“Die Woordfees wil daartoe bydra dat ons uitvoerende kunste werkgeleenthede vir kunstenaars én vir ons plaaslike gemeenskap skep. So bevorder ons sosiale samehorigheid,” sê Saartjie Botha, die Woordfeesdirekteur. As deel van wat Saartjie ’n “groter ekosisteem in die uitvoerende kunste” noem, dra samewerking met teaters, susterfeeste en geselskappe soos Kaapstad Opera en Cape Ballet Africa by tot aanbiedings van gehalte wat verskeie dissiplines saamsnoer.

DIE HART VAN DIE FEES
Die feesprogram wil veral eer betoon aan die letterkunde, sê Saartjie. “Dit was die ontstaansrede vir die fees en is ’n kwarteeu later steeds die hart daarvan.” ’n Nuwigheid op die EasyEquities Skrywersfees is die aanwys van ’n feesdigter – ’n posisie wat vanjaar deur Antjie Krog en Siphokazi Jonas gedeel word. Hul woorde is oral op die dorp teen mure, op sypaadjies, en verskuilde plekkies (selfs op suikerpakkies!) aangebring. Kom luister ook na Antjie en Siphokazi in Alles wat ons deel.

Iets waarna baie lesers reeds uitsien, is Marita van der Vyver se gesprek met Ingrid Jones oor haar jongste boek, My jaar van vrees en vryheid, waarin sy vertel van haar swerftog oor drie vastelande heen. Bibi Slippers vra Marita ook in Oggendkoffie en skryfgeheime oor haar werkwyse uit, en in Brandstof doen Irna van Zyl dieselfde met Rudie van Rensburg, Chris Karsten en Jaco Wolmarans.

Ander boeiende gesprekke word gevoer met uiteenlopende skrywers soos Tony Leon, Jolyn Phillips, Ingrid Winterbach, en Edwin Cameron – enkele van die hoogs interessante aanbiedings wat oor alle genres strek.

Breyten Breytenbach en Athol Fugard word vanjaar met twee toneelstukke gehuldig. Die Spier Toneelprogram bied Breyten se Boklied aan, met Marthinus Basson as regisseur. Athol se onvergeetlike Boesman en Lena, met Lee-Ann van Rooi en Brendon Daniels in die rolverdeling, het Christo Davids as regisseur.

FEESKUNSTENAARS
Daar is vir die eerste keer twee feeskunstenaars aangewys – Xhanti Zwelendaba en Benjamin Stanwix. Hierdie tweetal het reeds lof ingeoes vir hul samewerking om kulturele identiteit, die verlede, en die landskap multidissiplinêr te ondersoek deur middel van installasiekuns, video, beeldhou-, tekstiel-, tapyt- en drukwerk.

AANDAG, KUNSVERSAMELAARS
Die vierde jaarlikse Woordfeeskunsveiling en -uitstalling word aangebied in samewerking met Strauss & Co., en op die aanlyn veiling kan gebie word op werke van gevestigde sowel as opkomende kunstenaars. Dit sluit in die twee feeskunstenaars wat aangewys is as beste opkomende kunstenaars by die onlangse Investec Cape Town Arts Fair.

Veldhospitaal is ’n uitgebreide, multigenre- projek wat ’n uitstalling, opvoering en uitvoering kombineer. Meer as 50 kunstenaars is betrokke by die ervaring. Dié verskillende aspekte is verdeel in liggaamsdele, tipes behandeling, en algemene mediese praktyke. Die welstand van die kunstenaar en die verbintenis en versorging tussen kunstenaars staan in die kern hiervan.

Met die ateljeebesoeke kan feesgangers die skeppende ruimtes betree van kunstenaars soos die beeldhouer Izette Roos, fotograaf Lunga Kama en die veelsydige Trude Gunther met haar sketse, boeke, olieverfportrette en meer. Skadu’s en silhoeëtte is vanjaar se uitstalling op die Stellenbosch-kunsmyl. Die wisselwerking tussen kuns, plek en persepsie kan op die staptoer langs die oewer van die Eersterivier ervaar word.

KOOK MET BERTUS BASSON

Dié stersjef bied weer sy gewilde Speel- kamersessies aan. Beleef ’n kookdemonstrasie en heerlike feestafel in sy hoogaangeskrewe Eike-restaurant wat bekend is vir eg Suid- Afrikaanse geregte met ’n kreatiewe kinkel.

AAN TAFEL

Die bekroonde kosskrywer en TV- persoonlikheid Herman Lensing bring sy eiesoortige flair en warmte met ’n maaltyd van geure en stories na die Langtafel onder die eikebome tussen die pragtige ou geboue van Ryneveldstraat.

