Pieter-Dirk Uys

Pieter-Dirk Uys (1945-) is a South African actor, director, dramatist, impersonator, comedian, political satirist and author. His personal website describes him as "author, actor and activist". [1]

Biography

Youth

Uys was born in Cape Town on 28 September 1945, went to school and grew up there.

Training

He matriculated from Nassau High School in Mowbray, Cape Town after which he completed a BA degree at the University of Cape Town Drama Department. His university lecturers included Rosalie van der Gucht, Mavis Taylor and Robert Mohr. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he studied at the London Film School [2].

Career

Uys started working as a freelance playwright, actor and stage director in Cape Town in the 1970s. His early plays, like Popcorn (1973), Selle Ou Storie (1974), Pity About People (1974), God's Forgotten (1975) and Karnaval (1975) all premiered at the Space Theatre in Cape Town. Over the years he continued writing, directing and often acting in his own material all over South Africa and abroad. While at film school in London he played a role in drag for the first time, as a milkmaid in an advertising film he produced as a student project and he later became particularly well-known in South Africa for the character Evita Bezuidenhout (also known as Tannie Evita), a white Afrikaner socialite and political activist, which he created and plays himself on stage, television and film. He later settled in Darling, in the Western Cape, where he converted the old, disused, railway station into a cabaret venue called Evita se Perron (perron is Afrikaans for station platform) [3], where he stages productions and performs himself regularly.

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

As a drama student

As a student at UCT Pieter-Dirk Uys (under the name Pieter Uys) played a part in Little Malcolm and his Struggle against the Eunuchs by David Halliwell at the Little Theatre in 1967 with Peter Kruger and Wilson Dunster and directed by Mavis Taylor. While at the London Film School he wrote and produced Faces in the Wall.

Space Theatre in the 1970s

He returned to South Africa to join the Space Theatre as a very active actor, writer and stage director.

As a Freelancer

After his spell with The Space he became a freelancer in the performing arts in South Africa and abroad. Initially a performer and playwright, he continued to make his name with bilingual realist comedies and tragedies with a strong political message, set in Cape Town. He gradually started focusing on stand-up satires. These include the immensely popular and long running satire Die Van Aardes van Grootoor (lit “The Van Aardes [i.e. ‘those of the earth’] of Big Ear”) at the Baxter Theatre and Market Theatre – where he opened the Laager in 1978, Adapt or Dye (1981), Hell is for Whites Only (1982), Die Vleiroos (the first Afrikaans play commissioned for the Grahamstown Festival’s main festival, 1992), No Space on Long Street (a celebration of the Space Theatre, performed in the Baxter in 1997.

Towards the end of the 1970s he began doing impersonations of South African politicians and creating a number of popular characters, the most notable being Evita Bezuidenhout, whose persona became so strong that she finally became Uys’s public alter ego. Evita has had a string of productions of her own, including a TV chat show for a while. (See also: Evita Bezuidenhout).

Over the years Pieter-Dirk Uys has performed a large number of one-man shows, including Farce About Uys, Hell is for Whites Only, Adapt or Dye, One Man, One Volt, Tannie Evita Praat Kaktus, An Audience With Pieter-Dirk Eish! and others.

In August 1978 he opened The Laager, a small theatre space in the Market Theatre, in the venue formally known as the Market Café. The opening production was his Die Van Aardes van Grootoor, directed by Dawie Malan and starring Uys, Magda Beukes, Johan Botha, Lida Botha, Antoinette Kellermann, Nomsa Nene and Rina Nienaber.

In 1995 he moved to the town of Darling [4], 75 km from Cape Town, where he bought the old station and built Evita se Perron (“Evita’s Station Platform”), a small theatre and restaurant complex where he performs regularly, often as Evita Bezuidenhout. Over the years Uys has toured extensively, nationally and internationally, to wide acclaim. He has also recorded and filmed a number of his shows, and has (as Evita) hosted his own TV show.

Another facet of his work is the enormous amount of charity and community work he has done to create understanding, tolerance and health awareness.