d - winning works, Karoo Moose and Tshepang.

“Both Karoo Moose and Tshepang were milestones in my career and were very important for social and political commentary at the time that they were made,” Foot says of their selection.

Known for hard-hitting plays that tackle social issues in South Africa, Foot has earned great respect and recognition for her work both locally and internationally.

“There is an activist in me and I think what drives me to write stories like these is the need to engage with topics that are difficult to grasp in order to try to understand them a bit,” says Foot.

The cleverly written Karoo Moose delves into African storytelling and magical realism with the story of village in the Karoo where people struggling to survive.

Foot uses the story of a girl killing a moose, with no answers about what it was doing in the desert nor how got there, to engage the breakdown the family unit and the loss of innocence endured by many South African children.

Darker and grittier, Tshepang is the story of the ninemonth-old Upington baby raped by her teenage mother’s ex-boyfriend in 2001. The play, since translated into Zulu, Afrikaans and Croatian, has won several awards and has been performed in prisons and rural settlements throughout South Africa.

Although the content of the play motivated by factual evidence, story is fictional, and brings together themes of devastation, love and forgiveness.