A deep dive into the intensely pleasurable National Arts Festival

My abiding memory of the National Arts Festival (NAF) is the bone-cracking cold of the bitter Eastern Cape winter thawed by the sheer delight of watching something spectacular and fascinating on stage, before braving Makhanda’s chilly streets once more.

It is the NAF’s peculiar charm that the town’s bracing climate makes everything about the event that much more intense and pleasurable — and I don’t just mean the regular mandatory glühwein infusions.

It is this energy that Rucera Seethal, the NAF’s artistic director, believes is a crucial part of the experience of entering what she calls the “festival state”.

“What I think is still quite important is that when you travel a long way to the festival you force yourself to be immersed in a totally different space. I think doing that, for both audience members and artists, puts you in a place where you take risks and do things you wouldn’t normally do, and go to places you wouldn’t usually go to. Your normal pathways and everyday activities are disrupted, so you create new ones.

“And the NAF is, I think, still a destination festival. So journeying to the event, which necessarily involves removing yourself from your usual context, means you make decisions you wouldn’t normally make, such as decisions about which works to watch, which conversations to have, or which restaurants to go to. I think that’s very important. The festival offers you the opportunity to check out a bit, instead of just going non-stop. When you are at the festival, you can just go with the flow and tap into different vibes.”

So I think the festival energy is still there. And it does have a specifically festival feel, which is about sheltering from the cold, meeting new people, and having conversations you wouldn’t otherwise have with people you wouldn’t normally meet 

—  Rucera Seethal, National Arts Festival artistic director

I meet Rucera at her favourite Joburg coffee shop — Loof. It has just moved across the street in Norwood to a new bright space that feels fresh and recharged, but still pleasantly communal, which is a big reason Loof is so beloved by so many. The coffee is still exceptionally good, and Rucera introduces me to her favourite lunch option — an excellent flatbread.

This is the 50th anniversary of the NAF, and it feels portentous.

Rucera’s tenure as the event’s creative director coincided with Covid and, like everyone else in the performing arts, had to pivot quickly and work out how to keep the NAF alive, albeit digitally. She says she has never worked harder in her life. The event also incorporates several regional festivals, and she is also a curator for several international arts festivals in Basel and Taipei, so I completely understand why she might be feeling just a little run off her feet right now.

She describes the first NAF held in the real-life streets of Makhanda after the repeated Covid lockdowns in almost revelatory terms. 

“It was overwhelming. The day before the festival opened, the mask mandate was dropped, so after people being required to wear face coverings for two years, suddenly thousands of people were out there without masks on. It was surreal — everywhere I turned, someone was calling my name and hugging me, and it was as if I had landed on another planet. I think what was so palpable at that point was this sense of gathering and sharing and exchange.”

Rucera had an emphatically peripatetic childhood. Her parents studied on a number of occasions in the US, and she grew up between there and South Africa.

She would spend extended periods of time in a diverse community of graduate students from all over the world, and then suddenly be dropped back into the South African milieu.

“I think there are many things about that period that have defined who I am today, but one thing that really does carry on into my work life and adulthood is a particular relationship with South Africa — of simultaneously being part of the country and its culture and outside it. I was always on the outside of something, whether it was being the odd one out at a township Indian school or not having a sense of religion and therefore having to deal with questions about what kind of Indian I was.

“And then I found myself in a white Model C school, where I did not grasp some of the nuances of the racial politics being played out in Pietermaritzburg at that time, and I think that was also a defining experience for me.

“In terms of my work career, after a stint in fashion I worked with pan-African networks at the literary journal Chimurenga, and then I worked outside South Africa in several countries on the continent. Thereafter I moved into Southern Africa, and now I find myself at the NAF. I took the job because I wanted to take a deep dive into this country — you know, because it’s mine and I carry that identity — but in doing so I find that South Africa always sits outside me a little bit, which is interesting.”

It’s a world view that has informed her curatorial work and underscores the thinking for this noteworthy instalment of the NAF. This 50th anniversary of South Africa’s flagship cultural happening looks to the past, reinterprets it, and envisages a new future. The programme is abundant, fascinating and geared towards the diverse audiences drawn to the NAF from all over the country. 

I cannot possibly do the NAF justice in this column, but some of this year’s highlights include Third World Bunfight’s world premiere of The Stranger, Sibikwa Art Centre’s 1789, a theatrical celebration of Can Themba’s life, various art installations in public spaces, shows by music legends such as Sipho “Hotstix” Mabuse, captivating sound installations, exhibitions of Standard Bank Young Artists’ work, performances by dance great Sello Pesa and the Vuyani Dance Theatre, as well as an abundance of works and performances from the rest of the continent. 

Rucera says the festival is also a catalyst for employment and urban renewal in Makhanda.

“A lot of the festival’s funds are directed towards creating jobs related to maintaining the city. The aim is to employ people to fix potholes and street lights. The thing about being an artist in South Africa and Africa is that you don’t have many resources and there isn’t much available that’s ready to work with. So when you want to create your work, you also have to make the context for it. You have to put in place the infrastructure to enable you to make art.

“I found it interesting last year that a lot of artists were also renting out their houses and having these gatherings, such as post-show conversations and drinks, at their homes. It strikes me as a post-Covid shift. Previously, people would have been hanging out in clubs or bars, but now they are gathering differently. So I think the festival energy is still there. And it does have a specifically festival feel, which is about sheltering from the cold, meeting new people, and having conversations you wouldn’t otherwise have with people you wouldn’t normally meet — deep into the night. But it’s interesting how the festival vibe manifests and shifts over the years.”

The 50th incarnation of the NAF runs from June 20-30.