Ladies and Gentlemen

As my first outing as Chairperson, I want to pay tribute to my predecessor, Sibongile Kumalo. She was a beacon of light and authority amongst some of our most fragile years in the building of a National Arts Festival alongside the building of a new nation, and I would like to give her thanks.

We make art for many reasons. We view art for another range of reasons. We promote art for yet another whole host of reasons. At the National Arts festival we are meant to deliberate on all of these myriads of reasons why a work of art exists, why it may be shown or not. We also know that the kinds of reasons that are contemplated determine some crucial trends, decisions, and careers paths, praise and criticism alike From Fringe to Main, from Arena to Think Fest, from advert to sponsor, from sore bums to bums on seats, from programming to venues, we deliberate on all kinds of imperatives about art: Its excellence, its innovation, its transformation, its impact, its distribution, its demographic representation, its commerce, its value, its saleability its internationalism and so on and so forth.

But the reason why the Standard Bank Young Artist Award is so special is that it epitomizes the dream in what we do.  It sits at the core of the value of art; it represents the imagination at its most pure. It is Young in the best sense of the word. Not innocent, or flippant, or slight, or just effervescent. The Young Artist Award is about the young but not the unwise. It is young and not careless, it is young and not untrained, and it is young but not unknowing. It is young and brave, courageous, fresh, electric, idealistic, dynamic, pure, unwavering, stubborn, opinionated, hopeful and free: Free from constraint, from compromise, from fitting a mould, from brash commercialism, from trying to live up to industry expectations. Read the rest of this entry »

(Pics by Sean Laurenz)

1.) Where did your love for theatre originate, and when did you know that this was what you wanted to do professionally?

It’s a little bit of a cliché, but I really can’t remember wanting to do anything else with my life. I suppose the earliest memory I have is when my mother took me to see Singing in the Rain at the Natal Playhouse when I was six years old. The opera theatre with the stars in its ceiling, the hum of the orchestra tuning up before whole worlds appeared and evolved before my eyes.Particularly memorable for me was the scene where it poured with rain on the stage. I roped several relatives into taking me to see it again and again. I couldn’t understand how they timed the show with this deluge each performance. It was as if they had a hotline to some celestial being who made it rain on cue. I had seen magic before but this took things to a whole new level.So you could say this was the beginning of a very long and involved love affair, with my mother taking me to the theatre regularly. From an early age I was exposed to a wide range of styles including children’s theatre, opera, pantomime, contemporary and classical dance, Shakespeare, Fugard, Slabolesky Ngema musicals etc.At the time we were also family friends with the Ellenbogen Family (when they were living in KZN) and Nick and Liz invited me to sell programs at one of their Theatre for Africa seasons at the Grahamstown festival when I was around nine years old. This was another turning point for me in that I witnessed some of South Africa’s finest theatre makers at work.Out of watching theatre came the need to create and tell my own stories. I would sit for hours writing plays and then building miniature sets using my father’s Jenga blocks and brothers screen printing screens as gauzes.At the same time my passion for literature and cinema was growing and all these mediums began to fuel my future aspirations.

During my schooling career I was fortunate to have teachers who recognized my love for creating new work and who allowed me to stage my own material. By the time I matriculated there was no question of which direction I wanted my life to take.I worked as an actor (even dabbling in a spot of contemporary dance) for several years after leaving school, and decided to hone my interest in story-telling by obtaining a Degree in creative writing through UNISA. I threw myself into many strange and varied experiences during this time: teaching at a theatre summer camp in New York, as a dialect coach and stand- in on film sets, a producer of a large scale musical project, a researcher on a documentary film, a free -lance journalist and travel writer. All these experiences have, in rather unconventional ways, shaped and inspired the work I do as a playwright and theatre-maker.

2.)What does the Standard Bank Young Artist Award mean to you at this stage of your career?

I suppose for me this award offers a significant moment to stop and take a deep breath. It’s a very welcome point for reflection, to look back over my body of work while at the same time preparing myself for a future of new challenges and directions. I’m so grateful that I get to continue doing what I love, crafting stories, worlds and characters while working with inspiring people who care deeply about the same things that I do.On saying this, there are so many of my fellow artists that I feel are deserving of this award and it certainly cranks up the pressure in the sense one doesn’t want to disappoint.

I was glancing over the list of previous winners the other day and my elation suddenly turned to terror. These are all hugely influential people in my life and I keep waiting for someone to phone me up and tell me there has been a terrible mistake.

3.) What inspires you as a person and as an artist?

I am inspired by people, strange pockets of history and places. I draw much inspiration from fellow artists and friends who continually strive for excellence and innovation in their chosen fields. I am inspired by this country and others. I love to travel, to witness how stories are communicated and told from different perspectives and cultures.Most of all I am inspired by visionaries who throughout their careers have forged legacies that never lose immediacy or relevance. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Aurora

There is one of your play block’s sitting on my writing desk.I found it under the couch in the T.V room the day after you left.

