It’s lights, sound and all action at festival

LOAD SHEDDING has overtaken the weather as the favourite topic of discussion at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown this year.

The festival kicks off today and for the next 11 days artists, “festinos” and families descend on the normally sleepy Eastern Cape town to catch up on what’s hot in the South African arts world.

National Arts Festival chief executive Tony Lankester said there was a three-way agreement among the Makana municipality, the festival and Eskom to ensure productions would not be left in the dark mid-performance.

Grahamstown is divided into two zones, but for the next two weeks only one will be affected by load shedding, with the other zone, where 54 of the 60 festival venues are, receiving a continuous stream of electricity.

“For the two weeks following the festival, this will be reversed, so that’s the broad plan,” said Lankester.

Festival venues outside of the lucky zone will be equipped with generators. Festival organisers have a hotline to Eskom to alert them of any problems or deviations from the plan.

“There might be some inconvenience at the B&Bs on the outskirts of town, but people can always go and watch a show if the power is out,” Lankester said.

Altogether the 60 venues will host 628 shows, which makes this year’s festival slightly smaller than last year.

Lankester said the number of shows seemed to remain stable and he thought this would stay more or less the same for the next few years.

“There is a supply and demand that kicks in. At the moment the audience focuses a lot on day visitors from Port Elizabeth, East London, Cradock, King William’s Town and Bisho. It’s a funny old beast, but the number is fairly consistent.”

Organisers introduced the concept of a featured artist in 2013, but this year they chose to highlight the genre of satire.

“When we sat down to think about it, we thought ‘what’s the issue? Where are people’s minds at the moment?’

“What emerged is that the world is in a very particular place at the moment and issues of freedom of expression are huge, particularly in South Africa.

“We noticed on the programme that there were a lot of artists working in that space, like Chester Missing, PieterDirk Uys, Ewok and Tara Notcutt bringing Three Blind Mice. There were lots of artists presenting work that concerns itself with satire and free speech.”

With hundreds of shows on the Fringe to choose from, “festinos” can find the programme daunting and intimidating, so one of the festival’s initiatives this year is to help productions market themselves better.

In addition to digital advertising at the central box office at the Settlers’ Monument on the hill overlooking Grahamstown, the festival has preprinted business cards for shows on the uncurated fringe programme, which will go up on the walls at key points where people converge.

“Audiences can look at the wall and take the ones they like and they will have the production times printed on the back. It makes it easier for productions to stand out from the crowd. Marketing is such an important part of the festival and there are no guarantees about whether a show will get an audience or not.

“It turns out that festival audiences do not handle a sense of entitlement on the part of the productions very well. But, what there is, is festival buzz and there is always a sleeper hit,” explained Lankester.

The festival online app for Apple and Android devices has been updated, taking the best of the attributes people liked last year. This simplifies the process of being able to see what other people think of particular productions. Lankester, though, suggests “festinos” read online audience reviews with a pinch of salt.

“It’s just one of those things that’s constantly evolving,” he said.

The National Arts Festival runs in Grahamstown from July 2 to 12. Check www.tonight.co.za for coverage by the Independent Newspapers team on the ground and www.nationalartsfestival.co.za for programme details.

See Arts Page 12