Publications
Partners
If this year’s National Arts Festival was anything to go by, audiences should anticipate an exciting theatre year in 2017, full of outspoken young practitioners ready and able to tear down the theatre of old.
It was an absolute delight to revisit the work of the festival’s featured artist of 2016, Lara Foot, whose body of work remains as relevant as when it first appeared in the 1980s.
Young poet Koleka Putuma and theatre organisation Drama For Life also stood out at the festival for their extraordinary performances.
Our musical of the year goes to Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, with a special mention to actor Jonathan Roxmouth, who blew audiences away with his skill on the stage.
This year’s overall theatre award, however, goes to the extraordinary, inspiring new play Ulwembu that was inspired by the lives of whoonga (nyaope) users in KwaZulu-Natal.
Director of the piece, Neil Coppen, is our director of the year for his unflinching attention to detail, his sense of humour and his sensitivity to a subject that is bringing entire communities to their knees. – Garreth van Niekerk
Ismail Mahomed’s pick
We asked stalwart theatre administrator and creator Ismail Mahomed (currently chief executive of The Market theatre) what his favourite productions were this year.
“My theatre highlights for this year include Roel Twijnstra’s Sleepwalking Land adapted from Mia Couto’s novel of the same title.
Twijnstra captured every nuance of Couto’s writing and was able to breathe life into it.
It drew the audience in as spectator and participant – just as Couto’s writing does so very brilliantly.
Lara Foot’s The Inconvenience of Wings is also on my list for its powerful writing and superb performances by Andrew Buckland, Jennifer Steyn and Mncedisi Shabangu.
The greatest investment made to develop new writing in South Africa is KKNK’s Teksmark programme. The project is visionary and strategic.”
