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.
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 […]
IF YOU DIDN’T know it was true, you’d deem it unbelievable. That’s Angela Merkel’s charmed life: It fits the parameters of a classical fairy tale. Clever girl born into marginalised village grows up to see democracy happen and later to become the country’s chancellor and lead it on […]
His was the story that changed the world’s understanding of the artist’s struggle. He yearned to, but failed to find love. He yearned to, but failed to make a conventional success of life. And at 37, died a pauper, alone. And then his work rocked the art world […]
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, […]
DO YOU REMEMBER building forts with the cushions from your parents’ lounge suites and wearing your bedspread as a cloak and a colander as a helmet as you shouted loud and feral words and regally waved a ruler in the air? Alan Swerdlow’s current production of The Hobbit […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
A BUILT-UP PLACE is so much more than a dot on a map. It’s a repository of history and emotions, of architecture and lives. But how do you catch its essence: the stuff of which it is made, today and yesterday? How to you portray the energy that […]
YOU ALWAYS KNOW you’ve hit upon something huge, when the FBI comes knocking on your door. All the best thrillers contain this kind of trope. But how do you tell your closest friends about this secret before the official blokes dressed in black get wind of it? In […]
ansunecilliers
Gillian Rennie
elizhanduvenhage
erinventer02
Geoff Sifrin
henricopg
huibrechtdehart
isabeausophiajoubert
jessicajoubert
kaylamullerr
matthewvanderwalt
meereieliefde
olgalouiselemmer
Peta Kaplan
Robyn Sassen
shanelschoombee
thembanhlapoart
zainabchoonara
Recent Comments