Posts

The Return of Elvis Pisanie

-
Image
The Return of Elvis du Pisanie: Memory, Masculinity, and the Theatre of Becoming There are performances that entertain, and then there are performances that inhabit you —that sit in your chest long after the lights dim, long after the applause dissolves into the Johannesburg night. The Return of Elvis du Pisanie , written by Paul Slabolepszy and brought to life in a riveting one-man tour de force by Ashley Dowds at Theatre on the Square, belongs firmly in the latter category. This is not merely theatre—it is excavation. Of memory. Of masculinity. Of identity in post-apartheid South Africa. And above all, of the fragile, often fractured human spirit trying to reconcile boyhood dreams with adult realities. Ashley Dowds does not simply perform this play—he conducts it. Alone on stage, he becomes an entire world: a son, a father, a dreamer, a broken man, a child clinging to illusion, and an adult confronting truth. His performance is nothing short of an acting masterclass. Ther...
Read more

CELESTIAL BODIES II

-
Image
CELESTIAL BODIES II There are evenings that entertain you, and then there are evenings that rearrange something inside you—Celestial Bodies at the Keorapetse William Kgositsile Theatre, UJ Arts Centre did the latter. Having first encountered this collaboration at Joburg Theatre, I walked in with expectation—but also curiosity. That first staging was already a triumph: an ambitious fusion between Joburg Ballet and Universe on Stage, where physics met plié, and cosmology unfolded through corps de ballet formations. It was intellectually rich, anchored by the brilliance of Dr. Luca Pontiggia and the ever-commanding musical presence of Yasheen Modi. You learned. You admired. You were moved. But this second experience? This was transcendence. From the moment the auditorium dissolved into darkness—courtesy of Simon King’s restrained yet devastatingly effective lighting design—you felt it: this would lean deeper into movement, into embodiment. L...
Read more

Under the shade of a tree I sat and wept

-
Image
Under the Shade of a Tree I Sat and Wept  At the Market Theatre for the opening of Under the Shade of a Tree I Sat and Wept, I love the Market Theatre.  For 10 performances only. Get your tickets now!  There are certain spaces that do not merely host performance—they hold memory. The Market Theatre is one such place. You do not simply enter it; you step into a living archive of South Africa’s artistic resistance, a space where stories have always carried the weight of truth. And in Under the Shade of a Tree I Sat and Wept , that truth is not revisited gently—it is ruptured, reassembled, and forced into the present tense. This is not a conventional play. It is theatre about theatre. A self-aware, shape-shifting work that refuses the safety of illusion. At one moment, you are submerged in the harrowing testimonies reminiscent of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission—stories steeped in brutality, injustice, and the unbearable intimacy of violence. T...
Read more

BULLY

-
Image
Bully: Reverence for Ye, or The Art of Loving a Villain There is no clean way to love Kanye West anymore. There is no neutral position, no safe distance, no polite cultural posture that allows you to consume the music without also inheriting the chaos that trails behind it like smoke from a burning cathedral. To press play on Bully is to knowingly enter a contradiction — to nod your head to brilliance while your conscience shifts uncomfortably in the background. And yet… the music plays. And it is undeniable. I. The Return of the Architect Bully does not feel like a reinvention. It feels like a convergence. Kanye is not searching here — he is assembling. This is not the frantic futurism of Yeezus , nor the maximalist confession of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy . This is synthesis. A man pulling from every era of himself — the soul-sampling disciple, the Auto-Tuned romantic, the industrial provocateur, the gospel convert, the digital warlord — and compressing them into...
Read more

Death Proof

-
Image
Death Proof: Tarantino’s Ode to the Women Who Survive Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof is often treated as the forgotten half of the Grindhouse experiment. Overshadowed by its companion film and misunderstood by audiences expecting constant carnage, it stands instead as one of Tarantino’s most slyly constructed works. Beneath the long barroom conversations, beneath the retro scratches and reel burns, beneath the fetishistic attention to chrome bumpers and spinning tires, lies a simple but radical idea: the slasher film turned inside out. At first glance, Death Proof appears to be a love letter to exploitation cinema — the cheap, lurid, midnight movies that once populated American grindhouse theaters. The grainy film stock, the missing reels, the outrageous premise of a killer with a "death proof" car — everything screams homage. But Tarantino is never content with mere imitation. Like a DJ sampling forgotten vinyl, he loops the past and then scratches it until s...
Read more

