I thought I might take a minute of two to highlight a few experiences which stood out for me in the year of 2011.

My criteria for the below choices was originality, audacity and craftsmanship. In short an experience (or cultural product) that challenged and pushed the boundaries of the medium it was created within. My list is of course entirely subjective and I’m certain to have omitted some real gems along the way but here it is…

Album

Ex Durbanite Chris Letcher’s Spectroscope takes top spot followed closely by PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake. Letcher is an uncompromising musical genius and Spectroscope is a journey which enriches and unfolds with each concentrated listen. I’ve had this album on repeat for a few months and am yet to tire of this lush cinematic/schizophrenic soundscape.

Live Gig

It had been a tough Grahamstown festival, exhausted beyond the telling, I ambled in and out of theatres mostly unmoved by the work I was seeing. Perhaps my indifference could be attributed to my own post-project fatigue but catching Guy Buttery at the Rhodes Chapel managed to instantly restore my every frazzled fibre.

Perched on a stool, Buttery, messiah-like (How he must tire of this comparison) bathed in red light, the Virgin Mary painted on the back wall seeming to hover maternally over him, offered the nearest thing to a religious experience an atheist is capable of having. True to form, Buttery’s virtuoso combo of digits and strings warmed the icy cathedral, and kept the capacity crowd leaning in as if trying to get closer to the bonfire that was blazing up before them.

If Buttery doesn’t win the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for music in the next year or two I vow to outdo Werner Hertzog (who infamously ate his boot) and devour an entire ukulele instead.

Similarly Simphiwe Dana at the Sibiya Casino theatre earlier this year was majestic. Despite embarrassingly low attendance figures(the gig was terribly advertised) a gracious Dana and her band of accomplished muso’s took to the stage and indulged us with an intimate and passionate two and a half hour set– where artists of similar renown might have well taken one look at the meagre crowd and slunk from the stage after a few songs.

Film

Both applauded and derided Tree of Life tops of my list. Sure Mr Malick doesn’t always know when to stop (The concluding syrupy beach scene re-union was a step too far) but Tree Of Life is a beautifully shot, unapologetically cinematic/operatic experiment that for the most part works and often awes. Detractors– and there are many– complained that nothing much seems to happen (bar the glorious formation of the universe mid-section) yet I savoured Malick’s gentle narrative, his profound observations on childhood and Emmanuel Lubezki’s breathtaking cinematography.  A deep experience and I mean that in both the poetic and pretentious sense.

 Wim Wenders Pina 3D, which I was fortunate to have caught at the opening night of the JOMBA festival, offered a cinematic experience unlike any other. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t know much about Bausch and her company Tanztheater Wippertal , so Wenders film provided me with a suitably visceral and inspired introduction. Wenders was born with cameras for eyes, and his immortalising of Bausch’s dancers gliding through time, architecture and space was nothing short of masterful.

In the way of unadulterated pleasures Gore Verbinki’s Rango (which a reviewer aptly claimed was like watching Looney Tunes on mescaline) served up a surreal and irreverent treat. John Logan is a fine writer and Verbinski– away from the money mitts of producer Jerry Bruckheimer—harbours an irrepressible imagination. The product of their twisted imaginings is a bizarre take on wild-west lore which has more ideas in its opening sequence then the combined duration of Hollywood’s insipid annual output.

Theatre

The recent staging of Philip Glass’s opera Satraygrha (Staged at the Met and screened at cinema Noveau) was a wondrous to behold. The opera was the perfect union of Glass’s dizzying compositions and theatre Improbable’s ingenious staging and design. Improbable found mind boggling solutions to theatrically flogged (Do you Hear the people sing!) images of oppression, protest and emancipation. For what not to do, see the overly literal staging of the Cape Town Operas Mandela Trilogy which toured earlier this year.

Throughout Satyagraha wicker-baskets, reels of newspapers –and at one point– kilometres of sticky tape were utilised to create a series of striking metaphors. Exhibit A: Ghandi vanishing into a seething mass of newspaper print.

