[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][IN THE NEWS} Arts writer Christina Kennedy strikes the right kind of enthusiasm with her preview in Business Day today. Headlined, “Bards, ballet, belly laughs and brrr...”, she writes:

Arts budgets are tight and audience purse strings even tighter, but that won’t stop this Eastern Cape frontier town of saints, sinners and students from laying on a pageant of theatre, dance, art, music, film and debate to shore up cultural tanks for the rest of winter.

Among her theatre picks are: Standard Bank Young Artist Christiaan Olwagen’s adaption of A Doll’s House, A Voice I Cannot Silence (about Alan Paton), Masote’s Dream by Dagmar Slagmolen, profiling influential classical musician Michael Masote, The Imagined Land from Craig Higginson, Fred Abrahamse and Marcel Meyer’s Hamlet.

• Read Kennedy’s full preview here

The Mail & Guardian’s arts desk rounds up their highlights of this year’s Festival – well, for music, comedy and theatre. Their preview of Carlo Mombelli & The Storytellers sounds particularly enticing:

South African bassist and composer Carlo Mombelli is sharing the stage with The Storytellers ensemble, which is made up of Kyle Shepherd on piano, Mbuso Khoza on vocals and Kesivan Naidoo on drums. This show is described as a “manipulated bass and sound design” and promises not to be disappointing, with its assemblage of esteemed names from the local jazz circle. Mombelli has been in the music industry for more than 30 years. If you have never seen him live, make sure you get a taste of his talent at the festival.

• Read the full round-up here
• Book for Carlo Mombelli & The Storytellers

TimesLIVE’s Sylvia McKeown interviews Jemma Kahn about We Didn’t Come to Hell for the Croissants, which, apparently, “give us more physicality, more drama, more laughs, more skin and a lot more nipple than the first show”, The Epicene Butcher.

• Read McKeown’s full interview here
• Book for We Didn’t Come to Hell for the Croissants now

The M&G’s Kgomotso Moncho-Maripane finds out how comedy group Jittery Citizens are planning to establish a solid improvisational comedy scene in South Africa with their unconventional comedy in the Mail & Guardian:

“We would like to make improv comedy as big as stand-up comedy is in the country. So far we’re a little pin-prick – it’s a slow process, but the only way to entrench improv is to perform it. I especially want to change the way South Africans feel about improv.” – Wits comedy performance and physical theatre graduate Claudine Ullman

• Read the full article here
• Book for Jittery Citizens here

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