Jaqueline Dommisse snuck me in to the first performance of her show Sadako, since I could not get a media ticket and it was sold out! Sadako was written by Peter Hayes, directed by Jaqueline with a cast of amazing puppeteer/actors and designed by Ilke Louw.

I saw the original Sadako many moons ago at The Baxter Studio, and I was surprized at how much of it I remembered. It is the heart wrenching tale of Sadako, who eight or so years after the atom bombing of Hiroshima, gets ‘bomb sickness’, leukemia. Eina.

This production is newer, bigger, better and sadder. All the puppeteers are amazing; but special mention must be made of Roshina Ratnam (Sadako) and Mark Hoeben (who plays her dad and the doctor). They are transportingly wonderful, believable and Mark in particular is effortlessly sincere.

So, here’s what happened to me during Sadako. I could not manage the story of the sick little girl at all. I segued into imagining Natalie, in Boston, who is still undergoing treatment for her cancer, and I was a wreck, a total, wet, sniveling mess. I could hardly breathe. Which makes it hard to separate. But it is amazing when a piece of puppet theatre can take you there.

I do have some thoughts on the production though. It is very, very beautiful and special, but it is long, and because of the slightly old fashioned style, it is slow. This makes it hard for children (there were two wrigglies next to me and they were going nuts). The story has its own inevitable relentlessness and I think there need to be one or two fewer of the intensely poignant moments; there are one too many to be in tears about!

Sad Sadako is precious, beautiful, and an emotional weep fest. Be prepared. — Megan Furniss

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While it’s really difficult remembering everything I thought about the last three things I saw at the festival, I think I must try and write bout them; after all, that’s why I went in the first place. From the comfort of my own bed, in my own home though, things do look a little different.

The first of the last three shows I saw was Death of a Colonialist. This was a Market Theatre production directed by Craig Friemond and script by Greg Latter. I had very high expectations for this show; my gorgeous sister-in-law had highly recommended it after seeing it in Jozi. In fact, I even stayed at the fest an extra day to include the possibility of seeing it.

This is a ‘straight’ play in two acts, with an interval in between. It’s about a white school teacher in Grahamstown, his wife who has cancer, and their reunion with their two grown children who come back to visit from Canada and Australia. It stars Jamie Bartlett, and Shirley Johnston, Carl Beukes and Ashleigh Harvey play his satellites.

There is no doubt that the issues facing white South Africans are thoroughly (and sometimes poignantly) churned through the wheel of this play. Crime, education, fitting in, dealing with the guilt of the past, migration, belonging, being by-passed. A passionate history of the Eastern Cape, with a (for an old white guy) passionate and obsessive leaning to Xhosa sympathies, is the crux of the star character’s being misunderstood, by his family and the school.

My reaction to the play is one of ambivalence. While there were many moments of genuinely moving stuff and powerful ‘truth’ moments too, I found the watching the play challenging and problematic. Here’s why. I think I like the bulk of the script, but immediately saw the challenges that it presented in staging. I know that Jamie Bartlett is a powerhouse performer, but here he felt too big for the role, and certainly for everyone else on stage. (Can I confess to it feeling like the Jamie Bartlett Show?) Yes, his performance was intense and magnetic, but it was also in another play. His most successful moments were when he was on his own, in front of us, his class, where he could be cock o’ the roost. His character had absolutely everything; a ball grabbing habit when he was excited, a funny walk, a cough, sniffing, weird little neck jerks, a voice thing, a cutesy leg thing when he kissed his wife, weird jerky hand things, and a powerfully emotional moving belly. My sense is was that it was just too much.

The super-naturalism of the others was eclipsed and annexed by the Jamie Bartlett show. It felt a bit unfair really, like we needed to care about them less, and this can’t be true, especially since the mom had cancer. I enjoy watching Shirley Johnson. She is a subtle, quietly natural performer, who didn’t stand a chance here. Just saying. So, I’m not sure if the issue is a casting one (in truth, having seen Jamie in the role I can’t really imagine anyone else doing it) since I am unsure about what serves the play. Usually I love Craig’s choices; here I was confused. The two others felt like moaning stage furniture.

