Casper Johannes De Vries (; born 1 June 1964) is a South African actor, comedian, entertainer, painter, composer, director and producer. He has gained a significant following among South Africa's liberal Afrikaner and Afrikaans speaking population as well as Afrikaners living abroad. More recently due to his work on

Comedy Central Africa Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humor Humour (Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives fr ...

he has also gained popularity among English speaking

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

ns. Besides

Afrikaans Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gra ...

, he is fluent in

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

and English.

Early life

He was born and raised in

Pretoria Pretoria () is South Africa's administrative capital, serving as the seat of the executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to South Africa. Pretoria straddles the Apies River and extends eastward into the foot ...

where his father owned a toy shop. He attended Hoërskool Silverton where he was known as Cassie, and went on to study drama at the

University of Stellenbosch Stellenbosch University ( af, Universiteit Stellenbosch) is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant ...

. His shows were very popular amongst Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans and he even held shows in the

London Palladium The London Palladium () is a Grade II* West End theatre located on Argyll Street, London, in the famous area of Soho. The theatre holds 2,286 seats. Of the roster of stars who have played there, many have televised performances. Between 1955 a ...

in London(2003 - 2006) where a lot of

Afrikaners Afrikaners () are a South African ethnic group descended from predominantly Dutch settlers first arriving at the Cape of Good Hope in the 17th and 18th centuries.Entry: Cape Colony. ''Encyclopædia Britannica Volume 4 Part 2: Brain to Cas ...

resided. From 2005-2008 he performed in Canada and the Netherlands. Later, from 2010 - 2015 he started to perform in English to appeal to a larger fan base both locally and internationally.

Comedy style

Casper de Vries uses

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming ...

blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when ...

character Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...

observational Observation is the active acquisition of information from a primary source. In living beings, observation employs the senses. In science, observation can also involve the perception and recording of data (information), data via the use of scienti ...

, sketch and

word play Word play or wordplay (also: play-on-words) is a literary technique and a form of wit in which words used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement. Examples of word play include puns, pho ...

comedy styles in his stage performances, and he is very outspoken on topics such as humanity, religion, social norms, language and politics.

Live shows

His professional career started in 1986 with ''Hallo Suid-Afrika'' (''Hello South Africa''), and has been on-stage year after year until he started performing his one-man shows in 1997 where he started gaining major success. Here is a list of Casper's one man shows: * ''Walgwors'' (1997) * ''Wetter'' (1998) * ''Toet & Taal'' (1999) * ''Laat Daar Lag Wees'' (2000) * ''DiMensie'' (2001-2002) * ''Die Hits'' (2003) * ''Snaaks Genoeg'' (2004) * ''My Wêreld'' (2005) * ''Mondig'' (2007) * ''Broeders Ancestors'' (2009) * ''Gaan Groot'' (2010) * ''Vark in hel'' (2011) * ''Casper Goes Khaki'' (2013) * "Alive & Vrolik" (2016-2017)

Film appearances

* ''Haak en Steek'' as Blertsie du Toit and Hanno Gelderblom * ''Alec to the Rescue'' (1999) as Train Steward * ''Soweto Green'' (1995) as Adrian Fluit * ''Sweet 'n Short'' (1991) as George Weedle * '' Taxi to Soweto'' (1991) as a Telkom Engineer * ''Kwagga Strikes Back'' also known as ''Oh, Shucks-here comes UNTAG'' (1990) as Joop Van den Ploes * ''Egoli -Afrikaners is Plesierig'' (2010) as Duifie * ''Konfetti'' (2014) as Barry White