I am a fan of Danish performing artist Jori Snell. I caught her production of Inua for a second time this year at the Grahamstown fest and it confirmed my awe. Inua is an effervescent tonic against the creatively wrung one man/woman physical theatre formulae which litters many a theatre festival programme. Snell served up an icy vision part art installation/part performance piece that had me captivated from start to finish. I’ve grown increasingly weary with seeing the same thing played on stages: recycled narratives, over wordy diatribes (of which I am perhaps responsible) and theatrical quirks which I reckon even the likes of Jacques Lecoq –were he still alive and miming—would roll his eyes at.

Inua is like nothing I have seen before which is why it demanded (and was rewarded with) a second viewing. Those looking for paint-by-numbers, A to B entertainment, stumbled out of the show exasperated ,some even angered, by the whole affair but I relished the simplicity and commitment with which Snell constructs each of her strange images and characters. To my mind sitting through her productions is the closest one can get to free-falling down Alice’s rabbit hole. Folks looking to use AV or projection (a slide projector in this instance) on stage could learn much from her simple yet ingenious use of the medium.

Admittedly being stranded in a glacial dreamscape for an hour (or finding oneself trapped in a loopy Bjork music video) is not everyone’s cup of tea, but after enduring so much of the same thing year in and year out, I couldn’t imagine of a more refreshing way to spend an evening.

I was also briefly glimpsed the work of Cape Town actress Nicola Hanekom. While I have yet to see a full production of hers, Hanekom appears to be the ballsy visionary our stages are in dire need of.  In the space of fifteen minutes (She was re-interpreting a scene from Fugard’s Boesman & Lena for the GIPCA Directors and Directing Conference) she had me enthralled. I’m looking really forward to catching more of her work in the near future.

 Books

Researching several historic projects this year I wasn’t able to delve into as much new fiction as I would have liked. I did however find Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending a fantastic read (with a concluding chapter likely to cause as much speculation as James’s The Turn of the Screw has over the last century.) while in the way of non- fiction I savoured each interview found in the pages of The Paris Review Box Set - the most invaluable Birthday present (courtesy of Colwyn Thomas) I have ever received. The interviews with some of the greatest writers, poets and playwrights of our time was the equivalent of a University education  as was Richard Dawkins The Greatest Show on Earth which has enabled me to grapple with scientific concepts I’ve always imagined myself too dof to ever understand.

Clear, succinct and conversational, Dawkins sets out to debunk the myths while never losing sight of where the real majesty lies. A new pair of the lenses on (or into) the world is always welcome so here’s to seeing things a little differently in 2012.

On a Bum Note

I will not indulge in a lowlights list (too often it’s mediocrity seems to garner the most attention throughout the year) but perhaps one of my biggest disappointments was The Playhouse Companies mega- budget musical Cinderella. Despite the considerable talent concerned, the Durban public was served up a dated, humourless and grossly unimaginative Christmas turkey. Were this a private theatre company investing in such shabby spectacle I would have less room for complaint, but this is a well-funded Government arts institution that could (and should) have channelled such finances into funding hundreds of relevant and very necessary local initiatives throughout the year.

You left me with…

1.) A green piggy bank (in the shape of an elephant). Loot from one of your car-boot sale trawls.  A relic from some Afrikaans bank promotion in the 70’s.

2.) A fridge full of inedible leaves. Watercress wasted on me—my resourcefulness with salad stuff extends to boiled eggs and iceberg lettuce- what does one do with watercress?

3.)A wobbly vintage bed side lamp, fond of conking me on the head during late night reading sessions.

4.)An ID photo, carefully placed amongst our shelf of Chinese wind-up toys, solemn eyes to keep a tin army in check.

5.) A Jasmine vine on the balcony which, in the absence of your patient fingers, now competes with fellow tendrils to topple the TV Ariel and strangle me in my sleep.

6.)A sculpture you made in second year: A concrete cast of your upturned hands, left outside to cup the evening rain.

Each morning I wake and empty two generous palms-full.

Sweet Aurora

For months I have been trying to pen you this letter yet have found myself inhibited by a paralysis of the imagination.  I suppose a more benign term might be post project daze.

