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.
WHEN YOU KNOW, from the first few phrases of a book, that you are in good and powerful storytelling hands, the rest of the text sings beyond the confines of its pages. This is the kind of experience you can anticipate in Catherine Cole’s foray into South African […]
TELLING STORIES IS complicated. Telling personal stories that you have lived through even more so. And telling them perfectly, is extremely rare. Paolo Sorrentino’s film The Hand of God, is one of these unique feats of collaborative creative skills that yield a product that will lift your mood […]
IF YOU TAKE a step back from what your granny might want for your life, and what you may want for it, it’s merely a question of timing. Chinara, in episode 16 of The End of the Line, a series of British fictional monologues on podcast, skirts this […]
IF CHRONOLOGY AND history magically got turned on its ear, who would British novelist Jane Austen be in the tweens of the 21st century? And how would she craft and position her characters? While seasoned English academic and magnificently skilled writer Helen Moffett doesn’t quite contemplate this idea […]
WHEN IT COMES to skop, skiet en donder films, you know the drill, if you’ve been watching films for a year or two. It’s clear who the baddies are. And the goodies. And you know that when the felon, deemed guilty by the system, goes to jail, they […]
IT ISN’T EVERY day that you get to see a film which has the gravitas of the bible, the sinister undertones and dark wit of Quentin Tarantino’s work and the timelessness and devastating subtlety of a classic of the ilk of work by Ernest Hemingway. In Jane Campion’s […]
WHAT IS IT with the broad public – strangers on the bus – when they encounter something out of their experiences and need to poke at it? Maxine, in episode 15 of The End of the Line, a series of British fictional monologues on podcast, ponders this issue, […]
FROM THE SINISTER complexity of its cover, to its end pages, Anton Harber’s 2020 publication So, for the Record is a vital essay on the current state of journalism in South Africa. And it’s not a pretty picture. This publication should be present on the bookshelves of anyone […]
SOMETIMES WHEN YOU think your dream opportunity has finally presented itself, you’re rudely given to understand that the universe has a whole different narrative plotted for you. The sequel to Craig Freimond’s 2012 film Material, called New Material, released nationally on 26 November. It will have you reaching […]
DO DINKUM HORROR stories still exist in our dirty, misshapen world of Covid, violence and mistrust? Do they still inspire fear (rather than revulsion, cynicism or lurid humour) in the hearts of their audience members? Playwright Deon Johnston pushes a clichéd horror trope down a path spiked with […]
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