National Arts Fest goes completely virtual in light of Level 4 restrictions

The National Arts Festival has been forced to abandon its live audience 2021 Makhanda experience portion in light of the recently imposed Level 4 restrictions.

A scene from Qondiswa James’ new play “NDINXANIWE” – Source: Supplied

Already envisioned as a ‘hybrid event’ with both live and online shows, the festival had planned to stage a small live programme in its home town of Makhanda from 8 July and, before that, had flighted a live programme of shows called Standard Bank Presents in Cape Town and Durban, but suspended audience attendance for the Johannesburg shows due to rising Covid-19 numbers in the city. Live shows were also planned for Gqeberha. Working quickly, the team moved to record all these shows for inclusion in the online programme. Now the festival will be fully online for its second stay-at-home edition.

Says National Arts Festival CEO Monica Newton:

Our 2021 festival was built with change in mind, we knew we might need a plan B and this was a part of our risk mitigation strategy from the start. The festival team is working at 200% to adapt our live programme to this new scenario to stick to our original 8 July opening date. We are confident that we can pull it off and the National Arts Festival online will take place from 8 to 31 July.

Fortunately, the festival will be held online in 2020 and the infrastructure was built and refined last year. Newton acknowledged the exceptional resilience of the artists involved in the project. “Together with our team, they are working incredibly hard to ensure work is filmed with all the professionalism and passion they had planned to put onto their live stage performances. Everyone has just taken a deep breath, adapted their plans and moved forward. After a devastating year for the arts, it felt very important to us to honour our commitments and financial obligations to all the people involved in the 2021 festival. We also have a great programme so the show simply has to go on!”

A scene from “CARTOGRAPHIES OF SURVIVAL, BREATH, BEAUTY, TOUCH and DESIRE” by Siwela Sonke – Source: Supplied

The reimagined festival will be hosted on the festival’s website and visitors to the experience will be able to securely purchase tickets and watch their shows off the same platform. A new addition to the festival is a ‘Livestream element with shows being broadcast live into the homes of online audiences. The Standard Bank Jazz Festival is also fully online and features a knock-out programme of shows filmed in cities around the country and also features some amazing international guests.