This article first appeared in THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

Sunday 10th August 2008

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I’m running a few minutes late for my meeting with little-known South African theatre personality, Ron van Wuren – and with each passing minute, I know, the number of people milling around the theatre foyer-cum-coffee shop is growing. But I’m not worried. Although he’s shorter than most, Ron stands out in the crowd; and when I arrive, I recognise him straight away. It’s been about ten years since he made his first (and only) appearance on stage, but fortunately Ron bares a striking resemblance to a far more prominent figure of the local stage and screen: Rob van Vuuren.

For those who weren’t at last month’s National Arts Festival, this coincidence requires some explanation. Van Vuuren was involved in no fewer than 13 productions in Grahamstown, one of which was the intriguingly titled Rob van Vuuren is Ron van Wuren. Audiences who knew about the former flocked to find out about the latter – was he a new alter-ego, like Twakkie from cult slapstick phenomenon The Most Amazing Show?

On the contrary; if Corné and Twakkie are over-the-top extroverts, Ron van Wuren represents that side of Rob van Vuuren which is modest about his achievements thus far. The name is a constant reminder that, no matter how often they might be acclaimed, all performers have humiliating experiences at some point in their career: just when a younger Rob van Vuuren thought he’d made his big break (at an event that shall remain nameless), he paged through the programme to see that his name appeared with not one, but three typos: Ron van Wuren.

And so, even as he adds a new dimension to his public profile – the show is part of a shift towards ‘stand-up comedy’, as opposed to ‘comic acting’ – van Vuuren remains free of the brash swagger so often associated with stand-up comics. Indeed, sharing anecdotes about his childhood or describing raucous behind-the-scenes episodes from his performing career thus far, van Vuuren seems to be developing a brand of stand-up humour that makes him vulnerable by exposing (and, admittedly, exaggerating) biographical information to a public increasingly fascinated by celebrities’ private lives.

This is a challenge; even though he can ‘ad lib’ ad infinitum, van Vuuren says he has always been “shit-scared” at the prospect of doing stand-up. He also admits, however, that he is only partly motivated by personal and professional development. A further motivation is that participating in the stand-up circuit provides access to lucrative gigs like MCing at corporate events. “I’ve done most of my work in theatre for love, but I wouldn’t mind doing a bit for money,” he quips.

Van Vuuren has already experienced some of the pros and cons of performing for corporates with The Most Amazing Show (TMAS) partner Louw Venter. Dressed in those outrageous outfits (not to mention the outrageous moustaches), they often felt like “monkeys”: “You’re paid to dance, and you must dance. But you are a well-paid monkey, it must be said.”

After two years of driving around the country building up a following for TMAS, Venter and van Vuuren – in their respective guises as Corné and Twakkie – became household names when what had been a stage phenomenon was translated onto TV. Van Vuuren was subsequently to be seen as one of the presenters of the SABC2 “Crazy Games” roadshow, and of course there was the even crazier movie Footskating 101, which he put together with Brendan Jack.

It’s difficult for some audiences to reconcile these personas with the subtle, nuanced and often dark imaginative world of plays like Electric Juju (a one-hander in which van Vuuren plays a young girl exploring a fantasia of gods and monsters) or Brother Number (in which he teams up with James Cairns to depict a prescient pair of brothers trying to find their way out of a labyrinthine Home Affairs building). Likewise, Venter has his own solo shows like Out of Time (a lyrical tribute to an interrupted father-son relationship) and Best Man’s Speech (which pushes the boundaries of comfort through cringe humour in the style of “The Office”).

There are no easy distinctions to be made between high and low comedy in Van Vuuren’s work. He will mock himself for using a pretentious word like “chagrin” and then make phallic jibes about polony; he will evoke, briefly, a mood of pathos and then segue into a series of jokes centring on matters scatological.

I put it to him that Corné and Twakkie have garnered a following amongst people who would not normally go to ‘serious’ theatre and that if, as a result, fans are drawn to some of the other work they are involved in, it can only be good for the South African performing arts scene. Van Vuuren agrees – he delights in luring people into “the wonderful lie of theatre” – but reminds me that the effort required to maintain the TMAS image was exhausting, and that fixed audience expectations can be limiting: “It was a great success, but the tight underpants were cutting off the blood flow to ... well, to the rest of my life!”

That success did, however, allow him to explore other roles in the performing arts scene – as a producer and director – through TMAS Productions and, subsequently, Juju Productions. Under the Juju banner in 2008, he has directed a range of acting talents, such as Gaetan Schmidt (Rumpsteak), Mark Elderkin (Swazi) and Scott Sparrow (Performer’s Travel Guide and, with Leila Anderson, Isabella). He has also dabbled in directing stand-up comedy (Cokey Falkow) and cutting-edge musical duos like Fly Paper Jet and Cabins in the Forest. As he puts it, “During the first six months of this year I got about six years’ worth of directing experience.”

Many artists find the National Arts Festival a gruelling and often dispiriting experience, but van Vuuren – who grew up in the Eastern Cape and has been attending or performing at the Festival for some two decades – finds it invigorating and, against the odds, profitable.

With the 13-show Grahamstown extravaganza behind him, ‘Mr Festival’ headed off to perform for the glitterati at Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday celebrations, playing the dubious role of “white South Africa” in a Brett Bailey pageant of Madiba’s life. There’s more TV work in the pipeline, and a number of the acts he has helped to shape are performing around the country during the second half of 2008 ... watch this space.