Ander hoogtepunte op die Leefstyl- program sluit in Koesterkos. Die kok en storieverteller Frik de Jager deel erfresepte uit sy ma en ouma se resepteboeke wat dateer uit 1914 en strek tot 1989. Kom luister tydens ’n heerlike middagete hoe Nataniël gestalte gegee het aan die publikasie Bloei + Blom – ’n viering van Afrikaans en van meer as 200 mense wat in die taal lewe.

Geniet ’n onvergeetlike aand vol musiek in Klein Alto se splinternuwe venue binne dié historiese omgewing met sy beleë sjarme.

Op die spyskaart is ’n spesiale driegang- aandete met hul Cabernet Sauvignon as pasmaat, en live musiek. Keer terug na die vroeë 1800’s by die Stellenbosch-museum se pragtig bewaarde Grosvenor-huis.

An Evening of Elegance sluit in ’n tradisionele tweegangmaal met vyf voortreflike wyne van die historiese Annandale-wynlandgoed.

Daar is geleentheid om te luister en te proe aan heerlike happies by twee kookboekgesprekke. Kosjoernalis Jeanne Calitz gesels met Elmarie Berry oor haar kookboek, The Table, wat geïnspireer is deur haar Libanese ouma se resepte wat sy met kreatiewe flair vernuwe het. Ilse van der Merwe vertel vir Errieda du Toit die stories agter 101 tipies Suid-Afrikaanse geregte in haar kookboek Timeless South African.

Die eerste Woordfees word in herinnering geroep by EasyEquities se ’n Aand van passie: Skrywerspartytjie. Kom geniet ’n ontspanne kuier en ’n heerlike ete en wyn saam met skrywers in die pragtige Die Boekklub in Johannesdal, net buite Stellenbosch.

’n Onvergeetlike aand van kos en stories wink by Spier se Winemaker’s Dinner. By Spier Manor House se langtafel word tradisionele Suid-Afrikaanse geregte verrassend nuut voorgesit in die gees van deel en samesyn.

KLASSIEKE MUSIEK: ITALIAANS TOT AFRIKAANS

Die internasionaal befaamde Koreaanse hoboïs Kyeong Ham tree op saam met plaas- like musici onder leiding van Suzanne Mertens.

’n Keurige program, saamgestel deur Willem Vogel, sluit in Ottorino Respighi se Ancient Airs and Dances, die hobo-concerto’s van Vincenzo Bellini en J.S. Bach, die Adagio uit die strykkwintet in C Majeur van Franz Schubert, en “Gabriel’s Oboe” van Ennio Morricone uit The Mission.

Vanjaar spog die fees met twee operas: Die towerfluit en The Barber of Seville. Volg die spitsvondige en slim Figaro in die opera The Barber of Seville wanneer hy sy sjarme inspan om twee jong verliefdes by mekaar uit te bring. Met sangers van Kaapstad Opera onder regie van Sylvaine Strike, beloof dié produksie om die humor en gees vas te vang wat van The Barber of Seville ’n immergroen gunsteling gemaak het.

Die alombekende Universiteitskoor Stellen- bosch sing werke uit hul internasionale kompetisierepertorium, asook nuwe musiek wat spesiaal gekies is vir die Woordfeesgehoor. André van der Merwe is die dirigent.

Aurum Cantores vier Afrikaanse koorwerk met twee blinknuwe uitvoerings in Sing jou lied.

LANDBOU

Die veelkantige wêreld van landbou word verken in ’n reeks uiteenlopende praatjies waarin onderwerpe soos familie- boerdery, innoverende tegnologie, arbeids- geleenthede, en klimaatsverwante uitdagings bespreek word.

REINET NAGTEGAAL- TEKSPRYSWENNERS

Danksy Dirk Nagtegaal herleef dié prys en is twee wenners daarvan op die program: Dianne du Toit Albertze se wendrama, Huis van sand, en naaswenner André Gerber se satire, Die kabinet. V

Neem deel en kom wees deel van die vreugde. Ons sien jou van 11 tot 19 Oktober vir nog ’n heerlike lentefees. Kry die volledige program by woordfees.co.za en jou kaartjies op Quicket.

The post Woordfees 2025 appeared first on Stellenbosch Visio.

The promise of summer lurks in the air when photographer Johan Wilke and i are met at the door by the smiling Athol and his wife Paula Fourie, who lead us into their lovely two-storey townhouse on the banks of what Athol fondly refers to as ‘die Eersterivier’. it faces north and is filled with light, with a lush, fenced-in garden that gives access to the footpath along the river. They are still settling in, but the house already feels cosy and lived in.