It was lying there with a lonely sheep piece from your farmyard puzzle. Both sheep and block, separated from their respective toy flocks, forgotten amongst tumble weed clumps of dog hair and half chewed hooves. Poor things.

I rescued them both, found them a home on a shelf filled with similar precious oddities: a Saint Christopher that my grandmother kissed before dying, two clay hearts, a collection of wind- up tin toys and a picture of Jill, your great grandmother, grinning with a ciggie and glass of white wine.

It’s been a while since we saw each other. Did I tell you that I started to go a little mad after you left? That I convinced myself that the wooden play- block (the one from under the couch) was a key of some sort. Its letters, numbers and illustrations all signs, parts of a complex riddle.

I thought that if I could solve the riddle, crack the code, a portal might open up and bring us closer. I have had no luck yet, have tried every possible combination, stared long and hard at the sides: the letter O, a picture of an orange, the number 2, the letter B then a picture of a bee and the letter K. What does it mean Aurora? I’m sure the answer is simpler than I make it.

Did I tell you that your Gogo and pop- pop also went a little loopy after you left. Gogo scoured the house and filled your mosaic christening vase with mementos of your stay with us: dominoes, squashed flowers, half- bitten berries, threads of hair, lavender stems, dinosaur shaped pasta shells (wedged and fossilising between lounge pillows) and cryptic doodles left on office paper scraps.

It was, I believe, an attempt to preserve the little you we had come to know. She wanted you, one day (when the vase was broken and its contents spilt) to be reminded of a brief yet formative time when language eluded you and curiosity was your only vice..

Read the rest of this entry »

Pictures by Paul Fetters

Travelling into Durban’s CBD from the Berea, one is met by two iconic and historic city landmarks. In the foreground the spires of the red brick Roman Catholic Emmanuel Cathedral while just behind, the two gilt-domed minarets of the Juma Musjid Mosque.

In what can be described as a profound demonstration of interfaith solidarity, respected leaders across the faith spectrum, including leaders of the Juma Musjid Mosque gathered earlier this year to pledge their support for the Denis Hurley Centre project: a community outreach initiative spear headed by the Emmanuel Cathedral under the guidance of Fr Stephen Tully and project coordinat

The new centre will be an innovative outreach facility to better serve the growing number of poor and homeless people in the area.

The proposed centre is to be named after the late Archbishop Emeritus Denis Hurley who served at the Emmanuel Cathedral for 60 years of his life and is remembered for his many and significant altruistic contributions to the city of Durban. Read the rest of this entry »

The scrape of their spades recalls your shoes on the driveway, heavy, home from work. Around five, winter dusk, sky murky purple. Often I’d pass you on your final stretch, turning up Tividale: peace in a moment, the now. Steps steady, slow. Your legs were tricky since childhood.

You should have taken the ride your boss offered you after work. He told me on the morning of your funeral, said he was giving you a lift but was delayed by some last minute paper work. You had decided not to wait, thought it better to take the bus. Said your mother was waiting at the stop to walk you home.

We shuffle down the slope of the Kwanangezi cemetery, clusters of gravediggers taking twenty beneath the shades of the only acacia. Spliffs and spades exchanging hands till one takes mine. A man with peep holes for eyes, two fingers missing.

“Don’t cry, don’t cry” he says mocking the Ray Banded white boy, a visitor accustomed to the clinical rites of a Doves cremation parlour: Time to Say Goodbye misplayed on the organ, inanimate doominie at the podium. In and out. Far from this hellish descent, these injured dirges, mists of marijuana and dust making mud of the brain.

At the foot of the grave (beneath purple Gazebo) sat your mother. No matter how hard your brothers shovelled they could not conceal you. The heap beside the hole refused to lessen and your Dudu ,resolute as a stone and wrung of all grief, never once looked away. Not when they tossed in your pillow, blankets and clothes, a wilting plastic bouquet.

I hid your denim skirt the day before she returned to work. Tucked it in the corner of a laundry cupboard. Memories less painful than ones material remains. Pocket’s an inventory of the living: bank slips, buttons, a pencil, bus fare shrapnel, balls of unravelled thread.

An hour, minute, milli second, a minor interruption and all this might have been avoided. Retrospect is torture still we play the scenario over and over. Your legs were unreliable, tricky since childhood.

So you tumbled as the bus left the stop, not into her waiting arms, but past. Under wheels, torn on tar, pressed like the flowers we laid this afternoon to mark the merciless place.

The following is an extract taken from an essay I wrote in 2008 exploring South African politics and the Performative turn.

I print an extract of this paper as I think it sheds some interesting light on the notorious Mr Julius Malema and his more recent “Kill the Boer” comments.

This was an Academic essay written during the succession battle between Zuma (who at time was awaiting his corruption trial) and Mbeki in 2008, during which (a comparatively ‘milder’) Mr Malema was just beginning to make himself known.

I have decided not to re- edit the extract even though my thoughts and feelings have shifted significantly over the last two years. Still I think it illustrates just how little changes.

