One man alone on stage, over seven thousand times, and each time is the first time and the last time. Why? Because there is a new live audience, waiting to go wherever the player will take them. Each one happy to be left abandoned when it’s all over and the green velvet curtain has slid down into place, and cherishing the memory of the magic, ready to tell others about the passion and celebration being shared with them.
‘And so, Pieter-Dirk Uys, what do you actually do?’
Gathering wet sand
The sandcastle you’re looking at started with a title that popped into my head: The Echo of a Noise. What did it mean? Was I the echo of a noise from the past? A has-been clinging to the wreckage of a political ship that disintegrated in 1994? Possibly. Or the echo of a noise from the past that is reinventing itself for the future? Not impossible. The Echo of a Noise is a title that could mean all of those things and even more. Was it for a play? A satirical revue? Could a novel give real meaning to those words? Or another autobiographical venture into the known unknown?
I had already published two memoirs. The first, in 2002, was Elections and Erections: A Memoir of Fear and Fun, where the elections part was a collection of experiences growing up in the white paradise of Suid-Afrika then, and the erections section about confronting the reality of an epidemic that had no cure. Apartheid was the first virus I had to confront, HIV the second.
Then in 2005 came Between the Devil and the Deep: A Memoir of Acting and Reacting. The focus was on my life in theatre. Writing plays, producing them, and performing them within the two worlds that make up my life: the separate developments of yesteryear and the disconnected freedoms of today.
My musical family featured in both, as they should. My father, Hannes Uys, and my mother, Helga Bassel, hand in hand with my guardian angels, Mozart, Schumann and Chopin. Two grandmothers, one an Afrikaans matriarch, the other a gemütliche deutsche Oma. One grandfather alive in vague memory. A sister, Tessa, who became the Yin to my Yang, the accompaniment to my song, sharing my fears and fun, with battles and braais, enriched by the plaited multi-cultured linguistic koeksister of Afrikaans, English and German. So, there was really no need to venture back into that minefield of memory and musing.
As is so often the case with what one plans, the opposite happens. After explorations through photographs, albums, letters and intentions, I found myself writing about two people who without invitation elbowed their way into my narrative. A vibrant, complex, mysterious man who was not me, but my father. Pa and I had a relationship entangled and confused. Loving and loathing in equal extremes. And a woman, brash, gentle and wise, who was not my mother. Sannie Abader lived with us as the Uyses’ maid for most of her life, but she had a profound influence on my development as a small person, as Pietertjie Uys, and as a South African. These two people stepped out of the chorus line of my heritage and helped me sort out the noises that became my life.
I have consciously decided to quarantine Evita Bezuidenhout. She’s been around as what some call my ‘alter ego’ for a long time. Many think she’s all I can do. I don’t argue. I respect the goose that lays the golden eggs and hope she will never end up on my dining room table. But surely there are other noises in my life that have varying echoes. Music, never noise, a constant buzz-track to my existence, is the first inspiration. Once I have a soundtrack in my head, leading me into whatever mood I need, anything is possible. I recognise most classical music I hear, but seldom can place the composer or the name of the piece. Story of my life, I suppose, and further proof that a little knowledge can go quite a long way.
But this sandcastle, the one you’re reading, will not have the ‘most famous woman in South Africa’ up in the tower flashing her diamonds to attract the attention of the knights in shining armour below. This will be PDU, unpowdered. No props, no false eyelashes, no high heels, no security blankets. Whatever echo I expose here will be heard for the first time. So let me carefully get Mrs Bezuidenhout out of the way.
1981: An early glimpse of the wife of the National Party MP for Laagerfontein.
Send out the clown
‘Uys dons false eyelashes and presidents listen.’ Also sprach the Los Angeles Times in 2004, proving that just because she doesn’t exist, doesn’t mean she’s not real. After nearly forty years in the public domain, a creature of my making has become a legend in her own lunchtime. This was not intended. In the early 1980s she was just a character in an entertainment, without a name, part of my chorus line of characters inspired by real people, but well-enough disguised to confuse the legal teams. Censorship was then the religion of the day, more successful than anyone could imagine, thanks to all the attempts to try to fly the tattered flag of free speech – and ending up self-censoring.
Anarchy seemed to be the only response: sexual confusion, social stereotyping, ethnic colouration with a bit of obscenity, blasphemy, and terrorism; the last one was anything the authorities (and here you may also read ‘my father’) did not like. It helped having this anarchic banquet served in high heels by a familiar female that reminded many of a feared mother-in-law, a wife, a teacher or themselves. During most of those apartheid years, it was illegal for men to wear women’s clothing. It was a crime! It could result in being dragged off to jail. One endured such restrictions with a sigh and a shrug and got on with the job.
I was always fascinated by the chameleon-like talents of theatre performers, who use their voice, expressions and a disguise to disappear into a character. The make-up we applied when I was still in drama school came in the form of cigar-shaped, numbered sticks of grease paint, coloured to highlight, to shade, to blend and to contrast. I remember copying Laurence Olivier’s character Mahdi from the 1966 film Khartoum, with darkened skin, eyelashed glare and white headdress. Then Marlene Dietrich’s tour to Cape Town brought the drooping lashes and the carefully structured red-gash mouth. Somehow cheekbones appeared in the mirror where there had been none. I did characters with false noses, short hair, long hair, beards, scars and rashes. And then, just because I could, I slanted the eyes and ripened the lips to pout in the mirror at what was now my Cape Town version of the Italian woman on my wall – Sophia Loren.
Evita Bezuidenhout got her name from two people. The editor of the Sunday Express gave me a weekly column to reflect the madness of the Information Scandal that was breaking news every day, then without the immediacy of social media or tweet tornadoes. I created an Afrikaans tannie, who would be at ‘white monopoly capital’ parties in Pretoria and condemn her beloved National Party with gushing enthusiasm. The editor called me into his office.
‘How come you can write about the things I can’t even mention on the front page?’ he hissed. ‘This woman is a real Evita of Pretoria.’
The musical of the life of Argentina’s Mrs Perón had just hit the box office. After reading a biography of that remarkable, controversial woman, I knew I had a blueprint for a similar life along which my character could tiptoe.
Mrs Evita Bezuidenhout, the South African ambassador to the independent black homeland of Bapetikosweti from 1981 to 1993.
The second name came about when I had my first one-man show, Adapt or Dye. Evita appeared in a pink dress, fur coat, large picture hat and a face that launched a thousand gasps and hisses. It opened up a new area in which I could manipulate a character who was actually on the side of the enemy and who, through her familiar propaganda, could entertain as well as inform. My only rule was to not add noughts for effect; find a truth and stick to it as closely as possible. Don’t make jokes; try to make a point. A journalist interviewing me in the foyer of the Market Theatre asked if Evita had a surname. Behind him was
