Top 5 things at Fest this year
Before Festival started I was asked to write a piece highlighting the Top 5 unmissable things this year. It was going to be used in some publication or other, but never was. Rather than letting it slip off into nowhere, I’ll post it here. Festival is, however, over, so you can’t do these things any more….
Before I was someone whose Top 5 list of anything mattered, I would constantly write them in my head: My Top 5 songs this week, Top 5 meals of all time; Top 5 crushes….that sort of thing. Now that I’m CEO of the Festival and have been asked to write a list of my Top 5 things to look forward to this year, presumably because (finally) there might be someone out there who actually cares, my brain has frozen and I can’t decide where to start. So I’ll duck the question a bit, and meander my way to the answer.
Let me start with the things I don’t want to experience at the Festival this year. It would be really, really nice to not have to refund anyone any tickets because they didn’t enjoy a show, or felt misled by the description, or because they were in another show which ran late and do I know how far PJs is from Rhodes? Do I? Well, yes I do actually because I was a student in this town and, when my car wouldn’t start, I’d walk from my digs onto campus. I know exactly how far it is – and don’t really care that you couldn’t get your lardy butt there in time…but hey, smile, certainly sir, here’s your refund.
While I was at Rhodes I had a moment of humiliation that stands out: Albie Sachs came to speak at the University and I was somehow booked to operate the PA system during his lecture. Being an insensitive oaf I spent a bit of time during his talk chatting to my mate who had helped me set the system up. Until, that is, Albie stopped himself mid-sentence and told me to “shut up”. Direct quote. Now that he’s a Board member of the Festival, and that I’m a little more sophisticated, I will try and make amends by attending his talk on Think!Fest and actually listening. And while I’m there I’ll go and see Dr Christopher Smith, the Naked Scientist, who is on 702 each week and is a man who should wear a t-shirt saying “Forget Google – ask me”.
As a student I was prone to hang out at music venues during the Festival. It’s what I did. And if I were still a student today there’s no way I’d miss Guy Buttery, the Syd Kitchen Tribute Concert or Boo. My hangouts would be the Cuervo Music Room, EQ and the Urban Lounge, followed by the Long Table. Generally there would be other Rhodes students about – most notably, in a Festival context, Rob van Vuuren and James Cairns. Both of them are all over the Fringe programme this year, and both are worth seeing – even if they are merely sitting on a stage reading a telephone book aloud (I don’t think either of them have actually done that, but now that I’ve planted the seed, look out for it on the Fringe next year).
In more recent years I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the Long Table. True, mostly I’ve spent it dodging artists who wanted to explain that no-one has come to see their show because ‘they were allocated a technician who couldn’t tell a gel from jelly or a dimmer rack from a rack of lamb’. Or because ‘no-one can find the venue / the box office/ the ticket seller’; or, ‘because someone stole my posters so no-one knows about my show’. Some of the time they’d be right, of course, but…. Maybe, just maybe, it’s because their show is, as Corne & Twakkie would say, ‘kak’.
For some reason I generally associate Rob Murray with the Long Table. Not because his shows are rubbish (they aren’t) but because he’s always there. I have become a fan of his work despite the fact that he’s never bought me a drink. This year he’s acting in Kardiavale, and directing Benchmarks – both shows I’m pretty sure will be inspired and inspiring (Heineken, please, Rob).
I love Award ceremonies. Red carpets, paparazzi, little trays of canapés and fizzy drinks in tall glasses. We do none of that at the Festival, but a good indication of what’s hot are the two Standard Bank award programmes – the Young Artist Awards and the Ovation Awards on the Fringe. Both are flags of excellence and, if you’re in doubt about how to spend your time, you can pick a production out of the programme that has one of those indicators of quality and chances are you’ll be blown away. Look out, particularly, for Neil Coppen’s Abnormal Load and, if you didn’t see it last year, London Road on the Fringe.
I seem to have run out of space, and you’ve probably run out of patience, so let me end with a bullet point list of some other things you must see or do at the Festival in 2011:
• Daddy Day could be the best thing you see this year.
• Iris Brunette is technically the most polished production I’ve seen.
• Mark Banks – the funniest man in South Africa.
• Everything Sylvaine Strike touches turns to gold, and The Table will probably be no exception.
• Selaelo Selota packs more energy and charisma into his shows than just about any other artist I know.
• Spend an hour on the lawns of the Transnet Village Green, eating Hari Krishna food and staring up at the Tomorrow’s Joy bottle-top picture.
• Support our Innovation Hub participants – they’re cool people with great ideas. Rent a bike from Pinkie; let Buli charge your cell phone or Zimasa babysit your kids.
And what shouldn’t you do? Don’t be late for a show and, if you are, don’t come and tell me about it. Have an AMAZ!NG time.
Short URL: http://www.tonylankester.com/?p=656
Posted by tony
on Jul 21 2011. Filed under General Thoughts.
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