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.
LET’S FACE IT: our inimitable icons of stage and screen are aging. They’re still beautiful, they’re still sexy and they still have what it takes. Thank goodness the film industry is capable of recognising this and of granting performers such as Judi Dench, Meryl Streep, Annette Bening, Julie Walters […]
IT’S A GREAT rarity for a child actor who wows his audience to go away and come back to the industry all grown up and wow some more. This is exactly what you get in Paul McGuigan’s film Film stars don’t die in Liverpool, which features Jamie Bell […]
IT TAKES A special kind of perspective and balance to be able to tell a story involving a child as adorable and articulate as young Will Tilston, without ramping up the cute factor and drowning in saccharine. Simon Curtis, director of Goodbye Christopher Robin achieves this significantly well, […]
ARGENTINE WRITER JORGE Luis Borges (1899-1986) did it. Italian philosopher Umberto Eco (1932-2016) did it. And now, there’s South African philosopher Leonhard Praeg with his debut novel weaving together a tale of self-reflection and intrigue; philosophy, politics and coincidence, to say nothing of love and tragedy in a […]
WHEN OLD AGE and its vagaries come under the inestimable loupe of Pieter-Dirk Uys, you may believe you’re in for a laugh-a-second experience with a sharp and bitter edge, and you will not be wrong, but the tears fall amid the laughter, which sometimes sours on your face. […]
“HAVE YOU SEEN Green Man Flashing?” was a statement uttered with urgency everywhere you went in 2004/5. It was a play that rocked South African society’s equilibrium when it first saw light of day. One of the first works from the pen of Mike van Graan, it fitted the […]
“WHAT MATTERS MOST is how well you walk through the fire”, wrote American poet Charles Bukowski. His passionate, angry words in plain language are woven through Afrikaans-language radio play Springgety (Spring Tides) with wisdom and dexterity. This tale about depression and guilt, suicide and the ultimate (but not […]
ONE OF THE ironies of being alive in this world is that in order to survive, you lie. You lie about everything, actually. All the time. If you feel bad or sad or ill or depressed, you lie by smiling in the face of deep sadness. You cover […]
THE FACT THAT James Ivory’s screenplay for Call Me By Your Name got this year’s Oscar nod seems like the Academy Awards was trying to bend over backwards for LGBTI issues. The irony is that this pretty, pretty film, which goes under the guise of being LGBTI-sensitive, nay […]
“I’M ABOUT LIVING, loving and sharing,” South African actor Bronwyn van Graan described herself on her facebook page. A performer who was relentless in plumbing the depths to find work in the South African theatre industry, and to do so with characteristic energy and always a smile on […]
ansunecilliers
beckkglass
Chester Miggels
Gillian Rennie
elizhanduvenhage
erinventer02
Geoff Sifrin
godukazinobulali
henricopg
huibrechtdehart
isabeausophiajoubert
jessicajoubert
Kapisha Ramraj
kaylamullerr
matthewvanderwalt
meereieliefde
olgalouiselemmer
Palesa Moore
Peta Kaplan
Robyn Sassen
Saleemah Shaik
saleemahsketches
shanelschoombee
thembanhlapoart
Willem Pieter
zainabchoonara
Recent Comments