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.
Possibly one of the most potent symbols of our identity as a unique culture is our National Anthem. Lee Hirsch in 2002 constructing the important film Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony gave beautiful documentary insight into how music and history cleave together in South Africa, and […]
A tale of the relentless complexity of sibling lives and how they can intertwine and contradict and hurt each other, under the devastating pall of apartheid, just before democracy, Five Lives at Noon is a real page turner. Meersman has created a bevy of characters which populate this […]
Should there be such a thing as a woman rabbi? Is it an archaic misinterpretation to force Muslim women to enter a mosque through a separate entrance to men? How does the Baha’i faith interrogate women’s rights? And where does the Christian trinity stand in relation to women […]
Picture the scenario: the scene is cast, with a fabulous director, a seasoned duo of performers and a tuned piano. Chairs are placed, the tone is set. And then the power goes down. “It’s scheduled!” yell some. “It’s not!” yell others. But still, it’s dark as pitch, and […]
It’s almost a year since Nelson Mandela passed away. To commemorate this great man, award winning art professional Natalie Liknaitzky has curated an exhibition of South African art, which will be shown at the Stephan Welz Studio in Sandton from December 5 until January 11. The show, another […]
From the moment band leader Tshepo Mngoma lets rip into his electronic violin, in the opening number Bungazani, you are convinced that this anthology of music, theatre, dance and poetry will be extraordinary. And you won’t be wrong, but Ketekang is not without decision-making flaws, which bruise its […]
They’re big. They’re shiny. They’re funky and puerile and they’ve gotten the local art world into a frenzy. This is Cape Town-based Michael Elion’s sculpture ‘Perceiving Freedom’, a gigantic pair of sunglasses, bedecking the public space on the Sea Point promenade in Cape Town. Having been asked to […]
Just when you think that you may have seen the Wizard of Oz – first brought to the silver screen in 1939 with a young Judy Garland in the starring role – enough times, along comes a production like this, bursting at the seams with the kind of […]
For first person narrative to sing with a poetry that pushes it away from petty personal accounts, separated by the phrase ‘and then’, you need to be a strong, experienced writer with an intimate understanding of the discipline and an ability to read your own work with scathing […]
Take three sisters. Clad them in severe black lace tops, white skirts and insufferable black tresses. Cast around them a vague tale of a missing father, an ever-absent black horse and tuna crumbs. And put vulgar hysteria and arbitrary cruelty into their mouths and souls, and you will […]
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