\nWho even remembers Netflix, Showmax, Apple TV? Whatever. Geezuz! What\na ride. And we don\u2019t even have to drive home. Normally we\u2019d be\nhitting the highways back to our cities with our collapsing ponzi\nscheme of hangovers in tow. This year NAF took the pilgrimage to us,\ndropping into our room like mother Krismis in July. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And now, like those weirdos who hang around Makhanda for weeks after fest ends and couch surf student digs and stir kak in the shebeens and eventually run out of options before finally leaving town and letting everyone get on with their lives, NAF is still here. Still here to crack a bottle of wine, scarf a curry, maak a pipe eks\u00ea. The Main is hanging out with us until the middle of the month and its buddy, Fringe, is only packing up on 31 July. But unlike those dodgy hangers-on who went by names like \u2018Zooty\u2019 or \u2018Rasta\u2019, NAF is welcome to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThese artists, you gotta watch out for them, they\u2019ll unskarrel your\nbrain, make you think straight. See shit you didn\u2019t think you\u2019d\nseen, were thinking maybe if you didn\u2019t look would disappear. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ay yay ya! And we were worried virtual fest was gonna be videos of plays. No, no no no no. You wanna talk cross-disciplinary? You wanna talk kicking down some gates, or just vaulting over them. Scrambling fences if needs be. The field just bust wide open. Through a screen. All through a screen. In the words of Bailey’s Banquo and Macbeth: Weird shit. It\u2019s never going to be the same again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nIt almost didn\u2019t make it here, virtual fest. They\u2019d been\nhammering away in the digital workshop for three months since our\nPrez shut us behind our front doors, desperately, madly, wiring it\nall together. Then on 25 June it started and belched into life, with\na few cylinders not yet firing. It coughed and spluttered and got on\nthe road, a couple of pit stops along the way. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nSo the Ford Cortina bakkie award goes to the vNAF website. Held\ntogether with bloudraad. You have to open the hood and bang about\nwith a spanner every few k\u2019s and then it eventually roars along\nwith a loose exhaust pipe. Well done Nicci and team. Techies, in all\nmediums, rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThe catch-me-if-you can jack-in-the-box award goes to J.Bobs. Not\nseen pha vNAF until the last day of the programme, and then giving us\na hoezit! and turning theatre upside down and inside out. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThe Department of Sports, Arts and Culture gets the upside-down lamp\naward, also known as the BBN award. Be back now, or perhaps never,\nfor walking out the opening presser leaving their webcam pointing at\nthe ceiling. Thanks deputy director, we know you care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bean counting award, also known as the blinker award, goes to the media who all but ignored the biggest arts festival on the continent, even though they did not have to shell out to send a journo to Makhanda. Instead, those who were at least aware of what was happening used copy from yours truly but the suits couldn’t have been bothered to scrape the budget barrel to hand over to their editors to make a token payment for it. Did I hear the word exploitation from the back? It was up to NAF to find something in the books to compensate the arts writers. Which is also why NAF gets the golden appreciation award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThe left-the-building award goes to Cue, which ties in with the\nmissed opportunity award for Rhodes (UCKR) who don\u2019t, or can\u2019t,\nor don\u2019t have the resources, to develop what could be a world-class\narts writing programme on the back of the annual festival in their\nbackyard. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More positively, the back-to-the-future-tapping-the-source award goes to Nyege Nyege<\/a>. Also known as the ytes-can-dream award for giving us a soundtrack to write to and rooting us in our continent and revealing where Brett Bailey gets his inspiration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the end, not quite. You still have \u2018til Thursday next week to watch what\u2019s on the vNAF programme<\/a>, and the vFringe<\/a> is there until month end. We\u2019re still hanging on, and probably won\u2019t be able to stop ourselves writing a few more reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, the forward-thinking award, also known as the grab-an-opportunity-rather-than-bewailing-your-fate award goes to all the artists, especially those on the vFringe, who believed this could happen and put work on the programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nLove you, take care, thank you for reading. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Who even remembers Netflix, Showmax, Apple TV? Whatever. Geezuz! What a ride. And we don\u2019t even have to drive home. Normally we\u2019d be hitting the highways back to our cities … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[577],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4281"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4281"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4288,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4281\/revisions\/4288"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}