14 Facts About Pieter-Dirk Uys

Pieter-Dirk Uys is a South African performer, author, satirist, and social activist.

Hannes Pieter-Dirk Uys, a fourth-generation South African of Dutch and Belgian Huguenot stock, was a musician and organist in his local church.

Pieter-Dirk Uys later went on to study at the London Film School during the early 1970s.

Pieter-Dirk Uys then began a period in his dramatic career as a serious playwright.

Pieter-Dirk Uys subsequently switched to performing one-man revues at the height of the Apartheid era.

Pieter-Dirk Uys's show Adapt or Dye started at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg in 1981 and ran for 280 performances to sellout crowds.

Pieter-Dirk Uys followed this up with Farce about Uys: A Legal Assembly in Two Riotous Acts, quickly selling out tickets for its initial five-week run.

Pieter-Dirk Uys is particularly well known for his character Evita Bezuidenhout, a white Afrikaner socialite and self-proclaimed political activist.

Under Apartheid, Pieter-Dirk Uys used the medium of humour and comedy to criticise and expose the absurdity of the South African government's racial policies.

For many years Pieter-Dirk Uys lampooned the South African regime and its leaders, as well as the sometimes hypocritical attitudes of white liberals.

Pieter-Dirk Uys serves on the board of directors for the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded to provide treatment for and conduct research relating to HIV.

Pieter-Dirk Uys converted the old, disused railway station at Darling, where he lives, into a cabaret venue called Evita se Perron and performs there regularly.

Pieter-Dirk Uys discovered that he has Central African heritage from his mother's side.

Pieter-Dirk Uys received the Special Teddy Award 2011 at the Berlin International Film Festival for his commitment to AIDS education at South African schools and for his on-stage alter ego, Evita Bezuidenhout.