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.
MALICIOUS GOSSIP, THE quest to squeeze your body into impossible Spanx and the need to slap sticky tape on your hairline in the name of fitting in, are just a couple of the indignities that women are brainwashed to comply with, in the world in which we live. […]
WITH A RUMBLE and a splash, a bit of babelas and some office politics, episode six of Martyn Le Roux’s serialised podcast tale, Die Soutwaterheks, (The Salt Water Witch), sees Frans (Francois Coertze) being taken care of by his assistant Belinda (Annette Havenga) and while her physical appearance […]
WHAT IS A teen flick? Dealing with issues and dreams too big to fit a framework suitable for pre-adolescents, it should contain the values that feel relevant to youth, but not flow too deep or wide to be irresponsible, and yet retain a relevance that’s neither prissy nor […]
VICIOUSNESS IS OFT a convenient veil to wear in the face of extreme anguish. Playwright Simon Woods takes a rich and complex understanding of social values and their tipping points in his extraordinary play, Hansard. Coupled with incisive direction by Robert Whitehead and a give-and-take performance by Fiona […]
LOVE THAT DEFIES the sometimes dogmatic grip of convention is taken under the rich loupe of the judginess of adult children, a community’s collective sweet tooth for juicy gossip, and a writer’s ability to navigate tradition with levity. This is what you can expect in Barakat, Amy Jephta’s […]
IN EPISODE FIVE of Martyn Le Roux’s serialised podcast tale, Die Soutwaterheks, (The Salt Water Witch), we find a very drunk Frans Baker (Francois Coertze). After a night of scepticism and belief, with his friends, recounting his weird experiences at the mysterious hands of the sea storm and […]
It was any woman’s absolute worst nightmare. And it was a story that rocked South Africa to its core. In April of 1997, Celeste Nurse gave birth to her first baby at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. A beautiful little girl. Amidst the blur of giving birth […]
A SHOW WITH a gleaming singer in tight sparkly lamé and a fur boa, her memories of the hardships and joys of a life on stage, and an accompanist on piano, sticking to the world’s best standards is not a novel idea. Toss the inimitable Kate Normington into […]
LOSS. IT’S SOMETHING that has characterised so much of our emotional landscape over the past two and a half years, and yet it’s so enormous and universal and specific and intimate that none of us are able to fully cast ourselves around what it means. It’s stupendous. And […]
THE CLASSIC THING that any self-respecting ordinary guy will do after witnessing something astonishing is to take it to his buddies in the bar, for a detailed post-mortem over a drink. This is exactly what happens in episode four of Martyn Le Roux’s serialised tale Die Soutwaterheks, (The […]
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