Read the rest of this entry »

The creative process can be hell on earth. I won’t lie to you, trying to tell a great story is the hardest thing I know. It’s agonising, reduces me every time to a dribbling, chain-smoking wreck. It takes huge amounts of focus and dedication. Years of research, sitting in a room, alone, wrestling with words and images and trying to make sense of things.

Of course your hard work will pay off. I love the part where the script gets taken into the rehearsal room and ideas that have been living in your head emerge in the flesh. In this part of the process the script and idea is re-worked with suggestions from actors and director. The creative process, contrary to popular belief, is not a place for rampant egos and creative dictatorships—let’s leave that to the politicians please.

It must be the opposite– an open, collaborative, sharing space. A space where ideas are encouraged to meet and never compete .If it is your project then you have to honour the people that work on it, inspire everyone from the person who works at the box office, to the stage sweeper to the actors to the technicians to invest in your vision.

Read the rest of this entry »

A renowned hip-hop poet and Graffiti artist friend of mine and I recently engaged into a drunken dinner-party debate/row over the ubiquitous tagging of public property going down in Durban.Tagging to my “mother-Grundy” mind, is a creatively hollow pastime appropriated and practised by bored “Banksy-befok” adolescents who like to think of themselves as “urban anarchists”.

The subject of our row was a local Durban tagger who had been recently trialed in court for 850 counts of tagging and now found himself slapped with a hefty prison sentence.

While I would not wish a prison sentence upon anyone, I would imagine that after 850 counts of tagging, one might decide to shift their lacklustre modes of rebellion in favour of a more effective means of urban commentary.

Time it would seem to grow up and move on.

“It’s not considered vandalism” my friend had argued, “if it doesn’t break or defeat the purpose of the object. Spraying something on a wall doesn’t destroy its function, the wall still stands. How can you tell me this is a punishable crime” he ranted, “when murderers and rapists in this country get off from their charges scott free?”

While (sub)urban hip-hoppers may consider it an “innocuous” and even “subversive” act, one must pity the grouchy local residents digging weekly into pensions for the buckets of paint to erase the offending marks from their walls.

Offering a refreshing and very welcome take on the contentious art form, is a group of ex Durban Vega Brand and Communications School students, who were inspired by the work of British street artist Paul Curtis (AKA “Moose”) who began pioneering his form ‘Green’ or ‘reverse Graffiti’ three years ago.

Curtis (legend has it) first hit upon the idea while working as a kitchen porter in a restaurant scrubbing mountains of pots and pans. One dreary evening while trying to erase a grease stain on the sink wall before him, he discovered he had cleaned a large white patch onto the grimy surface.

It didn’t take long before the aspirant street artist began conquering the cityscapes of London, applying his vigorous selective scrubbing to more prominent walls and bridges. (see 2 images below)

Read the rest of this entry »

Tree Boy tells a deceptively simple story: set in 1960’s South Africa, an eleven year old boy’s mother dies, his father is unable to cope with the loss and turns to alcohol, they move from a farming area to an industrial town and hope is born again through the example of the life cycle of trees. Voila! But the script is something of a banyan tree, spreading its branches into related territory and sending its many roots into the earth. Read the rest of this entry »

Stupidity plummeted to new lows in Durban this week (with Sunday newspaper headlines that even satirists like Haibo might have been hard pressed to come up with) with the report that acclaimed artist and sculptor Andries Botha’s R1.5 million life-size elephant sculptures, made of recycled wood, metal and rubber, were ordered to be removed from a Durban free-way island, after passing ANC megalomaniacs found them reminiscent of the –shock horror— same unwieldy mammals gracing the IFP logo.

Let’s get one thing straight. With three sculptures, costing as much as this and weighing over six tons each, this was no trivial commission. This was no beaded chandelier or beach-front curio City- managers commissioned to dangle in their reception areas.

Predictably, Durban City-Manager Mike Sutcliff (currently enjoying the more wintry climes of Vancouver, Canada, where he is attending the opening of the Winter Olympics) issued his usual diss to Durbanites for “over dramatising” the situation and claiming that Botha’s Elephants were not passed through the correct procedures and committees before going ahead.

At the cost of R1.5 million one would imagine (but hardly hope) that the that city leaders and planners had pontificated long and hard enough before blowing tax payer’s money on an art work that is now in danger of being reduced to a pile of rubble because it has irked certain “elephant-sized” insecurities within the ANC.

At the same time, can we blame those who commissioned the sculptures? Should we pity eThekwini Municipality head: international and government relations Mr Eric Applegreen?

Could Mr Applegreen have ever in his wildest, woolliest dreams imagine that such preposterous claims would be laid against the sculptures and, more bizarrely, that such claims would seriously ever come to threaten the fate of Botha’s art-works.

The Elephant it seems is no longer allowed to be considered just an Elephant. No longer can we see it as a quintessential African symbol of power, freedom and grace. Rather the ANC would like us to believe that the Elephant© was created exclusively by and for the Inkatha Freedom Party, conceived, not by some higher power, but rather by a loopy illustrator armed with copious amounts of Ganja and a pencil.  Read the rest of this entry »