While most other children were spending their time in school playgrounds, Redda Sarsawe was earning a living for his family by working as a carpenter. "I left school five years ago," says the 14-year-old from Hagar Aswad, an impoverished suburb south of Damascus. "My parents didn’t give me any money for books, so I started working."
Using improvisation and getting actors to play themselves, the new television series <i>Sorted </i> promises to remove the affectedness characteristic of local comedy, reports Nadine Botha.
Irene Stephanou’s heartwarming play about life in a Greek corner café recently opened at the Market Theatre and it seems Greek South Africans are going mainstream. Matthew Krouse wonders why.
<b>CD OF THE WEEK: </b>On his sophomore offering, <i>Late Registration</i>, rapper/producer Kanye West treads similar ground to his inaugural release <i>College Dropout</i>, albeit slightly more refined, writes Kwanele Sosibo.
<b>AUTHOR’S NOTES</b>: Dion Chang’s Gloria cartoons have appeared in <i>Elle</i> magazine over the years and now grace the pages of his tongue-in-cheek book of tips, <i>Gloria’s Guide to Fabulousness</i>. He speaks to ZA@Play.
Hamburgers are to Cape Town cuisine what coloureds are to South African racial politics — everybody has an opinion on what defines the perfect hamburger. Chris Roper tries his best to hunt down the best hamburger in Cape Town.
How could he do it? How could Zinedine Zidane, captain of the French soccer team, regarded as the best player of his generation and in the final match of an illustrious career, headbutt an opponent and hand victory to an Italian side playing for penalties?
It was seven minutes before half time. Real Madrid were 2-0 down against already relegated opponents in May 2004, when David Beckham tackled Real Murcia’s Luis Garcia. The England captain thought the tackle was clean but the linesman flagged for a foul. Leaping to his feet, the Dagenham-born galactico unleashed a volley of idiomatic Spanish, calling the official a ”hijo de puta [son of a whore]”.
The Simpsons are a famously dysfunctional family from small-town America, but suddenly they have all learned Arabic and started talking like Egyptians, reports Brian Whitaker.
Wataru Tsurumi sparked outrage more than a decade ago with his handbook on how to commit suicide. Now, he says, Japan is finally addressing an issue it long turned a blind eye to. The Complete Manual of Suicide, which was published in 1993 and has sold more than a million copies, has created the momentum for the start of public discussions on the issue, he said.