I wasn’t convinced. — Megan Furniss

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Only 11 days, but feels like that Thursday June 30 is already a short lifetime away.

I was told about ‘the festival minute’ a few days ago, apparently founder of the most prestigious fringe venue at the Edinburgh fest, Christopher Richardson, licked his pencil and did some calculations to announce that during festival time, what you get done in one minute would normally take you seven. While my attempts to verify this on the interwebs are not yielding anything straight up, it sounds about right. Ten days ago does feel like it could’ve been 70.

So yes, if we’ve packed 70 days of experience into 10, it’s no wonder we’re all feeling a bit jagged.

Tony’s still holding his form though, keeping the necessary announcements short and sweet, and even doing a piece of hilarious physical theatre with Ismail as the pair of them posed for a virtual photograph to acknowledge writer and director Caroline Smarts’ 25 years of contributing to the fest. She wasn’t present but there was some need to have a photograph of her and Tony and Ismail together, hence the pose with the absent Caroline, who is to be photo-shopped in later. It was a weirdly surreal thing to watch.

Media manager Gilly Hemphill also got a well-deserved special thank you for the amazing job she and her team have been doing for the past ten years.

Then, I found what Adrienne Sichel had to say rather interesting.

After 25 years of reviewing the fest and as chair of the panel of Ovation Award judges, she reckons there’s been a “bit of a dip in creativity” regarding the quality of productions this year.

She says the “seduction” of working on soap operas and commercials has taken its toll and theatre makers are skimping on the “process”.

“The quality of writing and directing is not as high as it should be.”

Mmmmh.

As a result there weren’t many gold Ovation Awards handed out, it was mostly silvers (see list below) and Anneke Jansen from the Amsterdam Fringe announced that she had chosen The Anatomy of Weather and Miskien for her shopping bag.

Here follows the list:

Theatre: Silver – Sie Weiss Alles

Physical theatre: Silver – Mafeking Road

Family theatre: Silver – The Ogreling

Contemporary Dance: Gold – The Anatomy of Weather

Comedy: Silver – Rob van Vuuren Live!; Stuart Lightbody

Music: Gold – Chris Chameleon. Silver – Laurie Levine and Lize Wild

Encore: Richard Antrobus; Shoelace Rockers Soul Band; Gavin Krastin

– Steve Kretzmann

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I found my magic moment last night in a bar behind an old stone wall at the top end of High Street. Apparently it used to be Maxwell’s but is now called the Grotto.

There under an open-sided festival tent, were a foursome of Grahamstown locals, joined by the incredible Greg Georgiades and Ashish Joshi, belting out the most rocking blues I can recall every having being flung around by.

The last time I experienced anything close to the absolute driving brilliance of this bunch of guys was when Dan Patlansky and the New Orleans All Stars played at the Cape Town Jazz Festival four years or so ago.

There was just no way to stand and listen to this music without moving. It was quite astounding that none of the four from Grahamstown are full time musicians, yet they played a gig that would have rocked any house in the world, including New Orleans.

Artist Anton Brink on bass and writer Stavro Copteros on drums drove that rhythm section with a dark hand, pushing a bass that got our hips jerking and our knees up while journalism lecturer Strelitz’s licks stretched our chests. Music teacher Rick van Heerden. Oh my god that man is a genius on the horns. He plays blues like jazz, doing things to our bodies and minds that should simply not be described.

The addition of Georgiades and Joshi gave an out of town spark that lit a bonfire of brilliance in which we basked. There was not one out of the about 60 people witnessing this who could remain sitting. Jackets, scarves and beanies came off. Then jerseys, then sweatshirts. We were dancing so hard we could have stripped naked and still been sweating despite the frigid air.

