Steve Kretzmann
The journ and drama departments at Rhodes used to share the same building, and I became curious about these oddities who shared the same verandah with us while we smoked our cigarettes there outside the Rhodes Theatre. They seemed to have a lot more fun. Been writing about arts, mostly theatre, ever since.
Sarah Roberson
I stumbled into the drama world via a preference in primary school for reading stories and singing (badly) and using my imagination rather than hurling spherical objects around on patches of mowed grass. Cue a couple of school plays on the CV, cue reading for Drama at UCKAR under several gurus who taught me heaps and loads about this whole live arts, theatre, dance, performancey-stuff story. They and my peers also cracked open debates and thinking about if and why the hell it does or should matter… thanks all ya’ll. Cue working in arts management & fundraising for several years and witnessing first-hand all the beautiful and ugly sides to this industry of which we all can’t seem to get enough. Cue 2012: the year of my last performance gig and the year I joined The Critter (then Artsblog). Ever since, have put the above to good use whilst scribbling ideas and opinions on this thing we call The Arts.
Mike Loewe
The National Arts Festival is one of few remaining truly free spaces for artistic creative freedom and that is why it is a fine starting point for myself. I am not an arts critic. I am more of an arts writer. I am interested in my intuitive response to work and thanks to 24 festivals, 22 in a row, I feel released enough to go with the flow. Did I get the narrative? Did it matter? Did it move me in an unexpected way? Did I learn something? A new fact, feeling, a piece of history or principle which moved others many years before me? I have come to seek out the new, the original, the unthinkable, but mainly to learn, find out about everything. I was shocked, nah, stunned by my first festival. The piece on the horrors of conscription did not call for an end to conscription (our thing back then), and the actor, Nicky Rebelo, was utterly disdainful of my complaint. It’s art. Long live!
Nkgopoleng Moloi: I am a writer and an MA student in contemporary curatorial practices at Wits University. Using archives and exhibition histories, my research explores womxn’s mobility —attempting to understand and draw attention to factors that enhance or inhibit womxn’s freedom of movement. Writing is a tool I employ to understand the world around me and to explore the things I am excited and intrigued by, particularly history, art, language and architecture.
Dave Mann is a writer and arts journalist currently living and working in Johannesburg.
Mia Arderne is a Cape Town-based writer with bylines in the Mail & Guardian and New Frame among others. Her debut novel Mermaid Fillet was published by Kwela in 2020. She grew up obsessed with Hair and District 6, went on to study Drama and Philosophy at Rhodes, and currently sticks to the written word.
Nondumiso Lwazi Msimanga is a performance artist and provocateur. Known for her public arts activism as co-creator of SA’s Dirty Laundry, she has performed at festivals and public spaces. Currently a PhD student at UCT and a twice-writing fellow with the Institute of the Creative Arts, Nondumiso freelances as a performance and cultural critic. She is also the curator of the
Theatre Think Tank; with the Market Theatre Laboratory in collaboration with the NIHSS.
Percy Mabandu is a South African writer, artist, and avid jazz record collector. He is the author of the book, Yakhal’inkomo – Portrait of a Jazz Classic.
loved Kretzmanns review of PDUs Sell By Date. Many of my friends sadly missed the deliberate baring of vulnerability that made this show so remarkable. Uys’s willingness to reflect on his characters over time was a treat.