Researched by Robyn Jordaan COMPLETE WITH HER freshly applied lipstick and her internal fierceness in the face of the ordinary, Christine Basson shied from the light of media sensationalism, but had the temerity to take on some of South African theatre’s most controversial roles luminously. She raised a […]
THE DIRTY IDEOLOGY of apartheid was enforced on many levels. It saw the ignominious burial of grotesque secrets. Some more deeply than others. Indeed some of those secrets were never sufficiently exhumed for general access, not at the time, not during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and not […]
WHAT WOULD MAKE a man risk his life by balancing precariously on one hand with his legs above him, on a rain-soaked ledge of a building high above a city half covered by mist? That’s what acrobat Hans Prignitz did in 1948 in Hamburg, as a favour to […]
TRIBUTE TO TONY BIRD RESEARCHED BY CHELSEA BARTON. THE SINGER/SONG-WRITER WITH the courage to apologise to Africa, who knew how to sing the songs of its landscapes, Tony Bird brought wisdom and activism to local youth before it was fashionable to do so. Considered by British music journalist […]
TRIBUTE TO LAVONA DE BRUYN BY OLGA-LOUISE LEMMER. SHE WAS A woman with an epic level of complete enthusiasm for life: An artist and a social activist, a theatre practitioner and a teacher who touched so many lives and gave them direction, this was Lavona de Bruyn, who […]
TRIBUTE TO RAYMOND LOUW BY SHANEL SCHOOMBEE. A MAN OF his word, arguably the king of newspaper acumen in South Africa, Raymond Louw was fondly known as Mr Press Freedom. He was bold and brave in working with the press as an anti-apartheid instrument and a dedicated force […]
BOOK REVIEW: BETRAYAL BY JONATHAN ANCER. IT’S EASY TO judge someone proven to be in the wrong, someone unmasked and publicly shamed. It’s easy to tut-tut about someone’s malleability in the face of complicated lures. It’s also easy to voice judgemental opinions through the gauze of history, and […]
FILM REVIEW: VOËLVRY — THE MOVIE. THEY WERE MORE than just angry young Afrikaans-speaking men. Musicians of the ilk of Johannes Kerkorrel, James Phillips, Koos Kombuis, Bernoldus Niemand, Willem Möller and others had the edge that could force change in a country locked down by blind racist imperatives. […]
REVIEW: AFRIKAANS RADIO DRAMA: DIE SWERFJARE VAN POPPIE NONGENA. THE POTENT TREASURE of the complicated situation of standing still in a place where history is in the making, turning and swirling on itself and all that it may mean to future generations feels particularly prescient in this age […]
THEATRE REVIEW: RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS WITH A POTENT nod in the direction of the 1981 classic South African play, Woza Albert!, Mike van Graan’s Return of the Ancestors is a provocative essay on what has become of the world in which we exist. It offers a premise […]
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