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. This blog promises you new stories every week, be they reviews, profiles, news stories or features.
BETHANY DICKSON AND Kenneth Meyer are the two best reasons you need to see Matilda: The Musical. This internationally feted production which pushes kids to their very limits boasts polish and cohesion, humour, cruelty, victory and madness, is bruised by sound design, in the Johannesburg venue. Matilda is […]
AN ELDERLY WOMAN is found dead in her aviary and the police are summoned to investigate. Thus begins to unfurl a mystery that will keep you leaning in to your wireless until the very end. William Oosthuizen’s gently creepy Afrikaans-language radio play with a strong moral core, Die […]
PREMISED IN THE kind of sing-song voice that you might attribute to the retelling of a bible story, The Season of Glass is a fictional vessel for messianic prophecy, focusing on the birth of twins. But it’s not that simple. As you plunge into this complicated tale of […]
RESPECT. YOU RECOGNISE it as you look at the children, the dispossessed, the poor, the street-friendly, the felons in Jodi Bieber’s photographs. It derives from the photographer. It’s a source of nutrition infused in how the subject exists in her frame. Curated by Reney Warrington, Rosebank’s Foto.Za gallery […]
IT IS NEVER the story itself; it’s how you tell it that makes a tale sing. Damien Chazelle’s film First Man, which celebrates the story of Neil Armstrong – the world’s first man on the moon – fits this bill perfectly. It’s the tale of not only a […]
THERE’S STILL TIME to change your plans today and go and see what is arguably the finest piece of dance that has graced Johannesburg’s stages in a long while. Dark Cell, choreographed by Themba Mbuli and Fana Tshabalala is a contemplation on the horror of political incarceration. Focused […]
ARGUABLY THE CHILDREN’S classic with the most, Le Petit Prince was penned and illustrated in 1943 by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. It was one of the last gestures he made to the world before he disappeared in what is presumed a war incident. Now, 75 years later, this tender, […]
RAISING IS CHILD is a complicated exercise. More so if you’re firmly entrenched in your own sense of how things should be, if you have the old Afrikaner’s perspective on apartheid, hunting and violence as a backdrop and if the ostensible position of everyone in your life seems […]
HE WAS MORE than just a dancer, choreographer and artistic director. Lucky Kele was an interpreter of dance dreams, a man with a real passion for making things happen in the dance fraternity, and for pushing dance boundaries. Known by so many as ‘King’, Kele tragically passed away […]
“THE MOST IMPORTANT thing to remember is to be ready to give up what you are for what you might become”, the timeless words of American civil rights activist WEB du Bois were close to the heart and value system of Shoki Mokgapa. An actress, theatre activist and […]
Geoff Sifrin
Robyn Sassen
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