The Grahamstown Festival

For the cur­rent National Arts Festival Programme please see National Arts Festival Programme. 

Grahamstown Festival

It was open­ing night and adren­alin and lack of sleep were fuel­ing an unhealthy intens­ity in the house we were stay­ing in. We had arrived in Grahamstown after a ten hour drive which ended with the act­ors in the back seat trad­ing more elbow jabs and knees to the mid­sec­tion than in a Thai kick­box­ing match. We were in Grahamstown, a small town in the Eastern Cape, for the National Arts Festival, a high­light on South African arts cir­cuit occur­ing at the end of June/ begin­ning of July every year.

The first thing to know about Grahamstown is that it is abso­lutely freez­ing, which only seemed to give the the­at­rical types more reason for hys­teria and may­hem, little dra­matic dynamos gen­er­at­ing their own internal sources of heat. For the rest of us proper winter cloth­ing is essen­tial. Stretched over about 10 days, the fest­ival is a melt­ing pot of the most bril­liant, cre­at­ive and utterly strange things the coun­try has to offer. At the cent­ral mar­ket, which serves as the hub for the day­time activ­it­ies, you’ll be accos­ted by everything from half-naked hyp­not­ists and hard­selling Hare Krishnas to act­ors evan­gel­ising about why their par­tic­u­lar play will change your life. The mar­ket is also home to a cor­nu­copia of traders selling everything from did­jeri­doos to cures for arth­ritis, so it’s a pefect place for unusual gifts.

Grahamstown Festival

The theatre exper­i­ence is divided between the Main pro­gramme and the Fringe pro­gramme. The Main pro­gramme fea­tures the cream of South African theatre and is a sure-fire way to get down to some ser­i­ous the­at­rical appre­ci­ation. The only way to describe the Fringe exper­i­ence is to liken it to shop­ping in a antique curio shop. There are hun­dreds of strange and bizarre little theatre trinkets to choose from. Some of them are unique and valu­able while oth­ers are use­less junk. Like antique shop­ping, how­ever, the only way to find out which is which is to browse thor­oughly. Whether comic, tra­gic or just plain incom­pre­hens­ible, the Fringe pro­gramme is the place where old theatre con­ven­tions are broken and new theatre trends are made. Whatever the mer­its of the plays, young tal­ent is inex­or­ably drawn to exper­i­mental nature of fringe theatre and it can be a show­case for the raw pas­sion that is theatre’s lifeblood. You have been both encour­aged and warned!

Food is an import­ant com­mid­ity wherever you go, but no more so than when the tem­per­at­ures drop toward zero. Hearty, hot food is a lifesaver at the fest­ival and one of the best places to enjoy it is at the Long Table. The Long Table is a bit of an insti­tu­tion at the Festival, situ­ated in an old hall and filled with, yes, long tables, the res­taur­ant looks more like a soup kit­chen than a place of fine din­ing. The food, how­ever, is great and it’s a won­der­ful place drink wine and rub shoulders with the act­ors and theatre types. Ensure you have a col­our­ful scarf non­chal­antly thrown around your neck and a fedora posi­tioned low on your head and you’ll fit right in.

The Grahamstown Festival is a must-see. It com­bines a com­fort­able, folky, com­munity atmo­sphere with the excite­ment of cre­at­ive pas­sion and cutting-edge the­at­rical innov­a­tion. Make sure you give it a visit!

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