About half of the productions on the programme will be presented free to the public in communal spaces within walking distance of one another in the Cape Town city during the daytime. This allows audiences to take an historical and creative tour of the City and the spaces in-between. The rest of the programme events are reasonably ticketed at various non-theatre venues during the day and in the evening.
Infecting the City is curated by award-winning writer, director and designer Brett Bailey. The broad theme that underlies the 2009 festival is “home affairs”, which investigates issues of immigrant vs citizen, insider vs outsider, inclusion and exclusion, with unavoidable reference to the xenophobic tensions that constantly simmer in southern Africa.
Commenting on the theme and format of the festival, Bailey says, “The arts have transformative power, the ability to widen our perceptions, open our imagination, and show us the world from different perspectives: they belong in the centre of society. Confined in galleries and theatres they are often beyond the bounds of most people in our unequal society. ITC is a festival of groundbreaking works accessible to people from all walks of life.”
An innovative component of Infecting the City 2009 is the creation of collaborative works made by teams of artists from Europe, South Africa and some SADC countries. The collaborative process begins well before the festival, with a five week residency in Cape Town, during which the collaborators will be exposed to an intense, pressure-cooker course of situations and circumstances to stimulate thought and creativity.
The festival is a significant event both for the performing arts in South Africa and for Cape Town as a creative, iconic city. Many European visitors, so familiar with the notion of site-specific performance, will instantly relate to Infecting the City, whilst Capetonians will be intrigued to discover the hidden spaces and unexpected perspectives on their hometown.
Visit www.infectingthecity.com for the programme and more info.
|