They didn’t just play a set or two either, they were loving it as much as we were and they played on and on until we were almost exhausted, hitting that sweet spot of desperation where you feel like you can’t handle any more of this bliss but you don’t want it to stop.

The most magical thing about it was that the gig was not on the programme, not something you could buy tickets for. It was serendipity at its best. It was magic.

If you ever hear that Rick van Heerden and Larry Strelitz are playing somewhere, it is highly likely Brink and Copteros will be in the mix. Don’t miss it. — Steve Kretzmann

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Sjoe!

It is possible that had I seen Sadako during any other time of the year, after a day at the office dealing with hard news, for instance, I might , just might, have said the play was a sentimental tear-jerker with puppets.

That wasn’t the case tonight. I went to see their premier at the Rhodes Box and, it got me. It got me good. I shuffled out there skaamly with wet cheeks. I wasn’t the only one, it seemed at least half the full house – who gave them a standing ovation – were also awash with emotion.

Cape Town based Hearts and Eyes Theatre Collective use the most incredibly expressive puppets designed by Janni Younge to tell the story of Sadako Sasaki, who was two years old when the atom bomb fell just 1.7km from her home in Hiroshima. Although the family escaped without injury, she contracted leaukemia ten years later as a result of the radiation.

The play is based on ‘Sadako and the 1000 Paper Cranes’, a children’s book by Eleanor Coerr which writer Peter Hayes and director Jaqueline Dommisse share a love of.

Parts of the play are drawn out, and there are some saccharine lines and notions but these were not so jarring as to pull me out of being totally engaged with the story.

Hiroshima is such a distant event, so far from us in time and geography, and surrounded by so many numbers and statistics that the reality of it, the truth of it, fails to sink in.

By providing us with one individual story, so finely and sensitively told, we are brought face to face with the horror of what we are capable of. Yet through and after it all, Sadako highlights the hope that we carry with us, a capacity the lack of which would surely spell the end of the world.

Sadako is a devastating, beautiful play.

Ok, I think I should go see some comedy now. Rob van Vuuren anyone? — Steve Kretzmann

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I loved this show, from the opening moment when Rob Murray puts his freak on with his Tom Waits growl to the lights going down on Liezl de Kock’s fluttering heart.

The character of Oskar the despairing alcoholic freak-show ringleader is made for Murray, and de Kock perfectly plays the naïve orphan with her vulnerable heart beating outside her chest. It is so nice to see de Kock, who acts in FTH:K’s mask work, speaking.

The script is tight, sharp and funny, the set is original and quirky but unfussy, and the music and soundtrack is played live by two Shaun Acker and Brydon Bolton to one side of the stage. They art partly hidden but at the same time integrated into the set. It’s a wonderful touch and it completely won me over.

While the show is broke-down-carni playing-a-broken-piano-in-a-yard-behind-a-dilapidated-bar-strewn-with-empty-bottles over-the-top bawdy burlesque, the story it tells is delicate. As delicate as an exposed heart.

It was noir, it was lovely. –Steve Kretzmann

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A Grahamstown friend tells me over 80 people had an hilarious time watching great SA actors performing.

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Urrrrr. Late night. Best handle on the polycephalic monster (yoh, did I just say many-headed?), oh effit, I need more effort this morning.

So you lean a lot at the Albany Club bar and at a shertain Grahamshtown kisshen

Late into the night and I’m hearing about how pessionate the techies are about keeping our asses safe.

And there have been many little, but significant, changes to the infrastructure such as carpeting to the lego bleachers at Drill Hall — so Mr Poephol who clank-clanked out of Mouche in those silent, throaty moments at the end, now you can be quieter. Why do we let people do this? Why don’t we just all shout out to these clanker-wankers “Sit down and wait you selfish morons!” — so that we can carry on, our focus unbroken.

