Best of Afrikaans just an artbeat away
SO RY Miss Daisy, or more familiar as Driving Miss Daisy, is the production Aardklop manager, Alexa Strachan, is probably most chuffed about. And with John Kani and Sandra Prinsloo heading the cast, how could she not be licking her lips?
“We needed a bilingual title because it is a bilingual play with Prinsloo’s character (Miss Daisy) speaking Afrikaans and Kani’s chauffeur, Hoke, conversing in English,” she says.
All of that is going to make this a winning production as it will probably tour the country and the festivals once it has premiered at Potch.
And apart from another festival run for Christiaan Olwagen’s Hond se Gedagte, which also stars Prinsloo as well as Neels van Jaarsveld, Albert Pretorius and Lorraine Burger, he will also direct Miss Daisy. But there’s so much more. Take the two young darlings of Afrikaans TV, Ivan Botha and Donnalee Roberts. They will star in a relationship drama titled Beurtkrag (loadshed) which deals with vulnerabilities between lovers as they are forced to spend more time talking because of the lack of electricity. Another young star and festival favourite flies in on a more dramatic note: Wessel Pretorius will perform in Die Ontelbare 48 which had its debut in Innibos (Nelspruit), exploring four colourful characters and the way people find a way to make it through the day.
Also trying to make it, but in a different way, is acting couple Elize Cawood and Wilson Dunster in Saartjie Botha’s ’n Geworry, which is more serious than their recent outings together, but this time their serious acting credentials are fully aired as well as tackling ageing from a realistic perspective. How do we cope at different ages with life’s curve balls, because they will always be part of trying to survive? It’s a powerful, insightful piece directed by Gerrit Schoonhoven.
A bonus for creating big productions is the Dagbreek Trust gifting each of the Afrikaans festivals one production with the proviso that it tour to all the other festivals. One of these is Die Vrou Uit die See, a translation of one of Ibsen’s lesser-known plays, The Lady from the Sea, directed by Henry Mylne and starring Neels van Jaarsveld, Jana Strydom and Eric Holm. Expect an exploration as only this playwright can do of the human condition.
If solo is more your thing, Frank Opperman returns with a Dana Snyman piece called Hond which tells the story of a man and his dog. It’s both funny and sad, which is what life is all about. And on the other end of the scale, actor Whaden Johannes joined forces with playwright/ director, Nico Scheepers, to tell the stories of his world in Mamre. It’s an exploration of Johannes’s town and its people, but it also reflects on small towns swamped and left behind by progress.
Scheepers is also responsible for Rooivalk, which won an award for Best Production. It stars Richard September and also tells the story of small lives as two boys become friends on a farm, the one the son of the farmer, the other that of a farmworker. And we know how these tales usually unfold… However, with Scheepers’s writing and directing and September’s performance it is not to be missed.
As an artist herself, Strachan knows what it’s like to be a young performer trying to find a stage to tell your stories. She has selected Welkom in Suid Afrika and Bachus in Hillbrow, giving young and new artists a springboard. “It’s not an easy road,” she says, but she also knows that with experience comes wisdom and with youth, fresh ideas and some risk, which is all part of the full spectrum of the arts.
Marthinus Basson returns with his Cock ’n Bull Story, which had Cape Town and Joburg runs. It stars Edwin van der Walt and Dean John-Smith in a story set in a boxing ring just before the big fight. It’s explosive and as always with this visionary director, brilliantly explored.
Milan Murray returns with Amper Vrystaat and Pa, the former starring Antoinette Louw and Cintaine Schutte tells the story of three sisters coming together when their mother dies, while the latter is about a father (Chris van Niekerk) who is lost to his daughter as he disappears in a cloud of dementia.
But bullish in another sense, Tobie Cronje and Louis van Niekerk play two old men in Ooms who have been sent to a reform school-type retirement home for wealthy old people, having been kicked out of a series of previous abodes because they’re impossible to live with. They’re kept busy, but already they have set their sights on an escape plan to win back their freedom. This could only mean trouble.
Of course, there’s more, from contemporary and classical music, a series of intimate concerts in an intimate venue, a musical theatre production starring Dawid Minnaar, Ilse Klink and Cronje of the muchloved Heidi, Mike van Graan’s latest satire, Pay Back the Curry, and a tribute to Jakes Gerwel with Kristalvlakte, a reworking of Brecht’s Mother Courage set on the Cape Flats with an astonishing cast (read more about these two productions later).
There’s the usual children’s theatre, the books programme with many different conversations including Kani being quizzed by Prinsloo on his latest self-penned play, Missing, while Marita van der Vyver speaks to playwright Harry Kalmer about her book turned into film currently on circuit, Dis Koue Kos, Skat.
Fine art has not been neglected, with a selection of art that reaches far and wide. From Pieter Matthews and his Cool Capital gang and their Venice Biennale exhibition Saadjies (Seedlings) to Urban Impressions, a coming together between the Pretoria co-operative FOUND Collective and composers Franco Prinsloo and Pieter Bezuidenhout, videographer Christo Niemandft and curator Elani Willemse.
So, more than enough to keep festinos smiling, even if put together in haste and with too little money. It’s how the imagination works.
Aardklop site: wwwpotchfees.co.za.