Grahamstown Arts Festival

It took two days to get to Makhanda. It felt a lot longer. We put fifteen theatre and music students into a very small bus and drove from eSwatini to the Eastern Cape, and I think it was a more arduous trip than any ocean passage. I’ve developed some passionate thoughts about the relative merits of different petrol stations. We stopped for the night in Ladybrand and everyone, (even the Norwegian!) agreed that it was excessively cold. The next day we made it to Grahamstown/Makhanda and immediately headed to the box office to pick out some tickets for the next few days.

We were in town for the Grahamstown Arts Festival – the largest arts festival on the continent which runs for eleven days in the college town of Grahamstown (recently renamed Makhanda at the recommendation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, although in Xhosa, the town is called iRhini.) Makhanda is home to Rhodes University and a large number of schools, institutes, and museums. The town is also currently undergoing a massive drought. Over the four days that we were there, I took one three minute shower, and kept my hair braided most of the time. JoJo tanks sat in the middle of the road and most public bathrooms had shut the taps off in favour of hand sanitizer.  

Despite the sobering reality of the drought, during the arts festival, Makhanda thrives. There were couples that had been coming to the festivals for decades, student groups like ours, and actors, musicians, dancers, and artists from all over the continent.

We were staying in student housing at the University, close to the middle of the city, in walking distance of any shows we might want to see. Ticket costs ranged from R50 (for fringe shows) to R150, so we were able to take in a lot of performances. I managed to see about twelve shows over our short time. Nearly every available venue in the town had been commandeered for performances. We saw a drag cabaret our first night in the hall of a small bowls club, and saw the Drakensberg Boys’ Choir in a huge theatre that could hold hundreds of people.

Despite it being a school trip, we were free to go wherever we wanted. We had to check into our residence at 11pm, but apart from that we could take in whatever shows and spend our time as we wished. Because the trip took place over our midterm, it served as a bit of a holiday for us as well. It was nice to not have to plan for accommodation and transport in a strange city the way I did for my first midterm, which I spent in Jozi. It was also nice to have good food – being a university town; Makhanda has a wonderful selection of cute cafes, pubs, and restaurants. I had an excellent kudu hotpot at the affordable and laidback Red Café, and I was told that Major Fraser’s had some great gin cocktails.

However, because it was a school trip, I did need to attend as many shows as I could in order to gather inspiration for my director’s notebook, (a project for IB theatre which accounts for 20% of my grade, and a project that I need a rough draft for in an a month and a half *screams*.) When picking shows, I tried to opt for a mix of experimental shows, fun looking productions, and shows that friends had gone to and recommended.

Some of my highlights included the one woman ‘Silkworm,’ a comedy performance with a massive amount of audience participation that carefully pulled the audience back and forth between humour and heartbreak, another one woman show called ‘Unfathomable,’ that had some very clever and versatile props that were used to create an enormous amount of visual motifs while the performer monologued about her father’s life and death, and an ambitious musical called ‘Umthombo,’ that followed a young girl to seven different African countries as she explored wedding customs across the continent.

Over all, it was a lovely experience, and I would definitely recommend it if you’re in the Eastern Cape during the festival.