While Paula and Johan look for a place to take photographs, Athol shows me his favourite room. “it’s here that i have begun to write once more,” he says, having feared for a while that his writing im pulse had died. To his joy, it seems to be coming back slowly.

The south-facing space is small, intimate and lined with books from 30 floor to ceiling. He calls it his “cell”. A small and much-used typist’s desk stands against a wall, a full set of writer’s tools at the ready: his traditional fountain pen and sufficient paper for first drafts, a laptop for the rest of the work. he uses an ornate oak swivel chair that has writerly antecedents, having come from the famous Grocott’s Mail in Grahamstown. A more modern lounging chair by the bookshelves points to Athol the avid and eclectic reader.

The curtains of the cell are closed when he’s working, which seems understandable. for this self-confessed ‘regional writer’, a sense of place is always a primary concern – in his work and in his life. for him to travel to any imagined and significant place in the mind, all distractions need to be kept in check. The room seems a little too crowded for a photo shoot, though, so we head upstairs to Paula’s study, equally book-filled but much more spacious. The contrast is astounding: while suggestive shadows dominate downstairs, the space upstairs revels in clear light.

As Johan snaps away, Athol is talking. i observe his face. Aged 85, it is less gaunt than it used to be; the dark beard of yore is snowy white, the hair cropped short. Yet this is still the brooding face of the intense writer i first got to know in the 1960s and ’70s, whose sharp, dark eyes, peering from under those heavy brows, pin you to your chair as his fiery energy and reflective words cast a spell. Like the best of his writing, his conversational style is straightforward and unpretentious, with something almost Zen-like about it: a strong sense of ‘less is more’. his distinctive voice and colourful south African English, hovering charmingly between English and Afrikaans, is complemented by the occasional conscious and highly theatrical gesture; often arrested for just a moment, for emphasis, before being completed, or performed in slow motion, to the rhythm of his speech.

Athol requires no prompting, for he is a born raconteur and takes over from the first moment, telling me how he copes with his heart problems and his recent mild stroke. As he talks, he occasionally calls on Paula, working in another corner of the study, for names, dates and confirmation about events. (“she is my archive,” he says with a fond smile.) The stroke on 2 December 2016, combined with his already existing heart condition, led his doctor to suggest they move away from the seclusion of Nieu Bethesda to somewhere with a better range of medical care. A swift decision had to be made. “Actually, Stellenbosch had been on the cards for a long time,” he says, and now it seemed the logical place. They were extremely fortunate to find that this particular house had come onto the market at just the right time. The contract was signed on 24 December and by the end of August they had moved the last of their possessions from Nieu Bethesda.

I jump in to ask about his intriguing admission that Stellenbosch had been ‘on the cards’ and he is happy to respond. he had a brief exposure to the town in 2006 when he received an honorary doctorate in drama from Stellenbosch university, but he says his fascination with it started somewhat later, when he met Paula, who was studying at the university for her PhD. Then, in 2011, his relationship with the town really took off when he became a research fellow at the Stellenbosch institute for Advanced studies (STIAS) to work as artist in residence, writing a kind of autobiography, “an attempt to give some kind of reckoning of the life I’ve led”.

Though Athol is the first to point out that his plays contain many biographical elements, this is usually done “in disguise”, as he puts it. The new project was to be more overt, a prose document provision ally entitled Dry Remains. The text is not yet complete, having lost im petus along the way, but he feels he may be ready to take it up again soon, perhaps even rework it as a play. This tantalising suggestion is not unexpected, for in most of what he does Athol seems to respond and think primarily as a playwright, viewing and narrating his sense of the world in terms of visual images, snatches of dialogue, interac tions between people. it is thus not surprising that the most visible and complete outcome of his period at STIAS has in fact been a play. The compelling Die Laaste Karrietjiegraf, his first play in Afrikaans, was written in 2011–2012 and first performed at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town in January 2013.

“You know, I’m not a city man,” he comments, explaining that he had always sought to live somewhere intimate, not too big, not too small, a place where he could establish some kind of spiritual connection. places like Schoenmakerskop near Port Elizabeth and Nieu Bethesda in the Karoo. “Nieu Bethesda was my spiritual home for a long time,” he continues, “which San Diego in California, for example, never quite became; interesting and vibrant a place though it may be.”

