The 2016 edition of the Cape Town Fringe will be taking to the streets this year, with the inclusion of a brand new event – the Cape Town Buskers Festival – presented as part of a partnership between the Fringe and the V&A Waterfront.
Speaking in Grahamstown, Cape Town Fringe and National Arts Festival CEO Tony Lankester said that he was delighted to announce the partnership – which will see South African and international street theatre performers present their work at the V&A.
“We’re planning on presenting about 30 acts, which will include at least three invited headliners from the world busker circuit,” Lankester said. “The acts will perform over four days on four free, public stages at the V&A Waterfront.”
The Festival, the first of its kind for South Africa, will celebrate street performers of all kinds, including acrobats, musicians, mimes, and circus acts.
“As the most visited destination on the continent, the V&A Waterfront looks forward to hosting the first-ever Cape Town Buskers Festival. For our more than 24-million annual visitors, buskers are a beloved and firmly entrenched tradition, and visitors have come to expect an encounter with these colourful characters. Likewise, the V&A Waterfront presents buskers with the largest potential audience in the country,” David Green, V&A Waterfront CEO said.
In parallel with the Buskers Festival, a series of workshops and ‘creative exchanges’ between local and international performers will be run.
“An important aspect of the Festival is creating opportunities for local buskers to perform alongside well-established international acts. In this way they will be exposed to new skills, and be given opportunities to develop and incorporate new ideas into their routines. The Waterfront believes the Festival will position buskers as the professional artists they are,” Green said.
The Buskers Festival dovetails with the Cape Town Fringe, running for four days from 6 – 9 October 2016, while the Fringe kicks off on 22 September.
FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT OF CAPE TOWN FRINGE PRODUCTIONS
As the National Arts Festival came to a close, the first productions selected for staging as part of the Cape Town Fringe were named.
Guest Artistic Director, Rob Murray, named seven productions as a “taste of what is to come” at the end of the Grahamstown event.
“The Fringe will include four productions that played to great acclaim as part of the Baxter’s Zabalaza Festival (Addis Ababa, Muzo Tribes, Ubudoda and Gelapte Pop),” Murray said. Added to the list are three shows from Grahamstown – the Silver Standard Bank Ovation Award winner Dangled with Rob van Vuuren; Kontinuum, and the new work from Uyabona Ke (makers or last year’s smash Waterline), Falling Off the Horn.
With this line up – together with the tantalizing prospect of three international works making the trip to Cape Town and at least 40 more local productions due to be named in the next couple of weeks – the Mother City’s Fringe seems set to delight audiences one more.
“The Cape Town Fringe will also include a citywide school tour as part of the buildup, taking quality theatre to more people than previous editions,” Murray said.
