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Pieter-Dirk Uys born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1945 has been in the
theatre since the mid-1960s. Closely associated with both the Space
Theatre in Cape Town and Johannesburg Market Theatre during the 1970s and
1980s, he has written and performed 20 plays and over 30 revues and
one-man shows throughout South Africa and abroad. His plays ‘Paradise
is closing down’, ‘Panorama’, ‘God’s Forgotten’, ‘Faces in the Wall’, and
‘Just like Home’ have been performed internationally, and his one-man
shows ‘Adapt or Dye’, ‘One Man One Volt’, ‘You ANC Nothing Yet’, ‘Truth
Omissions’, ‘Live from Boerassic Park’, ‘Dekaffirnated’, and ‘Foreign
Aids’ have been presented in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany,
Holland, USA, and Canada. His performance of ‘Foreign Aids’ at La Mama
received the Obie Award in New York in 2004.
Most of his satirical work is available in South Africa on video and so,
in spite of government censorship during apartheid, he built up a very
large multiracial audience. Members of the present democratic Parliament
remember seeing his videos in prison and in exile! He has been seen on
SATV since the late 1970s in a variety of programmes, including a special
called ‘An Uys up my Sleeve’, ‘One Man One Volt’ which was to be screened
prior to the 1994 Election but held back for ten months, ‘You ANC Nothing
Yet’ in 1996 and ‘The Great Comedy Trek’ in 2004. The series featuring Nowell Fine in a saga from 1976 to 2004 - ‘Going Down Gorgeous’ screened
towards the end of the last century. ‘Foreign Aids’ was recently screened
on Aids Day 1 December.
He has also written Evita Bezuidenhout’s biography ‘A Part Hate A Part
Love’, as well as a book based on his 1994 MNET 12-part television series
‘Funigalore’, in which Evita Bezuidenhout, his most famous invention,
interviewed the new democratic leaders, including Nelson Mandela. His most
recent novel ‘Trekking to Teema’ was South Africa’s first Internet Book,
before being published in ‘tree-format’. A memoir of fear and fun,
‘Elections & Erections’, has recently been launched and his new play
‘Auditioning Angels’ premiered in July 2003. A new volume of memoirs
‘Between the Devil and the Deep’ is being prepared for late 2005.
Pieter-Dirk Uys has been doing this sort of thing for so long, people
refer to it as a career. Officially unemployed since the early 1970s, he
writes, directs, acts, produces and does everything else, including the
making of dresses and the wearing for them! Having survived the mediocrity
of ‘apartheid kultuur’, it is his therapy and joy to expose the bones of
that dinosaur for the entertainment of democratic audiences worldwide. He
is also delighted to still have a government who on a daily basis write
his best material!
He was awarded South Africa’s prestigious Truth and Reconciliation Award
in 2001, as well as honorary degrees from Rhodes University (D.Litt. Hon.
1997), the University of Cape Town (D.Litt.Hon. 2003), the University of
the Western Cape (D.Edu.Hon. 2003) and the University of the Witwatersrand
(D.Litt.Hon 2004) Evita Bezuidenhout proudly received the Living Legacy
2000 Award in San Diego USA.
During the last four years he has been travelling around South Africa,
visiting over 500 schools and one million school children, as well as
prisons and reformatories, with a free AIDS-awareness entertainment called
‘For Facts Sake!’. He has also released a corporate AIDS-information video
(‘Having Sex with Pieter-Dirk Uys) as well as one for the family
(‘Survival Aids’) His new one-man satire celebrating 10 years of
democracy, ‘The End is Naai’ has been performed throughout South Africa
and abroad as ‘Elections & Erections’. His 2005 show is called ‘Icons & Aikonas’.
Pieter-Dirk Uys lives in a small town near Cape Town on the West Coast of
South Africa called Darling. There he has converted the old railway
station into a cabaret venue called ‘Evita se Perron’ (Perron is Afrikaans
for ‘station platform’). It has two theatres, a restaurant/bar, arts and
craft market and a satirical garden called Boerassic Park, and is the
domain of Evita Bezuidenhout, the ‘most famous white woman in South
Africa’. She made her stage debut in Uys’s 1976 classic
‘Selle ou Storie’ in late 2004, while her sister Bambi Kellermann starred
in ‘Same old Story’.
His latest book ‘Between the Devil and the Deep – a memoir about acting
and reacting’ will be published by Zebra/Struik in September 2005 to
coincide with his 60th birthday (and Mrs Bezuidenhout’s 70th). Summer
School Programme contribution
- Tannie Evita Praat Kaktus
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