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Met eish, ja!

– Cathryn Pearman-Owens, The Citizen, 20 February 2007

One of the most recognised names in South African theatre, Pieter-Dirk Uys, has a new show on the circuit, and it promises to be all and more of what we’ve come to expect from South Africa’s master of satire.

Uys has an amazing presence on stage, and in life. Sitting down to coffee with this legendary playwright, actor and educator is an endearing treat indeed.

His warmth seems to fill the room and his smile will melt anybody’s heart.

His creativity has spawned not only some hilarious, intense and often controversial plays and one-man shows, but he is also the man behind one of South Africa’s most-loved (and laughed at) ladies, Evita Bezuidenhout.

Uys’s shows are, without fail, a string of brilliance from beginning to end, and there is no satirist better able to communicate the South African mindset and circumstance, while keeping a smile on our faces.

His new play, Pieter-Dirk: Eish! (opening at the Market Theatre tonight) got its title from miscommunication over the phone where a lady thought that Uys was saying his name was “Pieter-Dirk, eish!”

The show, says Uys, “is centred on the premise that Evita will run for president.

“There are eight new characters . . . Kadar Asmal and Adriaan Vlok are just two of them ... and they are characters that reflect issues that effect us today, but we see them through the filter of humour.

“It shows us the reality of who we are in our democracy and we see that we’re all involved.”

And what would make Evita the perfect president? “She’s familiar to everyone and Evita makes people laugh, but like she says, if the right person emerges for the job, she’ll step down.”

Uys says that if Evita were made president, one of the first things she would do is to “give two people some very important ambassadorial positions: she’ll send Jacob Zuma to Somalia so he can have as many ‘mashinis’ as he wants and she’ll send Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to Mongolia to cook potatoes, beetroot and garlic for all the people there.”

Of course, Evita’s style of presidency will be somewhat different: “It will all happen around the kitchen table,” chuckles Uys.

For a man with so many colourful creations of character — some that have been with him for years, and other newer manifestations — it must at times become difficult to separate them from himself.

But, says Uys, he has to: “It’s important not to cross lines.” He says the difference between himself and Evita is that “she has no sense of humour”.

He says when he creates a character, “like any actor, I have to build up a CV — I have to know what their fears are and how their mind works — what the most important aspect of life is for them.”

Uys notes, however, that “sometimes I do find that the character merges with me and then I have to change it”.

Uys says he creates the characters he uses by “observing and finding characters to be a mouthpiece for a certain issue”.

For a comedian who manages to hit the right note with his audience every time, he says the formula is simple.

“Truth makes people laugh. If you take things that make people angry and frightened and you confront them with it in a place of entertainment, then certain things are outed and hopefully the audience learns that it is not about fear and they see things in a different light.”

Evita is a character that made her appearance during the apartheid days and has remained a popular presence today.

But, the woman has changed magnificently, and although she still gets away with being subtly subversive, it is in an entirely different way.

“In those days she was very much a part of the status quo — she was one of the enemy and as such she would say the things that other people couldn’t say,” Uys says.

“Apartheid was the culture of death and our democracy today is the culture of life . . . with its problems, but there’s hope.”

Uys says that he finds much hope in the youth that he has been working with on his HIV/Aids education projects all over the country. “The new generation of kids is extraordinary with their demand of life.”

He says that his biggest hope for the show is that “people leave with a sense of excitement that we’re here and that we’re important to the future . . . if we as the older generation keep losing track of that excitement and we pass that sense of loss to the younger generation, we’re in trouble.

“It is sad when people become negative through a sense of fear. Upbeat is always far more interesting than downbeat.”

Uys says his brand of comedy, although satire, is not pessimistic. It is important that his audience leaves his show not only laughing, but with a sense of hope too.

“If I couldn’t do that . . . and do it with a sense of life, I wouldn’t do it. Life is so hard already, you don’t want to pay to have your small flower of optimism kakked on.”

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