The room you enter is crushingly ordinary. As the lights are dimmed and the instruments are fired up, magic erupts. Listening to the Image, an event which forced you to listen to a visual artwork with more than just your ears, not only presented four splinteringly fine new […]
The Afrikaans language is rich in talent – poets and authors, performers and playwrights. There’s a deep and full tradition of radio drama in Afrikaans as there is a history of children of Afrikaans heritage being schooled in the traditional performing arts and being audience members at ballets […]
It’s not every day that you come across a life story as shattering and empowering as that of classical ballerina Michaela DePrince. It’s also not every day that you encounter a first person narrative told with such unabashed freshness that leaves you with goosebumps on every page. On […]
Would you be interested in reading a blow by blow account of my sex life? How quickly would you lose interest? Writing about sexual encounters in the first person is dangerous: too much info and the words and their credibility part ways. And too much info about as […]
Victorian painter JMW Turner (1775-1851) may have been a curmudgeonly philanderer in his personal life, but he certainly doesn’t warrant the indignity of this insufferable film, Mr Turner, directed by Mike Leigh and on the art-film circuit in South Africa, at the moment. While a good part of […]
From the outset this book shrieks its presence into your awareness. Oy vey my child is gay (and an addict) are the words emblazoned in shocking pink across the face of a beautiful toddler. From the first time you see this book, you might find it sensationalist and […]
The scourge of sexual violence behind closed doors in affluent, educated and God-fearing society might be considered a topic so well covered in contemporary times that it has become hackneyed. But Marilyn Cohen de Villiers has debuted with a most extraordinarily powerful novel that will not let you […]
A tale of the relentless complexity of sibling lives and how they can intertwine and contradict and hurt each other, under the devastating pall of apartheid, just before democracy, Five Lives at Noon is a real page turner. Meersman has created a bevy of characters which populate this […]
Picture the scenario: the scene is cast, with a fabulous director, a seasoned duo of performers and a tuned piano. Chairs are placed, the tone is set. And then the power goes down. “It’s scheduled!” yell some. “It’s not!” yell others. But still, it’s dark as pitch, and […]
From the moment band leader Tshepo Mngoma lets rip into his electronic violin, in the opening number Bungazani, you are convinced that this anthology of music, theatre, dance and poetry will be extraordinary. And you won’t be wrong, but Ketekang is not without decision-making flaws, which bruise its […]
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