REVIEW OF AUDITIONING ANGELS at the NATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL (Grahamstown) — JUNE 2003
Festival Diary
– Caroline Smart, artsmart.co.za, 30 June 2003
Another beautiful day in Grahamstown and one in which I didn’t do much else other than see Pieter Dirk Uys’s Auditioning Angels before taking some time off and heading down to Port Elizabeth to see my niece and her family.
Auditioning Angels is everything that Pieter-
One of the most powerful images to turn around the general public’s approach worldwide to people living with HIV/AIDS was the photograph of Princess Diana kissing an AIDS victim.
In Auditioning Angels, there is the imagery of healthy people (the cast) holding babies dying of AIDS and actually getting involved in the process of doing something positive. A young girl is raped by someone with AIDS — or is it just a smokescreen for a sexual relationship with someone her own age? In hospitals battling to cope, if an AIDS baby is under 1kg, should you switch off the respirator because it’s not going to make it anyway?
It’s happening, people! Live with it. Deal with it. Do what you can when and how
you can — but don’t ignore it. AIDS is not going to go away. This is Pieter-
Directed by Blaise Koch, Auditioning Angels is not a guilt-
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