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.
AFRIKAANS RADIO DRAMA REVIEW: CLASS CLASHES CAN happen in the funniest and most brittle of contexts. This is what you can expect in Pap en Kaviaar, play that broadcasts on Thursday 1 April at 8pm on Radio Sonder Grense, opening the station’s new season of radio theatre. Featuring […]
THE SKILL OF representing inner dialogue and spooky intuitions on film is a complex, almost philosophical, one. How do you, without labouring the idea, tell your viewer what you need them to understand by what you are showing them? Melding past, present and future, with future imperfect and […]
VERY RARELY, YOU might be lucky enough to have a film cross your radar that presents you with an understanding of the intrinsic value of telling stories so much that you feel the need to speak of it in whispers. It’s like a sacred entity has been brought […]
CONVENTIONALLY, YOU MAY think of the horror genre, and the images that pop into your head will derive from western culture: Of vampires and werewolves and centuries-old gothic houses that creak and grumble under old untold tales. But we’re in Africa, and the yarns that unfurl here, can […]
IT TAKES A tremendous amount of skill and wisdom – as well as, of course, courage – to be able to tear and resew the traditional fabric of a novel and turn it inside out, tossing convention to the ether. Will, the passenger delaying flight …, may well […]
THE FIRST TIME you read this book, instinctively, you know you must be very careful. To cite Julian Schnabel’s film Basquiat: you might be looking at Van Gogh’s ear. This is the kind of metaphor that Lynn Joffe’s debut novel, The Gospel According to Wanda B. Lazarus presents. […]
WHEN YOU LOOK at – or remember – footage of Lindiwe Ndlovu, be it in the context of the terrifying ‘Sharon’ in the prison series Lockdown, ‘Sponono’, an ex-convict with her convictions close to her heart in Zabalaza, the inimitable ‘Patjutju’ in Uzalo among other characters, you see […]
Shorter than most, and the youngest of all, Portia Lebohang Mashigo came into the South African dance fraternity when she was just 14. Armed with an inherent sense of wisdom and focus, she grew up in the industry to be a giant of a dance professional. She died […]
ALONGSIDE AN ALL-ABIDING fear of social interaction on every conceivable level, the coronavirus pandemic has brought us – particularly us in the arts industries – dire concerns about the very income that keeps body and soul together. On 15 January 2021, South Africa’s current minister of sports, arts […]
YOU NEED TO quietly gather your sensibilities when you find yourself in the presence of sheer perfection. Several decades ago, theatre practitioner Margot Luyt directed Peter Shaffer’s enormous Mozartian play, Amadeus. It had been translated into Afrikaans and reworked for radio by Nerina Ferreira. This completely flawless rendition […]
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