Illmatic

-
Image
Concrete Scripture — Nas’s Illmatic There are albums that dominate charts, albums that redirect trends, and then there are works that transcend format altogether — records that feel like testimony preserved in sound. Illmatic belongs to that rare lineage. It does not merely document a time or a place; it crystallizes consciousness itself. Released into a mid‑1990s hip‑hop landscape brimming with regional identity, lyrical competition, and sonic evolution, it arrived not as noise in the conversation but as its quiet center — a record whose precision, brevity, and poetic clarity made it foundational scripture. To engage it properly is to engage it specifically. Its greatness lives in detail — in the songs themselves — each one sculpted with care by a consortium of producers whose fingerprints shaped the golden age: DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Large Professor, Q‑Tip, L.E.S. They did not merely provide beats; they built terrain for a young narrator to map existence with startling c...
Read more

Graduation

-
Image
The Glow of Arrival — Kanye West’s Graduation There are albums that document an artist’s rise, and there are albums that mark the moment they step fully into the light and realize they have already arrived. Graduation is that illumination — the glare of stadium lights replacing basement fluorescents, the echo of thousands of voices replacing solitary headphones. When it emerged in 2007, it did more than complete a trilogy; it reframed hip-hop’s center of gravity. It captured a genre standing at a threshold, and then gently, confidently, pushed it forward. To understand its resonance, one must return to the atmosphere surrounding its release. Hip-hop was still defined largely by muscular realism and hardened posturing, its mainstream aesthetic steeped in grit. Then came a cultural moment staged almost like myth — the public sales showdown between Kanye West and 50 Cent. It was spectacle as referendum: two visions of hip-hop’s future confronting one another. When Graduation ...
Read more

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

-
Image
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy  My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy does not begin so much as it detonates. It arrives not as a modest statement of artistic intent but as an act of excess, confession, and self-mythology. When Kanye West retreated from public view in the aftermath of controversy and exile, what emerged from that withdrawal was not apology in its ordinary form. It was a cathedral built from ego, shame, and ambition — music scaled to the size of an inner reckoning. The album stands as a paradox: deeply human yet operatic, vulnerable yet grandiose, as though the artist sought redemption by staging his own psyche as a spectacle. Listening to it feels less like hearing a sequence of songs and more like entering a sprawling fresco where each movement adds pigment to a portrait of desire, fallibility, and transcendence. The opening moments establish the architecture of this world. A voice introduces the listener to a narrative universe that is whim...
Read more

GNX

-
Image
GNX — After the Noise, After the War Some albums arrive as music. Others arrive as moments. GNX arrived as an event — a cultural checkpoint after one of the most public, volatile confrontations hip‑hop had witnessed in years. The tension between Kendrick Lamar and Drake had already spilled beyond records into timelines, barbershops, podcasts, and late‑night debates. By the time this album appeared, it carried the weight of expectation, curiosity, and anticipation. People were not simply waiting for songs — they were waiting for perspective, closure, or escalation. And when it landed, it did not disappoint. It resonated. It dominated conversation. It moved numbers. It collected awards. But more importantly, it reasserted authorship — Kendrick stepping back into narrative control. This project cannot be understood outside of that context. The aftermath of the feud lingered like smoke in the air. Victory, perception, exhaustion, and scrutiny all became part of the...
Read more

DAMN.

-
Image
DAMN. — Duality, Judgment, and the Architecture of Choice There are albums that announce greatness through spectacle, and there are albums whose magnitude reveals itself through structure — through the precision of their internal logic, the elegance of their contradictions, the depth of their moral inquiry. DAMN. belongs to the latter category. It is not merely a collection of songs, nor even solely a narrative arc. It is architecture. It is design embedded with philosophical intention. It is a meditation on human contradiction staged through sound and silence, faith and doubt, violence and vulnerability. That it would earn recognition beyond music — acknowledged as literature, as cultural text — feels less surprising than inevitable. This is not simply hip-hop craftsmanship; it is existential cartography. The album opens in ambiguity. A blind woman requests assistance; compassion meets fatal consequence. The scene dissolves into gunshot and revelation — wickedness or weak...
Read more