Actually, I’m impressed with the generous  support shown by audiences. I only learned this week — from my performer daughter and a few others more experienced– that the actors look into our eyes and read the mood. Well, this is their expertise, to rattle around in our emotional plumbing. Forget out that fourth wall stuff, they see right through that, and China-in-crime Kretz even talks about artists scaling the “fifth wall” — getting into our personal underwear, OK, space.

Audiences would be surprised to know that performers crave it when you make a noise (appropriately off course, unlike flatulance which you can keep to yourself though occasionally the gutteral sense of us does drift through venues and passageways.) If you are shy, you are withholding, OK, don’t go all exhibitionist and steal the show. But we know this stuff. Our audiences are showing maturity — and innovation. Last night the performers agreed that an audience will find you, in spite of being banished to a nunnery (a whorehouse, I also learned!), but behind the library, down that alley at 10pm  would qualify. If you are good, you will be discovered, they say.

Of course, this is a rose- and chipwood-scented festival. But around the kitchen table this way or that of midnight, things get said.

The director of Benchmarks is here. Rob Murray speaks with Kretz who criticised aspects of the show. Their heads lean in, touch, and did I say lean, as Rob says how much he appreciated the well-rounded piece. We all know now that first shows are always teeth-grinders for directors. Elsewhere in the (Western?) world shows are run 50 times or more they are ready for public. At festival, shows come fresh and bleeding, actors, techies, director-producers are filled with tension and the shows can go this way or that. Of course, it’s what we adore about work here. None of that homogenous, rigid, over-styalised  European perfection I’ve heard mention of; our work is rumbustious and hearts fly like bunting on Grahamstown poles — sometimes a bit tattered, but always out there and vibrant.

Rob speaks of how specific emotions are sculpted into the masks and are ignited by the angle. The complexity of mime-mask work startles me, and that the moment an actor feels slightly over-confident, they lose the impact, lose the audience, it falls.

At this latish hour in festival, Kretz and I talk about those great cowboy westerns, where Lee Marvin rides under desert stars, and then the set falls over, and what are we looking at? Must be the eighth day of fest?

Who wants to read these words of your hung-over blogger, but back we go to technical improvements — every venue has been revisited and light mountings and rails redone, rehung, straightened, strengthened, worked. This was a complaint from the past, and though no sign of major reinvestment (festival remains an annual tent city), many of the venues are working very well.

See,  you don’t have to wait for infrastructure from above. Innovative creatives make art with mud and stone. This is a core feature of our festival,  we are getting better. The techies say it, the performers say it. OK “Compucrap” as one actor called Computicket did some very dumb things — over- or under-booking shows, and that was hurtful, but overall, the festival fundis, the thespians on the inside, around the kisshen table say the standard of performance arts at this festival gets higher every year.

We are talking about people who thrive off picking the nits out of a piece.  We festivores, feed off the feast on the table. Artists are fiddling around looking at all the joints, nuts and bolts. The technical shyte.

So it’s good to hear that there has been improvement. And it’s also good to hear how concerned techies are about crowd safety — keeping aisles clear, making sure seating is just right, worrying about cabeling – stuff we can only imagine that goes on between shows.

I watched a techie at Glennie speed-climbing a giant ladder all by her lonesome and then dragging it on to the next lighting gel.

By now Rob’s head is nearing the table, Steve is on the couch “listening” to music, and I’m just stoked to be feasting from the inside.

It’s a sunny day out there! Er, no here come some clouds. But we’re told by TONY LANKESTER that the sun will out this weekend. Thanks bro.

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James Cairns and Taryn Bennet in a script written by James. It is no secret that I am head over heels with James Cairns as a performer. I won’t miss anything he does. (Dirt is one of three shows at the festival that I would be prepared to see again.) I also think that Taryn is gorgeous. So it was a no-brainer that I would enjoy their performances but, I must confess, I was dubious about the subject matter.