Now they have come to seek a new spiritual base in Stellenbosch. Athol feels that the town is exactly the right size for his purposes, plus it is a place of extremes, with the richest of the rich living cheek by jowl with beggars sleeping in doorways, a cultural and social mix that attracts him. “You know, I’ve really come to love this little town,” he says fondly. Connecting with people from all levels of society is extremely important to him if he wants a place to be home. “The thing is,” he says, “being in the community, as we are now, is not yet being part of the community. To attain that i have to get to know the place intimately and not just the grootkoppe at the top of the pile, but also the homeless and poor, like those walking 32 along the footpath by the Eersterivier.”

Prompted by this statement, Paula tells me an anecdote to illustrate this sense of connection. on an earlier visit, Athol was walking to town from STIAS and on reaching the town hall, he sat down to rest on a bench already occupied by someone who appeared to be homeless. While the two of them were sitting there, a passer-by recognised Athol and stopped to introduce himself as the mayor of Stellenbosch, promptly sitting down between the two men for a brief conversation.

For Athol himself, the first truly intimate moment with Stellenbosch also occurred during an early visit to STIAS. “I remember leaving the Eikestad Mall during rush hour and having to come to a stop at the crossing of Bird and plein streets as cars whizzed by, no one stopping for us. Next to me stood a matronly lady, also waiting for a gap in the traffic. At last, frustrated by the waiting, I thought ‘bugger this’ and putting out my hand to stop the cars, I took her arm and led her across the street. on the other side she thanked me warmly in the marvellous Kaapse Afrikaans of this region. We stood there for a moment sharing a bit of conversation. And it was right there, on that corner of midtown Stellenbosch, that I was suddenly overwhelmed by a profound sense of finally being ‘home’ again, in south Africa, in a small town and speaking my mother’s tongue.”

PAULA FOURIE, jOhAn wILkE stellenbosch visio summer 2017/2018 CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: The avid birdwatcher’s essential equipment, used daily by Athol; the playwright’s most cherished possession, a tin mug; the endearing Jakkals, a con stant companion on his strolls along the Eerste River; crammed bookshelves cover the walls of his study, these two are part of the poetry and Japanese sections.

Talking of the town, he mentions that he sadly had to give up his iconic pipe, but has since found himself relishing good food and fine red wine far more than before. “And Stellenbosch is the ideal place to be for that, of course,” he adds with a mischievous twinkle.

Although Athol was a central player in the cultural and poli tical struggles from the 1960s to the 1980s, his contribution to our theatre has been much wider and has evolved over a longer period. All his plays are infused with an acute sense of moral outrage, but he has never seen himself as a militant political writer or an aspiring saviour of society. To him the role of the writer is less presumptuous, yet in its own way important. “I feel I have an obligation in terms of our time to bear witness. That’s it!” And in more than 35 plays over the course of the past 60 years, he has been a keen observer of, and witness to, the many joys and sorrows of everyday south Africans and of the multiple failures and triumphs of the human spirit. When I touch lightly on the politics of the day, he expresses his anger and disappointment that all the hopes and aspirations of the cultural struggle have gone to waste. “I live with an enormous sense of betrayal every day,” he says, almost wearily.

We could talk about his numerous plays, which include such perennial favourites as The Bloodknot, The Island, Boesman and Lena, Master Harold and the Boys and The Road to Mecca, but I prefer to ask about his current writing and how he copes with this disappointment. i hesitate, though, acutely aware that many writers prefer not to talk about work in progress, and so I go to safer ground and return to the prominent role that some kind of ‘image’ has always played as an initial inspiration for his best work. he heartily agrees, and to my delight this leads him directly to the new work.

“The play i am working on now, which will in fact be my first Stellenbosch play, began with a powerful image.” It was of a man scavenging for food in a rubbish bin near Die Braak, his body folded over it, his legs outside, his torso inside. When he emerged, triumphant, he was holding up a half-eaten muffin in his right hand. “And he began to eat it with relish, while staring the world in the eye, a radiant smile on his lips. The image went into my notebook immediately.” The work started out slowly, an idea perhaps, but now it is beginning to be more than that. “it’s going forward, it’s got momentum. every instinct I’ve got as a writer tells me that this wants to be written.”

 I end the interview by asking for the loan of a few pictures, perhaps some images of things that have particular meaning for him. he hesitates, running his eyes over the contents of his study. “There are so many memories here,” he murmurs, then stops and slowly points at a shelf behind me. “Do you see that tin mug? That is the mug from which i drank the very first water drawn from my bore hole in Nieu Bethesda, just after i had fixed the pump.” A moment’s thought, then a nod: “it’s the most cherished possession in my life.” i look at the mug and think, “That as an image of one magnificent life? Yes, I think I can see that.”

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