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.
ALL SET NIEMAND really ever wanted to be was a pianist who distinguished himself from the pack. But the universe stepped in with a more complicated reward. This nifty science fiction work penned in Afrikaans by Schalk Schoombie is certainly something to cosy up to the wireless for, […]
Remember this story on Lara Lipschitz and her hilarious and poignant series, Chin Up? Well, there’s a season three in the ether, and a thundafund opportunity for you to help. Watch this space: https://www.thundafund.com/project/chinup3
NTHIKENG MOHLELE WRITES like an angel. His material flows so smoothly that you just cannot stop reading it, drinking in all the rhythm and song of the concatenation of the words he’s chosen and how they juxtapose and interface. But there, also, lies the rub. This work, premised […]
GRAVEYARDS ARE FASCINATING and complex ciphers of values. They’re about grounding one’s memories and honouring those who are no longer with us. They’re about a level of sacredness which touches everyone at the core. This is the premise of Athol Fugard’s devastatingly potent work, The Train Driver and […]
HE’S BRUTALLY HONEST, outrageously politically incorrect and aligns farting and bum jokes with political ones. He also fits, head over heels, into a suitcase. If you haven’t yet ‘met’ Chester Missing, and heard his repartee, experienced his friends and gotten a laugh or six out of his shtick, […]
IF THE COMPLICATED plight of an intelligent woman entrapped in a domestic structure, penned in the 19th century, is the kind of tale that grabs you, don’t go out tomorrow evening. Even if you’re not a Henrik Ibsen buff, Suzanne van Wijk’s Afrikaans-language translation of the Norwegian playwright’s […]
GHOULS READY TO pilfer your soul residing at the bottom of the garden, superstition and ritual and a septic wound are the ingredients that give ‘n Voorlopige Begrafnis (a Provisional Funeral), Albert Short’s Afrikaans radio drama which broadcasts this Thursday evening, a healthy dollop of the unexpected. Blended […]
THERE’S NOTHING QUITE like a foray with the world’s most famous illicit lovers, told by young voices to young audiences. It’s like being witness to the passing on of the baton to another generation of theatre makers and it might give you goosebumps, when you see Shakespeare’s Antony […]
IF YOU COULD suspend moral and politically correct imperatives for the duration of Guy Ritchie’s 1998 comedy Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, you will absolutely relish the texture and narrative, the drama and gruff sweetness of Lee Doubell’s Afrikaans language radio drama that broadcasts on Radio Sonder […]
REMEMBER 1987? IN the flicks, it was a year of big hair and sexy killers. Glenn Close took on Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction, a film that was to forever corrupt the basically benign one-night-stand with a right dousing of psychopathology at its most sinister. The stage version […]
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