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.
Everywhere you look, at the moment Gregory Vuyani Maqoma is present: He’s on the current cover of Gordon Institute of Business Science’s Acumen Magazine. He’s one of the judges in the Arts and Culture Trust Award for 2014. He’s just been in New York accepting the prestigious Bessie […]
Life changing seduction can happen without either party laying a finger on the other. This is the underlying erotic edge, in The Vertical Hour, a David Hare play about choices. Phillip Lucas (Richard Gau), a young physiotherapist based in America is taking his girlfriend, Nadia Blye (Jackie Rens) […]
With the ringing and tumbling of words and phrases over one another, this portrayal of 23-year-old Rachel Corrie, the young American activist who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003, while trying to protect a Palestinian family home from destruction, resonates with a resemblance to the Anne […]
Even before the lights go down, in anticipation of the start of this, the 21st season of Doo Bee Boobies, Eartha Kitt’s 1953 number I want to be evil filters through the bordello-like redness of the theatre, lending a lush and earnestly hilarious tone to something so extraordinary, […]
Seldom does one come across a debut novel which sings so sublimely from each page that you don’t want it to end. Alice Simpson’s Ballroom is one such whirligig of a read, leaving you heady and happy and weepy, all at the same time. Modelled fairly conventionally, with […]
War Horse is unequivocally the show of a lifetime: if you don’t see another theatre production ever again in your life, see this one. It brings together all the unmitigated magic of hand hewn material constructed with sheer love, courage and self-belief; the four brief months in which […]
Think of beautiful prose about the ebb and flow, the life and death of humble fish and you might turn to Margaret Craven’s remarkable little 1967 novel I Heard The Owl Call My Name in which the salmon is celebrated with language so delicate and crisp, so succinct […]
Murder is a sexy topic, in any entertainment sphere. Murder carrying a factual trail of political blood and racial acrimony, moreso, but there’s always the threat, the possibility that the gory denouement or headline might drench the whole work in blood, thus compromising credibility and coating it with […]
Gogo. These two syllables, under Gcina Mhlophe’s pen in the classic South African play Have You Seen Zandile?, embrace everything that a loving, hard working grandmother is about: Vulnerable, pugnacious when necessary, and above all, capable of real love. On stage 28 years ago this astonishingly fine work […]
Loss is central to who we are as human beings. It is the ever-threatening fragile hinge that makes us hold tight to our loved ones: and the spice that makes the time we spend with them so achingly precious. Enter Tony Miyambo, a dignified, under-stated performer who has […]
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