Creator
Robyn Sassen
A freelance arts writer since 1998, I fell in love with the theatre as a toddler, proved rubbish as a ballerina: my starring role was as Mrs Pussy in Noddy as a seven-year-old, and earned my stripes as an academic in Fine Arts and Art History, in subsequent years. I write for a range of online and print publications, including the Sunday Times, the Mail & Guardian and artslink.co.za and was formerly the arts editor of the SA Jewish Report, a weekly newspaper with which I was associated for 16 years. This blog promises you new stories every week, be they reviews, profiles, news stories or features.
The king, Queens and MaXhosa: Ruth E Carter’s blockbuster costume designs
Ruth Carter and Laduma Ngxokolo’s collaborative costumes make ‘Coming 2 America’ easier on the eye
Review: ‘Ikhaya Likamoya’ by Sethembiso Zulu — Ties that bind us all
Multimedia journalist and healer Sethembiso Zulu’s debut solo show embraces a fierce, raw and broken timelessness that encapsulates what it means to be human
Imizwilili zika Nolufefe ‘Fefe’ Mtshabe
Chorister and opera singer Nolufefe Mtshabe inspired hundreds of pupils to uphold her legacy
SA genocide museum opens
Permanent exhibition elements are arranged to immerse visitors fully in the experience
Nita Spilhaus in the Cape: More than a picture book
Few South African art-lovers will recognise her name, but Nita Spilhaus’s work from the 1920s is like a breath of fresh air, writes Robyn Sassen
Holocaust fantasies distort truth
‘Final Solution’ balances stories of Nazi Germany and the extermination of Europe’s Jews and reveals the treatment meted out to them post-World War II
Sylvia Glasser dances to her own drum
Sylvia Glasser dared to dream the impossible during the dark days of apartheid and radically altered the landscape of SA contemporary dance.
JAG puts on show of a lifetime
The gallery is staging six exhibitions to celebrate its centenary but its future is not without problems.
An outsider’s bare act of defiance
A genderqueer artist is going boldly, goldly naked to trumpet the sacred human form.
JH Pierneef’s people-less power
One cannot dissociate Pierneef from Nationalist politics but his work defies easy categorisation and kneejerk condemnation.
Q&A Luyanda Sidiya: The seeds dance sows
Siva is an electric dance into the notion of what god is, courtesy of Standard Bank’s Young Artist winner.
Roger Cohen: We are all party to a family’s tale
The New York Times columnist remembers the life of his family in South Africa, particularly his mother June, the girl from Human Street.
Peter Schütz’s carved celestial creatures
Peter Schütz’s sculptures are not only aesthetically brilliant, they also have the power to evoke a belief in the Omnipotent.
Getting a rise out of Croissants
Jemma Kahn explains how the bawdy, basic and dark storytelling theatre came into being.
A love affair with Can Themba
A young playwright tells how the Sophiatown-era writer provided the inspiration for a new play.