Characters

De Vries created characters that he portrayed in his live shows and in his TV series. * Oom Kallie Marie - An old Afrikaner that represents the old Boere-Folk and is very old fashioned. Married to Tant Anna. Has a gay son from a previous marriage called ''Karel-Jan''. * Greetje Appelmoes - A Dutch woman who always gives advice. Made her debut on ''Devries''. Has three children called Mooitje, Booitje and Vrooitje. * Montelle Jansen van Rensburg - A homosexual ex-flight attendant for SAA. Made his debut as Mara in the show ''Toet en Taal''. * Blertsie du Toit - A mentally disabled young boy. Made his debut in the ''Haak en Steek'' series on the Casper Rasper Show. * Hanno Gelderblom - A man from Kempton Park, drinks Klipdrift from the bottle and makes weird noises. Father of ''Orpa Gelderblom'' who sang a duet with him on ''Noot vir Noot''. Made his debut on the Casper Rasper Show as the manager of an old-age girlgroup called ''Die Jerry-Hattricks''. * Patience Candida April - Ex-prostitute and retired alcoholic from Cape Town. Lost her father at a young age. Has a son called Moses. Made her debut in a sketch called ''Hoer ry die boere'' on the ''Casper Rasper Show''. * Renier Ferreira - Head of the VKTA and organizer of ''Ikayezi''. Made his debut on ''My Wêreld''. * Gizelle Serfontein - News reader, presenter and porn star.

Television

Casper's live shows have been featured on South African television channels like

SABC 2 SABC 2 is a South African family public television channel owned by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). SABC 2 broadcasts programming in English, Sepedi, Afrikaans, Venda, and Tsonga. As of August 2018, the channel started broad ...

and kykNET and

Comedy Central Comedy Central is an American basic cable channel owned by Paramount Global through its network division's MTV Entertainment Group unit, based in Manhattan. The channel is geared towards young adults aged 18–34 and carries comedy programmin ...

Africa since 1986. He wrote, produced and starred in a 3-series comedy variety show, ''Die Casper Rasper Show'' (2001–2003) and a soapie-spoof ''Haak & Steek'' (2003/04). In 2009 there was a one season spin-off "CASPER Rasper Weer" He hosted '' Doen met 'n Miljoen!'', the

version of ''

Deal or No Deal ''Deal or No Deal'' is the name of several closely related television game shows, the first of which (launching the format) was the Dutch '' Miljoenenjacht'' (''Hunt/Chase for Millions''). The centerpiece of this format is the final round (a. ...

''. In the early 1990s he also hosted an America's Funniest Home Videos-style show called ''Devries'' In 2009 he guest starred in South Africa's longest running soap, '' Egoli''. In 2010 he appears as a guest artist in the

improvisation TV-show Proesstraat and as judge on the popular Afrikaans reality sho
Supersterre
alongside Shaleen Surtie-Richards and Theuns Jordaan. He co-wrote and starred in "Cas oppie Kassie" on kykNET and "Showmax" in 2020. He has appeared numerous times on Comedy Central Africa in the stand-up comedy show, Comedy Central Presents...Live at Parker's, in 2013. Several of his stand-up, one-man comedy shows have also been featured on the channel including "Mondig", "BroedersAncestors" and "Mondig deel 2". On 31 October 2013 during an exclusive interview with Herman Eloff on Channel24, Casper announced that he was going to retire from doing his one-man stand-up comedy shows, after his latest tour "Casper Goes Khaki" is over. "Now I can concentrate on my painting and I can do movies and TV shows. I’ve done the one man show thing for 27 years now and it's time to stop now," Casper told Channel24 during the interview. In 2016 he received the Comics Choice Lifetime Achievement Award. He returned to stage with Casper de Vries- Alive & Vrolik (2016/17) and later produced a new comedy series on kykNET Cas oppie Kassie (2020), which was nominated for four

South African Film and Television Awards South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþ ...

, but ended his career amongst Afrikaans speaking people.

Boeremag

In 2004 a radical right-wing activism Afrikaner group called the Boeremag was on trial for terror attacks in South Africa. During the trial plans to blow up De Vries together with eight other individuals was revealed. The group is quoted for saying that the reason for this plan was because De Vries "was not on the right path".News24: Boeremag planned to blow up Parliament

Hair extensions

In 2019 Casper received hair extensions in a TV series on SABC 2, called Pasella.

References

External links

Casper de Vries Twitter

CasperRadio Show

{{DEFAULTSORT:De Vries, Casper 1964 births Afrikaans-language singers Afrikaner people South African gay actors Living people Gay comedians Gay musicians People from Pretoria South African male comedians South African people of Dutch descent 20th-century LGBT people 21st-century LGBT people