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Author Archives

Robyn Sassen

A freelance arts writer since 1998, I fell in love with the theatre as a toddler, proved rubbish as a ballerina: my starring role was as Mrs Pussy in Noddy as a seven-year-old, and earned my stripes as an academic in Fine Arts and Art History, in subsequent years. I write for a range of online and print publications, including the Sunday Times, the Mail & Guardian and artslink.co.za and was formerly the arts editor of the SA Jewish Report, a weekly newspaper with which I was associated for 16 years. I am currently a Research Associate at Wits University. This blog promises you new stories every week, be they reviews, profiles, news stories or features.

Tricks and balances

GENTRIFICATION. IT’S AN issue you cannot be passive about, particularly if you have axes to grind and stakes you’ve planted in the decaying area under question. Brent Palmer’s play King George takes on the behemoth of city life in all its glory and shabbiness, and he wins. It’s […]

Of swings and roundabouts

HOW LONG HAS it been since you were a greasy teenager, bursting with confusing hormones and thinking you had the world down pat? Carlien (Erika Breytenbach-Marais) and her once bestie Caitlin (Faeron Wheeler) come face to face after 20 years in Your Perfect Life, and it ain’t all […]

How to wish upon a star

AS THE TRADITIONAL heavy velvet curtains part and the sheer magic of Grant Knottenbelt’s set, with all its bells and whistles, cobbled pathways and Italian provincial signs appear, a hush that signifies young people’s awareness of the imminence of magic, descends over the audience. But the intake of […]

Ode to the Patron Saint of Mediocrity

WHEN YOU THINK of Amadeus, Peter Shaffer’s perfectly wonderful play of 1979 that cast mischievous light into the mysterious nooks and untold crannies of the life of 18th century Vienna composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the first thing that comes to mind is the music, that Confutatis from Mozart’s […]

Dance me to the edge of time

IT WAS THE late Alan Crump, Chairman of the National Festival of the Arts in Grahamstown, during the 1990s, who used to quip about the so-called “blue rinse and boiling sweet brigade”, who the festival organisers had to take seriously because they represented a money backbone of the […]

Let yourself go!

IT’S VERY RARE in this industry, in this country, that audiences are privileged to see skills so sharp and lithe, so wise and developed, in a performer who is so young. Daniel Anderson, at just 24, embraces performance with a full heart and an open soul, but much […]

Folly shared, folly multiplied

WE LIVE IN a world that would be unrecognisable to anyone of a previous generation. It’s a world where spite and malice can have legs that last forever and a tail that can destroy lives. Indeed, it’s a world where a silly gag can land a child with […]

The world in a hoop

IT’S RELATIVELY EASY to mesmerise an audience, with shiny objects and surprising gestures, but what does it take to hold them transfixed? In Off Balance, Mlindeli Zondi and Jack Moloi present a work about being black in a white world, that is rich in cynicism, sprinkled with hard-edged […]