Mike van Graan still causing us to pause

The honour bestowed on Mike van Graan as 2013 Festival Playwright allows us to see a compendium of work by this important South African writer. Four of his plays are presented by Artscape this year and Van Graan, who has a long history as a struggle artist under apartheid and cultural activist since democracy, still causes South Africans to pause. In Brothers in Blood, he presents a very tight script which takes an up-close and personal look at the politics, economics and social intercourse of Cape Town a few years after democracy. It is a community whose lives interact in diverse ways as apartheid, cross-cultural prejudices, social consciousness, religion, gangsterism and drug abuse all impact on the lives of ordinary people. It calls to mind Hollywood director Paul Haggis' 2004 movie Crash, as it interweaves racialised experiences of people who, on the surface, have no connections to each other. The acting in Brothers is superb across the cast but the youthful competence of Aimee Valentine and Harrison Makubalo as Leila Abrahams and Fadiel Suleiman must be highlighted. First produced in 2009 at the height if xenophobic and gang violence, some of the material may appear dated but one senses these issues are still very much a reality for Capetonians. Rainbow scars is a looser script which examines white mother Ellen's adoption of black child Lindiwe. Lindiwe has to deal with the questioning which most adopted children experience at some point about their place in their new family, with the added complication of dealing with alienation from her former extended family across South Africa's racial and class divides. On the surface, Rainbow throws up all the challenges of defining identity in a post-apartheid era. But typically of Van Graan's work, there is much more happening at an underlying level within the characters' lives. Ellen is divorced from her fraudster husband who is shortly due to be released from prison. Lindiwe's cousin Sicelo comes back into her life to expose the individual and family conflict hiding below. The other Van Graan plays at this year's festival are Panic with Siv Ngesi and the world premier of Writer's Block, directed by Jenny Rebelo. - Ray Hartle

Grahamstown does a damn fine job

It used to be a perennial one but I haven't heard this suggestion for ages - the National Festival is outgrowing Grahamstown. Or at least, the Standard Bank Jazz Festival is outgrowing Grahamstown, as it was presented to me last night.

It came at a packed out session by trombonist and virtuoso player of sea-shells Steve Turre and a bunch of other brilliant musicians. 

"I think it's time to have a debate about whether Grahamstown can still accommodate the festival," said a mate, looking across the packed hall.

That suggestion has been raised in different ways at different times - sometimes for political reasons, at other times for purely commercial interests, maybe because we've had a particularly arduous trek from the big city to this cold former garrison town, and, as an artist, we really do feel that our creative talents and the audiences appreciation of them may find better expression in another venue.

Yes, of course it gets a bit tight, and you may have to walk across town , squash yourself into nooks and crannies to see shows, and sometimes you have to stand in long queues for tickets or food, and there's no indoor venue big enough for the arts and crafts markets.

But this city offers itself once a year to the country and bits of the world. And it does a damn fine job!

 Where else in South Africa can you experience a mid-morning set by some of the best jazz exponents from0 Europe, the Americas and Africa (on the hill at DSG), walk down into the town centre for stand up comic (Riaad Moosa, Siv Ngesi or Boet en Swaer) then go across the university campus for a recital in the chapel of Benjamin Britten's choral songs (the Chanticleer Singers with Young Artist Award Winner Runette Botha).

The total walking time is 25 minutes, leaving aside a stop at the Village Green or a plethora of venue coffee bars for a quick snack (good food at a fraction of what you will pay anywhere else in the country), let alone the world.

And that handful of performances is among more than 150 productions running from 9am to 11.30pm - on one day. Multiply by 11 days and you get an idea of the tapestry which is woven each year by the festival.

That tapestry would be incomplete in any other setting. So, whatever may motivate a desire to take the festival out of Grahamstown, my view is its meant to be here. - RAY HARTLE