Shows to particularly look out for at your neighbourhood theatre after National Arts Festival

The winners for the National Arts Festival Ovation Awards have been announced. However, as is often the case at festivals, some of the shows that are featured on The Fringe are often very good. Excellent even, aesthetically speaking.

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor

The history of the National Arts Festival, can never be told completely without also telling the story of The Fringe. If The Fringe be told, it is a show within another show. Well, let me try again. It is a show, in the case of the National Arts Festival context featuring productions during the festival that take place outside the main programme of the festival –often in not that very good venues.

The shows are also terribly underfunded, as compared to those shows on the main programme of this festival. Also these shows have not been curated by the festival’s curator and a team of curatorial advisors. However they are required to apply to be on The Fringe of the National Arts Festival, which takes place annually in June/July in Makhanda.

However, as is often the case at festivals, some of the shows that are featured on The Fringe are often very good. Excellent even, aesthetically speaking. They are so good that they often attract audiences away from the shows on the Main Programme as word eventually spreads among the audiences that there is a show actually doing well on The Fringe. Often, this news is shared among attendees through a word of mouth, a powerful way to influence friends and acquaintances about something.

And so, although this year, I missed the festival, having been 900 KM away in Johannesburg, I waited patiently for the news of which productions, actors and theatre directors, triumphed on The Fringe programme of the festival. It is because the shows on The Fringe programme of the festival, badly funded as they are, and often performing in venues that in some cases, are glorified versions of the badly maintained and neglected community halls around our towns and cities, sometimes these shows, at least one or two, are so good that they steal the thunder from those on the Main programme of the festival. I have been going to the National Arts Festival for years to know this.

These shows have in fact, been doing so well for years that the idea of the Ovation Awards, judged by a hand-picked team of adjudicators, came about some years back. They were introduced, and I suspect, to mitigate the embarrassment of a badly programmed show, underfunded and all, outplaying those that are better funded and better programmed, enjoying good venues and well situated shows, stealing the audience’s hearts.

One thing you cannot control as a festival producer is the mind and the heart of a festival audience, who often fly for hours from another part of the country, even overseas to attend the festival at great expense. They will go for the best at the festival, on The Main Programme or on The Fringe.

And so, you ignore what happens on the stages of The Fringe at the risk of missing the real show at festivals like the just ended National Arts festival, which wound up on Sunday, 5 July, 2026.

And often these shows, particularly those that win the Ovation Award tend to enjoy another season on the stages of mainstream theatre circuit after NAF. This is as they are often snatched up by a vigilant producer looking for real gems to put on their respective theatre stages.

And therefore look out for these shows at your neighbourhood theatre, after all, these productions have just won the much sought-after Ovation Award at this year’s National Arts Festival.

 “Watching a breadth of shows like this is like a temperature check on the state of the nation,” noted Ovations convenor Tamara Schulz. “Many plays grappled with our traumatic history and difficult themes such as domestic violence and father-son estrangements. Yet, over and again, these difficulties were transformed into magic and healing—through music, song and the power of humour and comedy.”  

 Speaking at the Ovation Awards, National Art Festival Associate Producer, Zikhona Monaheng, said she recognised the incredible hard work and risks that artists took to bring works to the National Arts Festival. She also noted the high quality of work this year.