Pieter-Dirk Uys Back on Stage in THE ECHO OF A NOISE at Theatre On The Bay

Having performed alone on the stages of the world for well over seven thousand times, Pieter-Dirk Uys has learnt that every show is the first and the last performance - because each audience demands and gets a different energy, topicality and excitement. This year, Uys will be back on stage at Theatre on the Bay in his autobiographical one-man memoir, THE ECHO OF A NOISE.

Now in his seventieth year, Uys glances back not at the successes and failures that have strengthened a belief that his work could constantly be improved, but rather at those small signposts throughout his life that have subconsciously pointed him in the right, original direction: his parents, his grandmothers, his teachers and his passions - Sophia Loren, censorship, false eyelashes, and making a noise when everyone demanded silence.

THE ECHO OF A NOISE strips away the trappings of Evita Bezuidenhout and Bambi Kellerman to reveal Uys at his most candid. Uys reminisces about his childhood, on times when he sang accompanied on the piano by his father, Hannes Uys, who he would come to know as the harshest critic of his work. He reflects on his parents' deaths, on the influence of his Afrikaans and German grandmothers and on his relationship with his "Cape Flats mother", their housekeeper, Sannie. He recalls his own experience of the horrors of apartheid, having broken the law when he contravened the Immorality Act with a coloured gardener, with whom he shared the purest terror of being caught by the police. The show becomes an archive of South African theatre history too, with Uys remembering his first stage appearances and his ongoing clashes with the all-powerful censor board of that era.

THE ECHO OF A NOISE will run at Theatre on the Bay from 31 May - 18 June, on Tuesdays through Saturdays at 20:00. Tickets cost R100 - R160 and can be reserved via Computicket online or by phone on 0861 915 8000 or 021 438 3301.

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