EVITA SE PERRON
Theatre in Darling

Everything has changed so radically that some issues have become the same! It’s even funnier now, while it also still chills to the bone. Meet those in our Rainbow Nation who will help us laugh at our fear of an unchartered future. A Command Performance with the most famous white woman in South Africa as she gives her State of the Nation address. Come and join him and laugh at those who deserve to be laughed at! Our history as it should have been A revisionist look at the history of white South Africa, from the arrival in 1652 of the Cactus of Separate Development on the Drommedaris, through the Great Trek, Blood River, the 1948 Election and the arrival of the National Party and official apartheid, through the birth of democracy and the reality of today. Here you can meet Tannie Evita, along with other respected and yet scandalous members of her family, as well as many of South Africa’s most loved icons and loathed aikonas. He arrived in Darling, ordered a schnitzel at Zum Schatzi and outside the restaurant met Dale Gremels, who had seen his show at the Baxter the week before. And so she took him around the village, pointing out the charming Victorian houses nestled in the cosy elbow of the hills. She turned a corner and there amid wild elephant grass, shutters askew, stood the most beautiful wreck of an old house that Uys had ever seen. He bought it while still in the car, even after being told that there were snakes under the floorboards! When Uys, already settled in his house up the road, was asked if, to hold off the demolishers, he could perhaps use the building as a storeroom, the dormant idea of having his own theatre was rekindled in his imagination. And so, in 1996, the old station building stepped into the pages of the unique and became reincarnated as Evita se Perron. For the first year, activity was centred around the small blik building in its strange colours next to the railway line. When the station was derelict and rusted, concerned townsfolk looked in their garages and brought whatever paint they could find. and restructured with a small stage and enough space for twelve tables with chairs. The kitchen was squeezed into the small area at the back where the carpenter had kept his tools. And that in spite of Evita’s use of the word skattie, the town has always been called Darling. As the train clatters by, the driver often waves a greeting to Evita, the most famous white woman in South Africa. On the far side of the car park, Tannie se Tuin has become an integral part of daily life in Darling. Under the trees, no longer forgotten and dusty but lavish with leaves, the community rest on their way back to their homes from the banks, the shops and the bottle store, and there is a playground for kiddies centred round the old Land Rover donated by JC van der Westhuizen. Petal against plastic, these flowers thrive and grow, some by being watered, whilst others are dusted. The only real animals that stalk the terrain are the Perron Cats. Over the years there have been as many as seven Perron felines. Our current three resident moggies are Marilyn (successor to the original Marilyn), Blondie and Ginger.