MAKHANDA, EC– 2026 Standard Bank Young Artist for Theatre awardee Jason Jacobs brought three varying productions – a two-part decolonial curation named Kraal Stories comprising a one-man theatrical performance and an indigenous Matjieshuis which provided a non-performative environment intended for rest, reflection and dreaming, and a film titled Variations on a Theme – to this year’s National Arts Festival in Makhanda.
Karkhams-based University of Cape Town alumnus Jacobs’ productions occurred inside the Rhodes Box theatre of the Rhodes University Theatre complex, along the Lucas Avenue Footpath below the elevated 1820 Settlers National Monument and inside the monument building’s Olive Schreiner theatre.
The Matjieshuis – a hut constructed with material sourced from the Kamiesberg region of Namaqualand – a temporary structure which was part of the Kraal Stories, became a sacred space which was opened to the public during open hours between 9am-5pm from June 26 to July 4 in order for the local community and festivalgoers to share experiences within it for the purpose of collective healing.
A Nama-Khoi indigenous descendant, Jacobs had enlisted the services of an elder named Hendrik T Brandt and a Makhanda resident named Jean Burgess to erect the symbolic dwelling meant to transform the act of spectating into one of restorative participation.
The curatorial aspect intended for attendees to keep the ancestral tradition alive for the future.
Kraal, the alternative one-man theatrical performance, is an immersive journey which breathes life into the ancient wisdom of Jacobs’ native Kamiesberge. A production which had its debut at Woordfes in Stellenbosch – it was performed mostly in pure Afrikaans throughout as the theatre-maker unravelled the tangled vines of inherited trauma and the shadow of the dop system’s colonial legacy.
The production, which was staged daily in the Rhodes Box of the theatre, was absorbing stagecraft created with the capable inputs of filmmaker Kwei Shun-yu and production manager Cleveland Hopp (the Onthou vi Fredo?, director).
The film Variations on a Theme – which Jacobs co-produced with Devon Delmar as part of the Kraal Stories – narrated the travails of an elderly goat farmer from the mountains of Namaqualand named Hettie Farmer.
In the show, viewers witness the octogenarian falling victim to a scam promising long-overdue reparations for her father’s World War II service – with her independence threatened while she waited for money which never came.
Structured as a series of recurring visual ‘variations’, the film transforms repetition into revelation to frame a portrait of waiting, endurance and loss. The film garnered the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam early this year.
During a Saturday morning tete-a-tete interview with Jacobs in the foyer of Rhodes Theatre regarding his trio of presentations at the festival, the gqirha-in-the-training (traditional healer) broadly spoke about Kraal the theatrical performance as straddling “living in a colonial hangover” and Variations on a Theme as conveying the “need for matriarchs to guide us.”
Another SBYA award recipient and fellow Northern Cape native Bronwyn Katz – who works through sculpture and installation to develop a speculative language which draws on land and embodied forms of knowledge – had an exhibition titled Ta a-b kobab ada kāxu-da, ti khoe-du’e! which was on view at the Monument Gallery inside the 1820 Settlers National Monument building daily throughout the festival.
Her presentation had the retrieval of lost language through material process at its core interpretation. In the display, Katz traces subtle shifts across her own skin – with the intimate cartographies translated into metal scaffolds which hold resonant forms filled with conductive wire circuits.
Image Jacob MAWELA (Jason Jacobs, the 2026 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Theatre recipient limned performing in his production Kraal at the Rhodes Theatre in Makhanda during the National Arts Festival.
