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.
If you were white, young and English-speaking in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s in South African suburbia, you may’ve been privy to a particular lexicon of words like ‘tit’ (nice), ‘jislaaik’ (an expression of wonder), ‘kotch’ (vomit) and ‘boghouse’ (toilet). We were under cultural embargo. Apartheid was rife. […]
Complete magic doesn’t often happen in life. But when it does, it needs to be embraced with an unequivocally full heart. Last month, there was a production onstage at the Hillbrow Theatre (formerly the Andre Huguenot Theatre) in the heart of flatland Johannesburg that reached beyond the quota […]
Occasionally one comes across a production in which the behind-the-scenes fun factor of the work spills out with such abandon and into the audience that it becomes immediately contagious. This is far and away the case with the current production of Nikolai Gogol’s Government Inspector, which in terms […]
Philip Dikotla recently completed a run of his play ‘Skierlik’ at the Soweto Theatre. The work has received much attention and acknowledgement since its professional debut at last year’s National Arts Festival, but it’s not without flaws and it is curious as to why it seems no one […]
It is hard to imagine a production premised on the hurly burly melting pot of society that the suburb of Hillbrow in Johannesburg has always been, as weak. But the work written and directed by John Badenhorst playing at Wits Amphitheatre this week has almost no redeeming features. […]
From the showtime-evocative energetic start to the complex interracial love story which brings it to closure, The Astounding Antics of Anthony Ant, written by Natal University’s Pieter Scholtz in 1985 during the thick of apartheid, sees light of day with a freshly painted coat of rhetoric that […]
Eleven years ago, South African-born dancer/choreographer Steven Cohen and his partner Elu created a piece called Dancing With Nothing but Heart. Debuting on the Dance Umbrella of 2003, it featured a naked Elu dancing with an enormous ox heart in his arms. No costumes. No soundtrack. No lighting. […]
“I’m always happy to be there,” says veteran television director Barry Berk. He refers to the seven SAFTA (South African Film and Television Awards) nominations his debut feature film Sleeper’s Wake earned, for best film, best director, best writer, best actor, best editor, best cinematographer, best sound design. […]
Jodi Bieber’s photographic exhibition Quiet lifts the curtain on the veneer of manhood, carbonised as it is by generations of society. It casts such a sense of the sacrosanct, you might be tempted to take off your shoes to see the work. There’s an astonishing moment in Aisling […]
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