Hennie Aucamp

(1934-March 2014) Prolific and highly regarded writer of Afrikaans short stories, poetry, cabarets, plays, sketches, lyrics.

Biography

Born Hendrik Christoffel Lourens Aucamp on 20 Januarie 1934 in the Eastern Cape town of Dordrecht, raised on the farm Rust-mijn-ziel on the Stormberg highlands, in the district of Jamestown, where he also went to school and matriculated in 1951. He had one sister, Rina.

Training

Studied at the University of Stellenbosch from 1952, obtaining a BA degree (1955teaching diploma in 1957, a Masters degree in 1958. In 1963 he set out for Belgium on a study bursary, attending the University of Leuven and completing a doctorate, concentrating on aspects of teaching literature at high school level - a field in which he would work at the University of Stellenbosch. In this period he was also exposed to the theatre of Europe,

Career

Between 1959-1962 he taught in Stellenbosch, Jamestown, Cradock and Rondebosch, twice also acting as temporary lecturer in the Education Department at the University of Stellenbosch. He would later become a permanent lecturer and professor in the faculty of Education at the same university, also teaching creative writing skills. remaining there till his retirement in ***.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

Though he wrote a number of plays, and was an influential critic of theatre and performance, a mentor to new writers and a judge for numerous contests and awards (inter alia for the Fleur du Cap Awards), his most important contribution to South African theatre must be his espousal of Kabaret, the Afrikaans verions of the pre-war German, French and Dutch political cabaret as a vehicle for resistance and protest among Afrikaans writers. His texts in this regard still remain some of the prime examples of the genre. He was particularly influenced by the Weimar period and the work of Bertolt Brecht.

Sources

http://www.litnet.co.za/Article/hennie-aucamp-1934

HAUM, 1974. Stellenbosse Galery, p.11.

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Besides a few of short plays (including a youth work Die Appel written at 16, and the popular Jan Blom Dans ‘n Mazurka, Blomtyd is Bloeityd , Sjampanje 1988), many of his Afrikaans cabarets (styled a Kabaret in Afrikaans) were developed and produced in association with Herman Pretorius of the University of Stellenbosch Drama Department - and have been seminal in establishing the genre and influencing a large number of other writers, and many of the songs have become classic Afrikaans chansons. The cabarets are: Met permissie gesê (lit. "Said with your permission")(1980); Slegs vir Almal (lit. "Only for everyone")(1986); Blomtyd is Bloeityd (1987), Teen Latenstyd (1997) Oudisie! (1991), Wie gryp kry ‘n handvol (1994), and Sewe Doodsondes ("Seven Deadly Sins") (199*). Aucamp has also written wquaite a subnstantial body of theory around his notions of the cabaret - or Kabaret as he calls it. He has won the Hertzog Prize for Literature ** times, and received an Honarary Doctorate from the University of Stellenbosch in 1999.

Sources

See South African Theatre Journal Vol.8 No 2 1994 (Special issue: Cabaret, edited by Herman Pretorius)

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