Archived 2015 Articles about Pieter-Dirk Uys

Woman in Entertainment: Pieter-Dirk Uys as Evita Bezuidenhout
In this month’s feature on South African Women in Entertainment, I explore Evita Bezuidenhout’s role in South Africa’s comedy landscape
– John Cole-Morgan, The South African, 18 March 2015

This article starts off a new monthly segment about the Woman in South Africa in the entertainment industry. Given South African culture, no series of woman in entertainment can begin without a story of Evita, famously dubbed as “the most famous white woman in Africa”.

Evita Bezuidenhout has been a part of South Africa culture for almost 35 years. Starting as a small character in a three week show in the early 1980s, Evita was borne, and has become a household name in the years that followed. Uys famously saying he is delighted he will never have to meet Evita face to face, as the thought terrifies him.

Evita took off like a rocket. She is a character that owes a lot of her success to the basic principle Uys has used when playing Evita,  “Woman must recognise the woman and men must forget the man”. Uys has the utmost and profound respect and adoration for woman. Inspired by the grace and extra-ordinary talent and beauty of his mother, his deep adoration for woman like Sophia Loren, Miemie Coetzee, Uys has used their essence to help create the enigma that is Evita. Uys’s incredible ability to read a person, started in the days when Uys would wait for his mother in coffee shops in Cape Town when he was at University. Uys would watch the people going by and was fascinated by the different things he saw. The tiny differences in the people that went by, have helped inspire his characters and is something he does to this day.

Uys is the ultimate down-to-earth industry personality. Starting off in the years of apartheid, when homophobia was rife, having an entourage was not an option. If you needed to go you needed to go, and dragging hangers on behind you could get you into big trouble. It was too difficult having too many people around if you got into a situation with the police, in the years of apartheid and rife homophobia, and that ethos still stand with him today.

This started a way of performing that has kept Uys grounded and without airs and graces. Uys, performs his shows alone, sets up alone, writes alone, drives himself to the theatre and publicity events, creating what is in some ways is a secluded working life. There is only one person, who does it all and that is Uys. Having studied stage management Uys is completely able to create all of his sets, arrange the lighting and with minimal input from others.  With just the audience to keep Uys company, and an audience that means no two shows of his more than 7,000 performances, have been the same. Uys says that his audience each performance laugh in different places, react differently in each show so his shows, and the characters he plays, keep him on his toes and thankful keep the monotony at bay. What ever the secret, his methods have helped build Uys into a national treasure.

The photograph of Uys on the beach in Blouberg taken a little over 25 years ago, the day Nelson Mandela was released from prison, was the turning point in South Africa. It is easy to forget that while Uys has been making us laugh all the way through the last 40 years of politics in South Africa, he has been at the fore front of what could be classed as cutting edge education. Uys was there and with his brilliant way of delivering you a devastating truth in one hand can slap you with such humour, any listener is unsure what just happened. Uys educated you with his point and made you laugh while doing it.

Over 80 different characters having graced the pen of Uys. His extra-ordinary talent has meant each character becomes the only watchable thing of value. With the subtle changes to his face, of inflection of his voice, Uys can turn P. W. Botha into Angela Merkel and into Mrs Pietersen in a nano second and with a subtle change you know precisely who they are. His talent truly is exceptional and Uys is without question one of the greatest entertainers to come out of South Africa.

In 1974, Uys wrote his Afrikaans play — Selle Oe Storie — which got him into such trouble with the National Party. It is easy to see Uys as simply the other part of Evita, but Uys has been writing and performing for over 40 years, almost a full decade before Evita was even borne. When asking Uys what his favourite piece of writing has been he replies “Gosh, that is like saying to a grandmother who are your favourite grandchild”. Highlights of his career for him are Selle ou Storie, Die van Aardes van Grootoor — which is being rewritten as a musical for the end of 2015. “Success is lovely. Success is something you hang on the wall and you very seldom look back on it. Failure is something you always go back to. First of all the word is wrong, failure is so negative but when something doesn’t work it doesn’t mean it is a failure, it just means it hasn’t worked the first time round.” The plays Uys loves with sadness are the ones that didn’t work.

Uys has made public all of his plays — free of charge — on his website www.pdu.co.za —  Uys loves the fact that with this new cyber world and the cloud you can share everything with the world. Firmly wanting his works to be enjoyed instead of gathering dust on a shelf or sitting in a drawer, Uys loves the traffic his website is receiving from these free sections.

At an age where most are slowing down, in his 70th year Uys has no intention of slowing down. When asked about this Uys said “It is very dangerous this thing where people think at a certain age you can slow down. No darling, that’s when you die. You don’t slow down, you change gear, you reinvent yourself. You actually maybe dye your hair, put in botox or cut off your penis, or whatever you want to do, but don’t just sit back and think you are going to be rewarded… I will keep going until, well if I fly away I hope I do it on stage. If I die on stage I will be magnificent and people will remember me for the rest of their lives.”

Uys’s philosophy is simple. Uys believes that everyone has talent, teaching is terribly important and leading by example is to show the way of to those people who don’t know how to use the torch of instinct. What you do with your talent is important, be as original as possible, be inspired and be something different.  Balance the pros and cons of what other people have given you and what you think you have, to what you know should be there. Go out there and seduce us with your guile and take over the world. “Make it work, it might take twenty years… Don’t just talk about it do it. Don’t wait for somebody to help you because they won’t. Be careful of advice, always listen to it and work through it and enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy what you are doing it will kill you.”

An Audience With Pieter-Dirk Eish is currently playing at Pieter Toerien’s Montecasino Theatre 17 March to 12 April 2015.