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Author Archives

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.

How to fiddle when your world is crumbling

SAY THE WORD ‘Fiddler’ in the film context to virtually anyone you meet, and they will know exactly what you mean. Fiddler on the Roof is like Van Gogh’s ear or Beethoven’s Fifth, in a broader cultural sphere. It’s also up there as the pinnacle of shlock culture […]

Garbed to a T

WHAT ARE YOU wearing right now? Does it pinch and bunch, ride and give you a pain where it shouldn’t? Does it make you feel like a million dollars, nevertheless? Or does it feel delicious but whatever you do, don’t catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror, […]

Present absences and men of war

DO YOU REMEMBER the cultural imperative in South Africa? The thing that you had to see, at all costs, whether it was an opera or an exhibition, a performance or an event? Kentridge’s The Head and the Load evokes this artistic urgency among South Africans, that is at […]

Tricks and balances

WHAT ARE THE odds that a hefty dose of chicanery, some treachery and a handful of sluttery will win the day? In Cat & Monkey, a work rewritten for stage based on the eponymous de la Fontaine fable of the 15th century, Danielle Retief and Rowlen von Gericke […]

Lessons in laughter at devils

AS YOU PUT your hands together in salute of this theatre work, and shift yourself to stand in loyal ovation, you are celebrating and honouring not only this particular theatre work, but the treasure that Pieter-Dirk Uys is to this country. It’s a feeling that floods through the […]