He was born and raised in Pretoria where his parents 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. His shows are very popular amongst Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans and he even held shows in the London Palladium, a city where a lot of Afrikaners reside. Recently Casper has also started to perform in English to appeal to a larger fan base both local and international.
Comedy Style
Casper de Vries uses satire, blue, character, observational, sketch and word play 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, 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
Wetter
Toet & Taal
Laat Daar Lag Wees /
DiMensie
Die Hits
Snaaks Genoeg
My Wêreld
Mondig
Broeders Ancestors
Gaan Groot
Vark in hel
Casper Goes Khaki
Film Appearances
Haak en Steek as Blertsie du Toit and Hanno Gelderblom
Alec to the Rescue as Train Steward
Soweto Green as Adrian Fluit
Sweet 'n Short as George Weedle
Taxi to Soweto as a Telkom Engineer
Kwagga Strikes Back also known as Oh, Shucks-here comes UNTAG as Jaap Van den Ploes
Characters
De Vries has characters that he portrays himself in his live shows and on TV:
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.
Casper's Live shows have been featured on South African television channels like SABC 2 and kykNET and more recently Comedy Central Africa since 1986. He wrote, produced and starred in a 3-series comedy variety show, Die Casper Rasper Show and a soapie-spoof Haak & Steek. More recently he became the host of Doen met 'n Miljoen!, the Afrikaans version of Deal or no Deal. 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, . In 2010 he appears as a guest artist in the Afrikaans improvisational TV-show Proesstraat and as judge on the popular Afrikaans reality show alongside Shaleen Surtie-Richards and Theuns Jordaan. 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", "Broeders, Ancestors" 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 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".
