Pieter-Dirk Uys (/ˈeɪs/; born 28 September 1945) is a South African
performer, author, satirist, and social activist.Uys was born in Cape
Town on 28 September 1945, to Hannes Uys, a Calvinist Afrikaner
father, and Helga Bassel, a Berlin-born Jewish mother. Hannes Uys, a
fourth-generation South African of Dutch and Belgian Huguenot stock,
was a musician and organist in his local church. Bassel was a German
concert pianist, whom the Nazis expelled from the Reichsmusikkammer in
1935 as part of their campaign to root out Jewish artists. She later
escaped to South Africa and managed to take her grand piano with her,
with which she taught her daughter, Tessa Uys (b. 1948), now a concert
pianist based in London. Bassel spoke little about her Jewish past to
her children. It was only after her suicide that they discovered she
was fully Jewish. Uys and his sister had an NG Kerk upbringing and
their mother encouraged them to embrace Afrikaner culture.Uys received
a B.A. from the University of Cape Town where he began his dramatic
career as an actor under the tutelage of Rosalie van der Gught, Mavis
Taylor and Robert Mohr, among others. His performances at this time
included roles in Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs,
The Fantasticks, and Once Upon a Mattress. He later went on to study
at the London Film School during the early 1970s. It was in one of his
student films, an advertisement for milk, that he performed in drag
for the first time (as a milkmaid). He then began a period in his
dramatic career as a serious playwright. Several of his plays were
performed at the Space Theatre, Cape Town, and his 1979 play Paradise
is Closing Down was performed in London, at the Edinburgh Festival
(co-produced by William Burdett-Coutts), and later produced for
Granada Television in 1981. He subsequently switched to performing
one-man revues at the height of the Apartheid era.
performer, author, satirist, and social activist.Uys was born in Cape
Town on 28 September 1945, to Hannes Uys, a Calvinist Afrikaner
father, and Helga Bassel, a Berlin-born Jewish mother. Hannes Uys, a
fourth-generation South African of Dutch and Belgian Huguenot stock,
was a musician and organist in his local church. Bassel was a German
concert pianist, whom the Nazis expelled from the Reichsmusikkammer in
1935 as part of their campaign to root out Jewish artists. She later
escaped to South Africa and managed to take her grand piano with her,
with which she taught her daughter, Tessa Uys (b. 1948), now a concert
pianist based in London. Bassel spoke little about her Jewish past to
her children. It was only after her suicide that they discovered she
was fully Jewish. Uys and his sister had an NG Kerk upbringing and
their mother encouraged them to embrace Afrikaner culture.Uys received
a B.A. from the University of Cape Town where he began his dramatic
career as an actor under the tutelage of Rosalie van der Gught, Mavis
Taylor and Robert Mohr, among others. His performances at this time
included roles in Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs,
The Fantasticks, and Once Upon a Mattress. He later went on to study
at the London Film School during the early 1970s. It was in one of his
student films, an advertisement for milk, that he performed in drag
for the first time (as a milkmaid). He then began a period in his
dramatic career as a serious playwright. Several of his plays were
performed at the Space Theatre, Cape Town, and his 1979 play Paradise
is Closing Down was performed in London, at the Edinburgh Festival
(co-produced by William Burdett-Coutts), and later produced for
Granada Television in 1981. He subsequently switched to performing
one-man revues at the height of the Apartheid era.
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