Adapt or Fly — reflecting on the collective long walk to laughter
Audience members hear what they have just read on their iPhones, writes Pieter-Dirk Uys
Now in my 71st year, it felt right for me to have the courage to step out of the fantasies of Evita Bezuidenhout, Bambi Kellermann, Nowell Fine, the Bothas, the Mandelas, the Zumas and the rest of my satirical cluster, and tell the stories behind the story. So, I took a deep breath and ventured into this minefield without the usual security blankets of wigs, eyelashes, make-up, carnations or rosettes. The Echo of a Noise is just me telling my audience the ups and downs of an unfamiliar journey: growing up in the SA of the 50s, 60s and 70s surrounded by a Eurocentric culture of music, art, facts and fiction, while discovering a forbidden world of African treasures: stories, languages, a struggle, a system of separate development and a hidden photo under the mattress of Prisoner 466/64. My parents gave me the basis on which I built my life: humour, music, fun and many denials. I only found out my mother was Jewish after her death. Then the theatre hijacked me and I have been in life i...
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