Guest: Rucera Seethal - Artistic Director National Arts Festival www.nationalartsfestival.co.za

The National Arts Festival reclaims its rebel roots with an energetic programme that channels the restlessness of the times and the promise of an invigorating cultural escape. Audiences can look forward to a blend of local and international works that provoke and imagine, protest and remember.

Musing on the evolution of this year's programme, the National Arts Festival's Artistic Director, Rucera Seethal says, “The global landscape is entirely unpredictable; trends emerge and collapse, institutions quiver, shocks reverberate and radical new ideas rumble below a tense surface. The Festival is a fluid container for these conversations. Unhinged from the daily grind, artists first see and then weave - through words, art, body or expression - that which we are too busy to truly notice. At the Festival we enter this world of the artist, leaving the everyday for the unexpected.”