Arts stalwart Nobesuthu Rayi has stepped down from her National Arts Festival management role to return to her first love — performing.
Having set aside her passion to serve the arts in an administrative capacity through various roles over the past 14 years, she said she also planned to teach the youth about the business of arts administration.
Rayi, however, said she felt an element of sadness as she would be leaving behind people she met as colleagues but had turned into family.
Earlier this week, the National Arts Festival (NAF) team thanked her for her service and applauded the standard of her work with the Mandela Bay Arts Festival, and how she had steered the Makhanda Gwijo Competition.
“But I want to remind people that this is not goodbye, they are still going to see me in the arts space — just in a different way,” Rayi said.
“For the past 14 years, many people have known me as an arts administrator, working at the Opera House (now Mandela Bay Theatre Complex), or working at the NAF.
“But I am an artist at heart, in ability and through education because I studied performing arts.
“So now I want to explore that side of being an artist,” she said.
Rayi found herself in an art administrator role after a car accident in June 2010, just a few minutes after she had signed a contract for storytelling with national radio station Umhlobo Wenene FM.
Rayi’s femur bone was shattered.
“For a moment, it felt as though my life had ended. Everything I had been studying for all those years had just been shattered.
“I had so many questions, like ‘should I change careers?’
“The employer at the time needed to move on, they were under pressure. I felt my life had come to an end exactly at the peak of my career.
“We were performing a lot at the time, introducing theatre in unconventional places like taverns.
“While lying in my hospital bed, I realised that even though my body was injured, my brain and hands were still working.
“Everyone wanted to be on stage, there were few people that worked behind the scenes.
“So I organised a dance festival via my phone in hospital — and that was when the beast of art administration bit me and I never stopped,” Rayi said.
Forced to take a pause from the stage, her journey in arts administration began.
She advocated alongside other members of the art fraternity for the Eastern Cape to have a declared cultural institution.
She started working at the then-Opera House as an art administrator until her resignation in 2017.
A month later, she joined the NAF family, which had always been a dream for her.
Rayi said she joined the festival with a mission — she wanted to leave the people of the Eastern Cape with the feeling that the festival belonged to them.
She also wanted local artists to see themselves on platforms they had never imagined they could be on.
She said proudly she had slowly started seeing the change.
On her position as stakeholder and partnership manager, Rayi said she worked on maintaining existing relationships while attracting new partners.
“I am happy with the strides that happened while I was there.
“We managed to form a partnership with The Playhouse Company in Durban. They brought a mobile stage that we used this year.
“We also welcomed back the Mandela Bay Theatre Complex (MBTC), and they had highly successful productions.
“The NAF is a national platform, we do not choose productions out of sympathy, it has to be quality. And the MBTC did not disappoint,” she said.
She also introduced the Gwijo competition to the NAF, which was a success.
Through that initiative, youth from Makhanda found themselves in studio to record with award-winning a cappella group The Soil.
The Herald
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