They say Aurora, ninety percent of writing is imagining what it is one wants to write. If this is true ,then I have been spending ninety nine-percent of my waking, dreaming, scheming hours imagining. A luxury for sure. Who wouldn’t leap at the opportunity to suspend reality in order to inhabit a semi-imaginary one. To resign oneself to the company of the non-existent. Reality during such periods slips into the background, is seen as nothing more than an inconvenience…. something to brave when the fridge is bare and a trip to the grocery store is a  matter of life and death.

I imagine at your age this is what your day-to-day must feel like, though you never have to actively set aside the time. Your pass is unlimited and integration seamless. There is no distinction between what is real and what is imagined, no boundary or border post you need ever flash a passport at.

The other night I went to visit Lorkin Greenstone, a whimsical little man with almond shaped eyes, quite similar to you in age and loveliness. Lorkin joined his parents and I at the dinner table and regaled us with tales of Buttercup cottage:  a fantastical plot of fictive real estate if I might say so myself. He proceeded to describe every detail: the hills, forests, rivers and bat-infested caves. When it came to the wolves, he would crouch his voice in a whisper, careful not to let the beasts (salivating around the next corner it would seem) overhear him.

I miss your stories Aurora, often wonder what topsy-turvy universe you have imagined for yourself over there. I am always dreaming up ways to reach you and figured if I could just crack an invite to Lorkin’s Buttercup cottage I might be able to swim across the river and find you living in the imaginary realm next door. I’d know it was you of course by the gargantuan butterflies and pink unicorned ponies strutting around the paddocks. Read the rest of this entry »

All this talk of beauty

Brecht’s stuffed donkey

Actors in falsetto

flailing about in three interminable acts of crisis.

Artistic arsonists

Setting mountains on fire

So they may weep

and in turn inspire

Modalities, meta-text, sub-text, intertext–tual, Sexual, Meta-sexual

Meta-sexual-inter-textual-ality

(There’s one for the PHD)

Collaboration… interrogation… provocation

Self….. sacrifice….mutilation…congratulation

Hypothetic… thermic…academics

And if not scraping the century old mould from the kitchen sink

Then off plundering the mythic imaginary.

That endlessly recyclable realm of post-modernist-modernisms.

So removed and obscure that you dare risk meeting any part of yourself  inside of it.

Hoary tales made heady with whimsy

Unfamiliar with cliché

Here?

Too depressing…recent…..relentless.

There…..

Glen miller records on a scratchy gramophone.

Surreal fairy-lit French circuses, butcheries and freak shows.

A mass of rock cuts off the rest of the continent

As onwards the Southern tip wafts

in an un-complex cosmos.

“Abnormal Loads is a profound and complex piece of theatre.”

Margaret Von Klemperer, The Witness

“Ground breaking”

 Gayle Edmunds, City Press.

“Another Standard Bank Young Artist, Neil Coppen’s play Abnormal Loads not only highlights the non-intrinsic value of the arts in articulating the history of our country through the divergent viewpoints of those who experienced it, but is a showcase of the commercial potential of the arts. It is clear that this 30-year-old playwright will draw in the audiences both locally and abroad for many years to come.”

Maya Fisher French, Mail & Guardian Online

“Abnormal Loads is a structural triumph in a medium that is often infested by creative repetition. Coppen’s play tackles social prejudice and race relations without being bogged down by intellectual utopia. The confident and intelligent use of space and lighting is almost like seeing a film without compromising the intimacy of the stage. Abnormal loads does equally well as source material for a master class on creative complexity or a conversation starter on a blind date.”

Sihle Mthembu, Mind-Map SA

“One of the most astonishing productions at this year’s Grahamstown Festival. An insightful and nuanced drama set in a small battlefield town steeped in anecdotal history, memories and oral tradition, nestled in the shadow of a mountain.”

Illa Thompson, The Mercury

“Breathtaking.”

The Crystal Calligrapher

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A week before the start of the National Arts Festival, an Anglo-Zulu skirmish unfolds on a hill made of pencil cedar. There is bloodshed and death, which appears to ooze down the richly textured slopes, and there the violence recedes — replaced by maids on all fours, their fastidious scrubbing somehow unable to erase the past’s stains from lingering in the air.

