Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen. On behalf of the board members of the Naledi’s, our executive director and our sponsors – Welcome to the 8th annual Naledi Theatre Awards.Master of ceremonies, Ladies and Gentlemen I believe that the Naledi’s board members would wish me to say at the outset that the Naledi’s continue to exist in large measure because of the tireless efforts, tenacity and exuberant determination of Dawn Lindberg and Des Lindberg. May we by means of encouragement give them both a round of applause and our heartfelt thanks.
I would like to welcome all present here tonight in particular our nominees who, in each category have over the last year exhibited creative excellence as practitioners of South African theatre in all fields.
From playwrights, producers, directors, choreographers, actors and actresses, to set designers, costume designers as well as lighting and sound designers – congratulations and welcome. We gather here tonight to celebrate your collective and collaborative ingenuity as you continue to enrich our lives and nations culture.
I would also like to welcome our judges, who have attended, assessed and adjudicated so many productions during 2010. They are all lovers of theatre and their informed, unbiased perspective is essential in the Naledi’s desire to highlight and reward those productions and people who make us proud of South African Theatre and proud to be South African.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Athol Fugard in referring to a play called Still Life, written by Emily Mann and produced at the Market in 1983 by the late gentle giant of South African Theatre Barney Simon relays how Barney spoke to him about the play and used the word TESTIMONY several times.
Athol made him check its dictionary definition: It means TO BEAR WITNESS. Athol described the phrase “TO BEAR WITNESS” as “A perfect definition of the challenge South African theatre faces at this moment in our country’s history.”
Barney was right, Athol was right, they did not mean that South African theatre should bear witness to our times as a cold reportage of the facts; rather what Barney and Athol were insinuating is that theatre’s role in society is not to tell us merely what is happening or has happened, the news and newspapers do that well enough. They were saying that the theatres role is to tell us how it felt and what it meant to be ordinary people in extraordinary times. That was in 1983, today in 2011, in post apartheid South Africa, the need to bear witness is still as great. The need to tell the stories of the past, present and future through live theatre is ever-present.
Watching the news and seeing the incredible events taking place in North Africa and the Middle East, one wonders how their playwrights and artists will remould and tell the stories of their times to their people and the world tomorrow. Because with the unleashing of liberty, freedom of speech, freedom to dissent and freedom of assembly, they will soon have the freedom to express themselves and in so doing – they will bear witness to the momentous events taking place in a way only theatre can.
The hard facts of their struggles today will be distilled by their playwrights into their nation’s cultural heritage. I have no doubt that the new season of liberty will inspire in North Africa and the Middle East a cultural Renaissance in which theatre will take its place as one of the best performance tools in a people’s cultural arsenal.
Equally I have no doubt that in their plays they will speak of their agonies and triumphs, about what it meant and what it felt like to be oppressed. With the use of drama, song, satire, laughter and tears, they will take their audiences on journeys that display the best and worst aspects of the human condition. I’m sure you will support me when I say we wish them freedom and we wish them theatre.
In South Africa we are fortunate indeed to have had in the past, the present and in the future, playwrights, producers, directors and performers who in succeeding generations have staged works of national and international repute and acclamation.
As theatre practitioners you are the interpreters of our times, our mass cultures and our most intimate moments. You give us character. You provoke, ridicule, challenge, educate and inspire. You create introspection and deep social observation. You are creators of social text in a way television can never be! And in your testimony, as you bear witness to our times with your individual ingenuity, you define us and our era.
The Naledi’s, Ladies and Gentlemen exists to salute you and recommend your work to public inspection and perusal - to promote theatre as popular entertainment and to promote the social practice of theatre going itself so that more South Africans will understand the emotional fulfilment one experiences as one leaves the theatre, or the lure of live entertainment.
How a great play can provide us with such psychological and physical pleasure and become part of our personal culture and identity.
How Theatre is both social activity for the audience and yet a precious art that lives beyond the run of the play and beyond production and consumption, to take its place in the annals of human endeavour.
Our goal as the Naledi’s is therefore to increase the number and variety of bums on theatre seats by drawing the nation’s attention to the diamonds of our theatre industry – our shining stars. This is made possible because of the power of your prose, the passion of your performances, the wonderful and often hilarious expression of your minds, bodies and souls.
We wish as the Naledi’s Ladies and Gentlemen, to call on both government and the private sector to subsidize, fund and cherish this vital national asset as an essential part of South Africa’s unique cultural legacy and heritage.
Subsidy in theatre is the organic fertilizer essential to its growth since the dawn of film and television. It is only through subsidy that developmental theatre, community theatre and rural theatre can blossom. It is through subsidy and enlightened private sector funding that we will discover across the length and breadth of our country the jewels, the precious stones that will light up the stages of tomorrow.
Master of Ceremonies, Ladies and Gentlemen, if we want the South African Theatre Industry to honour its past, sustain its present and nurture the theatre practitioners of the future, if we want it to be a truly united instrument of our national culture we must as a nation celebrate, support, subsidize and promote South African Theatre as never before, so that it may continue to give testimony – So that you, our theatre practitioners, the flowers of our nation, may continue to bear witness!
Have a very good evening and Welcome to the Naledi’s!
Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen. On behalf of the board members of the Naledi’s, our executive director and our sponsors – Welcome to the 8th annual Naledi Theatre Awards.
Master of ceremonies, Ladies and Gentlemen I believe that the Naledi’s board members would wish me to say at the outset that the Naledi’s continue to exist in large measure because of the tireless efforts, tenacity and exuberant determination of Dawn Lindberg and Des Lindberg. May we by means of encouragement give them both a round of applause and our heartfelt thanks.
