FROM PDU.CO.ZA

Pieter-Dirk Uys born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1945, has been in the theatre since the mid-1960s. Closely associated with both the Space Theatre in Cape Town and Johannesburg Market Theatre during the 1970s and 1980s, he has written and performed 20 plays and over 30 revues and one-man shows throughout South Africa and abroad.

His plays ‘Paradise is closing down’, ‘Panorama’, ‘God’s Forgotten’, ‘Faces in the Wall’, and ‘Just like Home’ have been performed internationally, and his one-man shows ‘Adapt or Dye’, ‘One Man One Volt’, ‘You ANC Nothing Yet’, ‘Truth Omissions’, ‘Live from Boerassic Park’, ‘Dekaffirnated’, and ‘Foreign Aids’ have been presented in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Holland, USA, and Canada. His performance of ‘Foreign Aids’ at La Mama received the Obie Award in New York in 2004.

Most of his satirical work is available in South Africa on video and so, in spite of government censorship during apartheid, he built up a very large multiracial audience. Members of the present democratic Parliament remember seeing his videos in prison and in exile!

He has been seen on SATV since the late 1970s in a variety of programmes, including a special called ‘An Uys up my Sleeve’, ‘One Man One Volt’ which was to be screened prior to the 1994 Election but held back for ten months, ‘You ANC Nothing Yet’ in 1996 and ‘The Great Comedy Trek’ in 2004. The series featuring Nowell Fine in a saga from 1976 to 2004 - ‘Going Down Gorgeous’ screened towards the end of the last century. 'Foreign Aids' was recently screened on Aids Day 1 December.

He has also written Evita Bezuidenhout’s biography ‘A Part Hate A Part Love’, as well as a book based on his 1994 MNET 12-part television series ‘Funigalore’, in which Evita Bezuidenhout, his most famous invention, interviewed the new democratic leaders, including Nelson Mandela. His most recent novel ‘Trekking to Teema’ was South Africa’s first Internet Book, before being published in ‘tree-format’. A memoir of fear and fun, ‘Elections & Erections’, has recently been launched and his new play ‘Auditioning Angels’ premiered in July 2003.

Pieter-Dirk Uys has been doing this sort of thing for so long, people refer to it as a career. Officially unemployed since the early 1970s, he writes, directs, acts, produces and does everything else, including the making of dresses and the wearing for them! Having survived the mediocrity of ‘apartheid kultuur’, it is his therapy and joy to expose the bones of that dinosaur for the entertainment of democratic audiences worldwide. He is also delighted to still have a government who on a daily basis write his best material!

He was awarded South Africa’s prestigious Truth and Reconciliation Award in 2001, as well as honourary degrees from Rhodes University (D.Litt. Hon. 1997), the University of Cape Town (D.Litt.Hon. 2003), the University of the Western Cape (D.Edu.Hon. 2003) and the University of the Witwatersrand (D.Litt.Hon 2004) Evita Bezuidenhout proudly received the Living Legacy 2000 Award in San Diego USA.

During the last four years he has been travelling around South Africa, visiting over 500 schools and one million school children, as well as prisons and reformatories, with a free AIDS-awareness entertainment called ‘For Facts Sake!’. He has also released a corporate AIDS-information video (‘Having Sex with Pieter-Dirk Uys) as well as one for the family (‘Survival Aids’) His new one-man satire celebrating 10 years of democracy, ‘The End is Naai’ has been performed throughout South Africa and abroad as ‘Elections & Erections’. His 2005 show is called 'Icons & Aikonas'.

Pieter-Dirk Uys lives in a small town near Cape Town on the West Coast of South Africa called Darling. There he has converted the old railway station into a cabaret venue called ‘Evita se Perron’ (Perron is Afrikaans for ‘station platform’). It has two theatres, a restaurant/bar, arts and craft market and a satirical garden called Boerassic Park, and is the domain of Evita Bezuidenhout, the ‘most famous white woman in South Africa’. She made her stage debut in Uys’s 1976 classic

‘Selle ou Storie’ in late 2004, while her sister Bambi Kellermann starred in ‘Same old Story’.

His latest book 'Between the Devil and the Deep – a memoir about acting and reacting' was published by Zebra/Struik in September 2005 to coincide with his 60th birthday (and Mrs Bezuidenhout's 70th).