On
Behind The Name tonight:
Episode 7: Pieter Dirk Uys
Broadcast Date: 17 October, 2007
This week Nicky Greenwall chats to the man behind South Africa’s famously funny aunt, Tannie Evita, Pieter Dirk Uys and finds out what it means to be a true entertainer.
Closely associated with both the Space Theatre in Cape Town and Johannesburg Market Theatre during the 1970s and 1980s, Pieter has written and performed in more than 20 plays and over 30 revues and one man shows both locally and internationally. His performance of the satirical play ‘Foreign Aids’ at La Mama received the Obie Award in New York in 2004.
Pieter lives in the small town of Darling, near Cape Town and it is here that he has converted the old railway station into a cabaret venue called ‘Evita se Perron (Perron is Afrikaans for ‘station platform’). It is the domain of Evita Bezuidenhout, Pieter’s most famous creation and ‘the most famous white woman in South Africa’. She made her stage debut in Pieter’s 1976 classic “Selle Ou Storie”.
Pieter penned Evita‘s biography A Part Hate A Part Love. His most recently published book Between the Devil and the Deep - a memoir about acting and reacting, coincided with his 60th birthday and Tannie Evita’s 70th in September 2005.
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