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articles from 2005

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Liberation drag

– Thomas Garvey, Bay Windows, 6 January 2005

 

Pieter-Dirk Uys is on a roll, professionally and verbally. The fifty-something drag artiste is suddenly globally celebrated; in fact, he’s about to go into rehearsal for his one-man, Obie-winning show, "Foreign Aids," at the ART’s new Zero Arrow Street space. But he can’t stop talking about his mission; the words keep tumbling out in a silvery, articulate, passionate stream.

 

"It’s great to be a gay man in South Africa right now," Uys (that’s pronounced "Ace") enthuses. "We have the best constitution in the world - everyone is protected. The Supreme Court even affirmed our right to marry, just two weeks ago."

 

Then he pauses, and a weariness tempers the luster in his voice.

 

"Of course they’re already working to repeal that. Just like in America."

 

But in a moment the cloud is gone; if nothing else, Uys is a survivor — having seen apartheid fall, he’s eternally optimistic. And his fight against that vicious system has put his own struggles in permanent perspective.

 

"When I began doing my shows, I couldn’t fly the pink flag. It was illegal to be gay — it was against the law to do drag! But I felt — we all felt — we had to put our own liberation way down the list, because there were just so many black people dying every day."

 

Uys spent years in the theatrical trenches, lobbing comedic grenades at the P.W. Botha regime from the wobbly heels of his greatest creation, "Evita Bezuidenhout," the self-proclaimed "most famous white woman in South Africa," a blithely racist South African belle whom some have called "the African answer to Dame Edna Everage".

 

"But what was the question?" Uys wonders aloud. For while the fabulous Everage has her own kind of edge, Evita was pitched at a whole other level: this was drag as street demonstration, the kind of cabaret that took no prisoners — even if Uys was sometimes in danger of going to prison himself.

 

"No, I never went to jail," he laughs. "I was too well-connected!" And indeed, with an Afrikaner father and a Jewish mother (and, he claims, a black courtesan somewhere down the family tree), Uys does seem to straddle every political faction in his native land. That and his own smarts kept him afloat — when a hostile journalist asked him point blank if he was gay, he simply replied, "On Tuesday and Thursday; I’m straight Monday and Wednesday, bi on Friday and Saturday, and Sunday I rest." The comment became famous in its own right.

 

Finally, of course, apartheid collapsed — and Uys learned a disappointing lesson. "We fought for freedom, but only got democracy," he sighs. "Which is hardly the same thing."

 

The dream began to seriously tarnish after the presidency of Nelson Mandela, when Thabo Mbeki came to power, just as AIDS "hitched a ride" into South Africa. "I can’t understand how I could have been so blind," Uys says now. "I thought he would be fine. Before he was president, Mbeki even wore the red AIDS ribbon!"

 

But soon the new president declared HIV was not the cause of AIDS; he supported the racist fiction that it was a "white man’s disease"; rumor and superstition gripped the population, and now, like the rest of the continent, South Africa is facing a health crisis that could actually destabilize its society.

 

"Six hundred people die from it every day," Uys moans. "And they don’t even have the right words for it — people call it ’the thinning sickness’. Men will rape children because they believe sex with a virgin can cure you, and people are sometimes killed if it comes out they’re HIV positive."

 

He goes even further. "I call it the new apartheid. People with money for the imported drugs — they can live. The rest are left to die. I’ve even compared it to genocide, and that’s what it is, really."

 

So Uys got back in the trenches, putting together "For Fact’s Sake," a performance piece about HIV, AIDS, and how to avoid infection. He’s been touring it to schools for years now, talking to middle school kids (and younger) bluntly about sex — even anal sex — and how to put on a condom. There’s been, of course, an uproar. "But there’s just no other option in a Third World country," Uys counters. "Here, kids have no choice. I’ve met nine year olds who have had sex! This is about our future, nothing more and nothing less."

 

"And of course it helped me, too," he adds quietly. "To confront my own fear."

 

So I ask if I can venture onto the most personal ground: is he, himself, HIV positive?

 

"No," he replies, without hesitation. "But I get tested all the time. I’m sexually active — though not as careless as I used to be. Every time I’m tested, I just tell myself it’s a little prick — probably the only time I’ve been happy with a little prick!"

 

His work in South Africa’s schools is still the backbone of what he does — he’s got five hundred visits planned for 2005. In the meantime Uys holds forth as Evita, her crazed sister Bambi, and a host of other characters in his own cabaret in the town of Darling, South Africa ("It’s the perfect name, isn’t it?").

 

As for the global fame that has come from winning the Obie (and his subsequent profile in "The New Yorker"), Uys has hardly let it go to his head, and he’s well aware of the irony surrounding his rapturous reception in America. "Your own comedians are getting rather less political, aren’t they?" he smiles. "And I’m very nervous about what’s going on here. George W. Bush reminds me quite a bit of P.W. Botha — they even said the same thing: "If you’re not with us, you’re against us." Awful line, by the way."

 

And when it comes to changing the world, Uys is equally level-headed. "You know what they say — the last time theatre changed politics was the day Lincoln was shot. But I do believe the theatre can change people — and people can change politics. I’ve been performing in the schools for so long now that adults sometimes come up to me and give me a hug. They say, "I saw you years ago, in high school, and because of you I’m still alive." That tells me it’s working."

 

"And what would I do without the politicians?" he sighs. "They write all my best material."

 

"Foreign Aids" runs to January 23 at the ART’s Zero Arrow Theater. For tickets, call 617.547.8300.

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