In the hands of one of South African theatre’s dream teams, this is a gem of a work. Job Kubatsi and Lebohang Motaung, in minor roles, give life to the bitter jokes that lubricated black society during the darkest days of apartheid, reminiscent of the bleak humour in Dostoevsky’s novels.
WHEN A GOOD storyteller has the skill to worm their way into an established monolith of history, there’s always some meat for a fantastic story. But Ian Gabriel’s Death of a Whistleblower is a lot more than just a great yarn that cuts deliciously close to the bone […]
SHE’S TOUGH. SHE’S wise. She has everything it takes to be conversant and earn respect in the uncouth macho South African man’s world that constituted the SA Police Service in the mid-1990s. She also has what it takes to skip the light fantastic to leap into the abyss […]
SHE SAID, HE said and the vulnerable young woman servant without a voice hasn’t a chance in a context where she can be labelled one thing and hung for it. Push anyone far and ruthlessly enough with the threat of their worst fears at the price of their […]
TAKE THE GENRE of the South African farm novel, throw it in the air with all its idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies, violence and violation, broken promises and trashed dreams, and a great contemporary South African classic is born. Take the work on stage, and a different kind of magic […]
FORTY-ONE YEARS AGO, Paul Slabolepszy’s play Saturday Night at the Palace rocked the theatre-going sensibilities of South Africa. This was art so close to the mirror that it reeked and terrified. It’s enjoying a season currently at the Joburg Theatre, under the direction of Albert Maritz and it […]
THE DREADED PARKTOWN Prawn. During the late 1980s in South Africa, it was the ugliest thing you could imagine, wherever in the political spectrum you were. It was a cricket, essentially, but very big and thorny of leg. It was orange and black in body and built like […]
ONE OF THE ingredients necessary in every generation is a voice of fire. Particularly if it is a generation beset by hurt. Sandile Dikeni had that inimitable quality. A poet, an arts editor and a man of words who originated in a thirsty Karoo hamlet in an apartheid-stained […]
Take an old and revolting story of disrespect and abuse, of entrenched behaviour and broken dreams. Put it into the mouth and sensibilities of young filmmakers and you may find yourself in the presence of an unexpected bit of pure poetry. This is what you can anticipate in […]
WHEN YOU WATCH a small child being exposed to the magic of theatre, you can believe in anything. Joyce Levinsohn, one of Johannesburg’s children’s theatre pioneers, understood this magic and this ability to believe, from the inside out. The founder of the city’s oldest traditional children’s theatre, she […]
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