Strato has gone gonzo at the Grahamstown National ArtsFest - and you're in it now for its full ten days.

FESTIVALIRIOUS

Well, the Grahamstown National Arts Festival is upon us - hopefully heating up a freezing winter wonderland with creativity manifest! For those that have never experienced a Gtown ArtsFest, put it on your bucket list and give yourselves at least one meander in this most fantastic world! Drama, comedy, musical theatre, jazz, music, stand-up, street theatre, painting, sculpture, photography, arts installations plus plus plus. It's insane! The whole programme would take you six months to experience. You have ten days, and thousands vying for your attention. It's phenomenal! From the uber deep and tres high-browed, to the slap your knee and laugh, it's all here, every year, from the last Thursday of June for ten glorious days! And this is the second year running that more than audience, I'm a participant! Now that rocks! Continue

Melange Magnifique-day 1

So day one of the Grahamstown National Arts Festival started off with a BANG! Literally. Last night I watched a drummer with 40 hands; or so it sounded; while the two that I could see looked happily, almost nonchalantly, bored. He was that good! They were all that good! A sextet called The Clearing. David Ledbetter's ensemble of the best young jazz musicians in the country - guitar, sax, trumpet, piano, double bass, drums. Breathtaking! The started off like Dave Brubeck and ended up like The Who. Musical mayhem with the unmistakable hand that holds control. Today, many of those same musicians were giving a jazz workshop to university and high school musicians on ensemble playing. Using just each particpants name sung differently, they created a song. The room shone. And it wasn't just the soft winter afternoon light flashing off a trumpet. Continue

Ama ... Ama ... Ama ... Ama ... Amaaaaaaazing! Bless you-days 2and 3

When I first heard the Grahamstown National Arts Festival tagline of "Welcome to Amazing!" the copyrighter in me found it a tad twee - which doesn't change the fact that it's absolutely true.

Today is day three of my 12th or 13th ArtsFest; and indeed amazed again am I! There is something so preciously beautiful about people at the top of their game sharing their gift. And so many of them are here right now. Continue

Come together .... over fest.

Last night, all the creative convergence, rhythmic coalescence and symmetrical synergy that fest has come to symbolise for me, came together at our band's opening festival gig - our SunshiP trio, now also with sax, electric violin and acoustic guitar. The other three had never played together, and only two of them had ever previously performed with us a long time ago. But we came together and cooked! They were moments of jubilant, thoughtless, total presence - with very gracious musicians all around me who gave each other the space and attention for every one to fly and create our very happy flock! Continue

Monday Panic; Comfortably Numb - day 5

The 2011 Grahamstown National ArtsFest is now in it's 5th day. Almost the halfway point; and I still haven't attended a single Thinkfest lecture, dipped into the film festival, seen any stand-up, gone to a dance perforrmance, done any serious plays or been to any art exhibitions except the Arts Lounge where my sister and I performed today. So I'm a tad panicked. Which is why after this I'm going for cocktails. It happens every half way point festival Monday - the initial panic of "so much still to see; so little time", followed by numbness where I kinda  start making peace with the fact that I now have to seriously plough through a 230 page programme, create a booking grid on a fullscap piece of paper and start booking. The grid's so that I don't double-book the same time slot. Se ri as. Continue

Long Night At the Long Table

Gaetan Schmid is a very funny man. Belgian born, but Cape Town based for a dozen years, he arrives every festival with a new fantastic original offering. Three years I discovered him in "The Dog's Bollocks" - an ingeniously funny one-hander, delivered in mock lecture format, on the hillarity of the bizarre spelling and expressions of the English language, from an outsider's pespective. Last year he brought "Rump Steak", where on a one square metre black and white tiled stage, in a funky non-cliched chef's outfit with the pirate style mod cuisine black bandana on his head,  mimed to pre-recorded sound effects flowing one into the other on a single soundtrack - Every action of 20 staff members in a Parisian restaurant - from the chop chop chopping, to the stirring, the taking of reservations, the serving of meals, bla bla bla - while staying totally synchronous with his movements to a constantly running soundscape and doing the dialogue of every single person - with each character seamlessly flowing to the next and back for 50 minutes. It's phenomenal! Just youtube a snippet of it.Continue

WATERSHED MINOLTA

On the side of one of the mountains that encircle and overlook the valley that is Grahamstown, is a very large - a mammoth - photocopying machine, or so it looks. It's an architectural monstrosity known as the 1820 Settlers Monument - a huge building that was constructed in the 1970s; and it shows. Square. From the two pointless mast-like structures protruding from its roof, you get a weak hint that its architect meant for the building to symbolise a sailing ship - to be an ode to the settler spirit that crossed oceans to tame this wild land - now forever imposed upon and embedded in the the landscape. Unfortunately the building is far from poetic, and fits into its quasi-rural environment about as well as an old banker in grey shoes and a polyester suit at a hippie tee-pee encampment.

Continue

BENT! - Day? - Who knows ...

The Grahamstown National Arts Festival is now a week old. But unlike the almighty, on this seventh day, no one's really resting. Swerving from exhaustion, but not stopping. Like that cheese grater infomercial on late-night TV, at fest there's always more.

And I finally got to see some art! ............... Well, mostly because it came to me.

Continue

Somewhere on the Border

Anthony Akerman wrote 'Somewhere on the Border" in the early 80s, in exile, based on his and countless conscripts' experiences in the then SADF. Of course, it was banned here for being 'prejudicial to the state' ... then. But this is now, for now - who knows what happens if the Secrecy Bill is passed and media tribunal manifests. 

This morning though, I experienced an Akerman doubleheader - the playwright himself giving a lecture as part of TalkFest; and then watching the play itself on the Festival Main programme an hour later. Continue

Sunshine n Festivity!

"Sun is shining, the weather is sweet. You gotta move your dancing feet." Bob Marley

Like the end of a biblical test, the perpetual dampness at this year's National ArtsFest is fading fast in the sunshine that began peeking out yesterday. Today it's blazing away delightfully! And after almost ten days of non-stop festivity, the fest-fatigue that has built up like a lego toy of tiredness, now makes way for that final, gleeful, fest-sprint to the finish! 

You have no idea how spectacular today feels! For many reasons! One - sun. Two - the good groove. Three - soon from festinos we'll be free! God bless em, they're lovely, and they fill our town with their happy arts adventuring every year, but I've almost had my fill of full. Being stuck in traffic jams -in Gtown - feels surreal. Continue

Sunday.Last day

Sunday. Last day. All over. Not quite. Schools' Fest starts tomorrow and some of the ArtsFest's offerings will still be here for that. But the town's emptying fast. Already, the eyelids of our usually sleepy hollow are starting to droop. And all I can do is look back and marvel! So much was, and so many were, here. Here it all was. So here we all were. HERE WE ALL WERE!!! Truly amazing! 

You see, beyond astounding creativity abounding; even more than the breathtaking choice of what to do, see and experience; over and above the spectacular aray of whats and hows, is the glory of who! Because more than anything, a festival like the Grahamstown flings people together with an artistic intensity that truly allows sparks to fly off at every human interactive collision. Continue

PLAY - ArtsFest Farewell

What a wonderful word: Play. 

Play music. Play a role. See a play. Come play.

As another National ArtsFest now gently bubbles over into Schools Fest and Gtown simmers down to post-fantasia tired bliss, we've had the most balmy winter's day in weeks. Soft light, but clear and strong. Thin sweatshirt weather. Perfect! Even the sun came out to applaud and wave to the countless who performed here and the thousands who saw them. Continue