The rehearsal space of the Playhouse complex in Durban’s Mayville suburb is a flurry of activity as the rest of the 12-member cast rush through costume changes on the sidelines or scramble to their next mark in writer-director Neil Coppen’s Abnormal Loads.

At the back of the room, his chair leaning against a wall lined with story­boards, Coppen, the 2011 Standard Bank Young Artist for Drama, is still. At times he mouths the actors’ lines — wincing when they stray from the script.

Occasionally, he scribbles notes on to a piece of paper. The young dramatist, who recently turned 30, is meticulous about detail — whether in research or in rehearsals. Read the rest of this entry »

Mary Corrigall chats to Neil Coppen about his new play, a black comedy that deals with history

IF ANY set of events best encapsulates the manner in which South African history is contested, it would have to be the debacle around Andries Botha’s notorious R3 million sculpture of Shaka. Not long after Botha’s likeness of the Zulu warrior king took its position outside Durban’s new airport, it was removed. It was said that King Goodwill Zwelithini and his royal household felt the statue was a poor representation of Shaka. They believed it cast the celebrated Zulu figure as a herd-boy rather than a powerful warrior. In a seemingly absurd gesture, a task team of historians and researchers were formed to investigate its appropriateness, as if it was something that could be quantified and verified.

Playwright Neil Coppen observed the shenanigans with amusement and interest. For almost six years he had been working on a novel centred on the politics and impact of history on the present. The narrative was still fragmented, its essence still embedded within numerous newspaper clippings he had been collecting. The stories were as absurd as they were revelatory of the status quo, such as one where a statue celebrating Read the rest of this entry »

Making a Mountain

By Illa Thompson

Published in Independent on Saturday Art column

Charming, effervescent French-born innovator, designer, artist and maker of beautiful things, Xavier Clarisse, is literally making a mountain in his front garden…..

He is creating an essential element of the set for Neil Coppen’s multi-disciplinary dark comedic production which looks at the weight of history, Abnormal Loads, loosely inspired by Coppen’s three month residency in Dundee last year, which will premiere at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival. Clarrise is creating a Drakensberg mountain range which is beautifully crafted out of pencil cedar – a cubic meter of massive planks was purchased from the Drakensburg  not far from where the story is set.  The wood is fragrant, textured and has a colour palette from deep purple and majestic burgundy to a range of earth colours.   

Clarrise’s brief was for the mountain to be sturdy – as actors perform on it – and it needs to travel to Grahamstown, so it has to fold flat. Clarrise thought that initial variations looked more like “a roof made from slices of bacon,” until he and Coppen settled on the final design which is being brought to life in the garden of Clarrise’s beautiful Glenwood home. The final design came from studying the typography of the area and looking at copious drawings, photographs and paintings of Berg ranges. 

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Think Theatre & the Catalina Unltd with support from the Playhouse Company and in association with the National Arts Festival presents Neil Coppen’s Abnormal Loads.

Pre-production is well underway for KZN playwright Neil Coppen’s (Creator of Tin Bucket Drum and Tree Boy) newest play titled Abnormal loads, which will headline the main programme at this year’s Grahamstown festival before embarking on a nationwide tour.

Abnormal Loads has been commissioned as part of Coppen’s 2011 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Theatre.

 Set in a fictional Northern KwaZulu-Natal battle-field town known as Bashford, Coppen’s latest play has been described as a whimsical (at times bloody) praise-poem to the province of KZN and its myriad of characters and cultures.

After months of auditioning in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, Coppen is thrilled to have secured acclaimed film and TV star Mothusi Magano (Totsi, Hotel Rwanda and  hit SABC 3 TV series The Lab) and Isidingo’s Jenna Dunster (currently playing the role of Sofia Le Roux on the show) who will play the productions romantic leads.

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We are about to embark on a three- month long residency to the town of Dundee as part of the project titled Two Thousand and Ten reasons to Live in a Small Town facilitated by VANSA .

There has been an exciting amount of interest shown in our project with folks wanting to know just what exactly we are hoping to achieve there.

So here’s the low down.

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