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Pieter-Dirk Uys

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 MY DESPERATE FIRST LADIES

 – Pieter-Dirk Uys, August 2010

So here I am, a 64 year old actor, on a diet for a 74 year old desperately overweight superstar. Why? So that when Evita Bezuidenhout stands on the stage of the Lyric Theatre on Womans Day weekend, she looks gorgeous!

Actors act. They are kings and queens, rogues and politicians. They portray mothers and fathers, gogos and tatas. Actresses usually play the women and actors the men. But what if there is a Tree in the play? Is that artist who becomes that Tree called a Forest? Why is an actor who plays a woman immediately seen as a trans-sexual, transvestite, a drag queen? No, he’s just doing his job!

How many times have people nudged me and suggested that I sleep in Evita Bezuidenhout’s nightie? Hello? Does the deep-sea diver go to bed in his wetsuit? It’s my job as a performer to convince my audience of the story that is the centre of any sketch. The day I realized how effective it was for me, as a man, to portray women, it became a serious part of my work. For thirty years I have played all those other people: old, young, good and bad. But when I put on that ‘rok’ in 1981 for a new character called Tannie Evita, I knew I had found the minefield I was looking for.

Under apartheid it was illegal for men to dress up as women, as illegal as being a democrat. But performing a character on stage was different than dressing up for a party. While some of my friends were arrested for dressing as girls at a gay jol, dressed up as a woman, I was making money as well as a political point.

Evita was arguably my first First Lady. She grew into a personality during the 1980s, from a member of my chorus in 1981 to the most famous white woman in Africa. My early line-up also included President P.W. Botha, Foreign Minister Pik Botha, Minister Piet ‘Promises’ Koornhof, a Kappie Kommando-tannie and the kugal, Nowell Fine.  Evita became the South African Ambassador to the Independent Black Homeland of Bapetikosweti. In spite of it being fictitious, it is still the one bantustan people quote. And as for Evita? Just because she’s doesn’t exist, doesn’t mean she’s not real. As the Queen Mother was in the UK, Evita has been a part of people’s lives.

My second First Lady, Nowell Fine, actually started life before Evita in 1975. As the cartoon of a white liberal, it was essential for me to use her to balance my unashamed attack on the Nationalist regime. As she then said: ‘There are two things about South Africa that I can’t stand: apartheid and the blacks.’ Klap the right, but also smack the left. Equal-opportunity offence. In the DVD of my 1981 show ‘Adapt or Dye’,  you can see Nowell making an assignation with her garden ‘boy’ Nimrod.

Evita has good timing. The apartheid years during the 1980s were tense, fearful, and dangerous. The need to laugh at our fear was crucial. The media also seemed relieved to be able to focus on the silliness of this boere tannie to show up the seriousness of what she stood for.  As long as Mrs Bezuidenhout was such a avid supporter of P.W. and his policies, she could damn with faint praise. Ironically, Tannie Evita was allowed on SABC live, while I was not welcome, even recorded. Maybe it was because Tannie didn’t say ‘poep’ or ‘kak’. Even today, Evita is family-friendly and a unique example of a two hour stand-up comedy performance without a single swearword.

As I moved along the tracks of comedy travel, a few other ladies joined my chorus line. The irrepressible Winnie Mandela has been with me forever. First as an icon to be celebrated for her courage and beauty. Then as a powerful woman to be supported, then questioned, often confronted, occasionally reviled. But always elegant and, as a cat with more than nine lives, reinvented for each season. I have a wonderful portrait of Winnie in her Xhosa traditional dress with an inscription: ‘The day you do me on stage please look like this.’ I do.

A recent addition is Mrs Petersen, a Cape Coloured woman who runs a bric-a- brac shop. She is inspired by two  people whom I have known through the years and dearly love for their feisty survival, sense of humour, political incorrectness and passion. And because Mrs Petersen is Muslim, I need her voice in my work. As she says to me:

‘You make jokes about everyone? Blacks, whites, coloureds, Indians, the Catholics, the Jews, the gays. But I notice you don't make any jokes about us Muslims. Why? We’re feeling left out. Do you think we Muslims can’t take a joke? I think it's because you comedians don't want to take the chance to find out.'

To balance the good with the chilling, Grace Mugabe, the second wife of the Pol Pot of Africa, sits in front of her dressing table making herself beautiful at the expense of her enslaved people. In another sketch, Mother Theresa is running the heavenly telephone exchange because Marilyn Monroe, who usually does it, is on strike with the other angels. Why? Because Jesus refuses to come back to Earth if he has to appear on Larry King Live.

Evita’s sister, Bambi Kellermann, has developed through the years as a star in her own right. ‘I was born in Bethlehem in the Orange Free State. I left South Africa in 1956 because I couldn't live in an apartheid state. No, it’s not true. I left because I didn't want to die a virgin in Bethlehem.' Where Evita is proper, Bambi is not. A former sex-worker and owner of a Boland brothel, Bambi sings and laugh and drinks. She is also openly HIV positive. Her mission is to educate people about safe sex and respecting each other.

That’s the keyword. Respect. My First Ladies always have my respect and my mission is to make them look their best and sometimes sound their worst, but always with style and dignity. Politicians are here today, gone tonight. My first ladies, I hope, will last longer.

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