I would like to welcome all present here tonight in particular our nominees who, in each category have over the last year exhibited creative excellence as practitioners of South African theatre in all fields.
From playwrights, producers, directors, choreographers, actors and actresses, to set designers, costume designers as well as lighting and sound designers – congratulations and welcome. We gather here tonight to celebrate your collective and collaborative ingenuity as you continue to enrich our lives and nations culture.
I would also like to welcome our judges, who have attended, assessed and adjudicated so many productions during 2010. They are all lovers of theatre and their informed, unbiased perspective is essential in the Naledi’s desire to highlight and reward those productions and people who make us proud of South African Theatre and proud to be South African.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Athol Fugard in referring to a play called Still Life, written by Emily Mann and produced at the Market in 1983 by the late gentle giant of South African Theatre Barney Simon relays how Barney spoke to him about the play and used the word TESTIMONY several times.
Athol made him check its dictionary definition: It means TO BEAR WITNESS. Athol described the phrase “TO BEAR WITNESS” as “A perfect definition of the challenge South African theatre faces at this moment in our country’s history.”
Barney was right, Athol was right, they did not mean that South African theatre should bear witness to our times as a cold reportage of the facts; rather what Barney and Athol were insinuating is that theatre’s role in society is not to tell us merely what is happening or has happened, the news and newspapers do that well enough. They were saying that the theatres role is to tell us how it felt and what it meant to be ordinary people in extraordinary times. That was in 1983, today in 2011, in post apartheid South Africa, the need to bear witness is still as great. The need to tell the stories of the past, present and future through live theatre is ever-present.
Watching the news and seeing the incredible events taking place in North Africa and the Middle East, one wonders how their playwrights and artists will remould and tell the stories of their times to their people and the world tomorrow. Because with the unleashing of liberty, freedom of speech, freedom to dissent and freedom of assembly, they will soon have the freedom to express themselves and in so doing – they will bear witness to the momentous events taking place in a way only theatre can.
The hard facts of their struggles today will be distilled by their playwrights into their nation’s cultural heritage. I have no doubt that the new season of liberty will inspire in North Africa and the Middle East a cultural Renaissance in which theatre will take its place as one of the best performance tools in a people’s cultural arsenal.
Equally I have no doubt that in their plays they will speak of their agonies and triumphs, about what it meant and what it felt like to be oppressed. With the use of drama, song, satire, laughter and tears, they will take their audiences on journeys that display the best and worst aspects of the human condition. I’m sure you will support me when I say we wish them freedom and we wish them theatre.
In South Africa we are fortunate indeed to have had in the past, the present and in the future, playwrights, producers, directors and performers who in succeeding generations have staged works of national and international repute and acclamation.
As theatre practitioners you are the interpreters of our times, our mass cultures and our most intimate moments. You give us character. You provoke, ridicule, challenge, educate and inspire. You create introspection and deep social observation. You are creators of social text in a way television can never be! And in your testimony, as you bear witness to our times with your individual ingenuity, you define us and our era.
The Naledi’s, Ladies and Gentlemen exists to salute you and recommend your work to public inspection and perusal - to promote theatre as popular entertainment and to promote the social practice of theatre going itself so that more South Africans will understand the emotional fulfilment one experiences as one leaves the theatre, or the lure of live entertainment.
How a great play can provide us with such psychological and physical pleasure and become part of our personal culture and identity.
How Theatre is both social activity for the audience and yet a precious art that lives beyond the run of the play and beyond production and consumption, to take its place in the annals of human endeavour.
Our goal as the Naledi’s is therefore to increase the number and variety of bums on theatre seats by drawing the nation’s attention to the diamonds of our theatre industry – our shining stars. This is made possible because of the power of your prose, the passion of your performances, the wonderful and often hilarious expression of your minds, bodies and souls.
We wish as the Naledi’s Ladies and Gentlemen, to call on both government and the private sector to subsidize, fund and cherish this vital national asset as an essential part of South Africa’s unique cultural legacy and heritage.
Subsidy in theatre is the organic fertilizer essential to its growth since the dawn of film and television. It is only through subsidy that developmental theatre, community theatre and rural theatre can blossom. It is through subsidy and enlightened private sector funding that we will discover across the length and breadth of our country the jewels, the precious stones that will light up the stages of tomorrow.
Master of Ceremonies, Ladies and Gentlemen, if we want the South African Theatre Industry to honour its past, sustain its present and nurture the theatre practitioners of the future, if we want it to be a truly united instrument of our national culture we must as a nation celebrate, support, subsidize and promote South African Theatre as never before, so that it may continue to give testimony – So that you, our theatre practitioners, the flowers of our nation, may continue to bear witness!
Have a very good evening and Welcome to the Naledi’s!
.
ward for the .of the televised production took place at the gracious Lyric Theatre at Gold Reef City last night. The foyer was awash with excitement and glamour as theatre industry luminaries showed up in their numbers, dressed to the nines – some no doubt at sixes and sevens with others - to either receive accolades or show support to those who were in the awards limelight.
The Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to “SA’s most famous white woman”, Evita Bezuidenhout, for her witty, refreshing and fearless observations of the social fabric of our country over the past 30 years, whilst the Executive Director’s Award was similarly given for three decades of service - to Frans Swart of Lefra Productions, for their promotion of Afrikaans Theatre. Mr. Swart made significant remarks about the Afrikaans media moguls and their neglect of Afrikaans culture. I will publish his acceptance speech separately.