A German SS officer interrogating an actress (who he had known previously) just before the Russians arrive. I have sort of done with this period in history, and I don’t really enjoy seeing English in German accents. But, this is an incredible idea, turned into an amazing piece of writing, twisting every possible moment on its head. Then there are the beautiful, original performances and connection between these two that make the work totally absorbing. But that’s not all. There are such layers, such surprizes, such thrilling observations. The two of them end up rehearsing the ‘get thee to a nunnery’ scene from Hamlet in the most exquisite, revealing and actor loving way. Genius. It was transporting.

I revelled in watching a ‘straight’ play, with real characters, real characterisation, real dialogue. I loved the reliance on old fashioned production values and the playing out of a great script. Sie Wiess Alles is great work performed brilliantly. See it. — Megan Furniss

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Back in 2009, I was living – temporarily – in Germany. I craved theatre. Good theatre. A friend suggested taking me to see an adaptation of Jason and the Golden Fleece. The only catch? It was all in German. I went anyway. It was the most incredible performance I have ever seen.

Weaving a successful narrative is not just about what is said. By freeing oneself from the constraints of following every single word, one has a chance to read the actors’ bodies, the subtle signs of the staging far more attentively. There is an inherent value in learning to look again, look differently.

What is disability but a difference in body language? What is different body language but an opportunity for a new way of understanding an otherwise familiar narrative?

There is much discomfort when it comes to seeing ‘foreignness’ on stage. People do not know how to negotiate things in a different language, are easily put off. “That’s not my language, I’m not interested.” Or, perhaps, “I don’t want to see that kind of story.” It leaves them disappointed if it imperfectly resembles a (body) language they are used to. It leaves them deeply uncomfortable if it does not.

Remix – like any integrated performance company – face these challenges of reception in creating work that deliberately seeks to engage people with the relationship between difference and dance. In ‘Lovaffair’, they have succeeded in ways that are both subtly noticeable and startlingly apparent.

‘Lovaffair’ is a dance piece that is beautifully, fiercely and tenderly choreographed for able-bodied and so-called disabled dancers. It is not an approximation of able-bodied dance, or an attempt to hide difference. It is uncompromising in its vision. It will not let you look away.

Professor Veronica Marks, in a Think!Fest panel discussion spoke of tactics in integrated theatre to reveal subjectivity and story, when all the audience initially focuses on is the body of the disabled dancer. She suggested that utilising the tropes of desire, humour and an awareness (and returning) of the audience’s curious gaze all function to ensure that it is the person that is revealed by the performance, and not just the body.

Remix must have been listening, because ‘Lovaffair’ works with all three tactics. In a startling challenge, performer (and Director of Remix) Malcolm Black breaks the fourth wall to ask the audience “What did you expect? That’d we’d be able to dance like them? You mean you put down your wallet-money for this?”

The use of a harness that hoists dancers of all physical abilities, leaving them dangling, feet useless beneath them, speaks eloquently to the limits of the body. At one point, an able-bodied dancer is suspended, flailing limbs rendered useless, in a furious, mute struggle with self and limitation, body and control.

To return to my notion of integrated dance being a dialogue between different body languages, there is a beautiful moment where performers, sitting in a row, are each translating a piece of text. A line is recited in English, a second performer translates it into isiXhosa, a third into sign language. All languages convey the same basic meaning, just differently. Sometimes they can do the same thing. At other times, the possibilities are more limited – “I can’t translate that,” declares one of the performers after a particularly nuanced isiXhosa phrase. So it is, ‘Lovaffair’ suggests, with different bodies. Difference has limitations, but these do not mean they cannot function successfully, both in their own right and with others.

‘Lovaffair’ speaks eloquently of the possibilities in the space of dialogue between different body languages. It shows us, quite literally, a way to embrace the other, to see beyond the limits of our bodies, whether they are defined as disabled or not. Whether this narrative is foreign to you or not, I would urge you to go and experience it. It’s a Lovaffair to remember. — Carla Lever

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