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The profile · researched 29 September 2026
The open audition that handed Carley Janse van Vuuren Baltimore
Carley Janse van Vuuren has spent three years putting out Afrikaans singles one at a time under the name Carley. From 22 October 2026 she carries the lead in the first professional South African staging of Hairspray in nearly twenty years.
Songwriting first, cameras second
Van Vuuren's own account of how she started puts the writing ahead of everything else. In an interview published by the theatre site pARTicipate on 7 September 2026, she described beginning in songwriting and live stage performance, and only afterwards appearing in the television production Die Kontrak. Musical theatre arrived later still, and she frames the discovery as a recognition rather than a career move: the moment music, acting and real human emotion were combined into one experience, she said, 'everything just clicked'.
In the same interview she named what keeps her in the work as 'the raw emotion and connection', and singled out the 'live energy exchange with an audience' as the thing a recording cannot reproduce. That is a musician's answer rather than an actor's, and it matches the order in which she built her career — the audience relationship came first, the script came second.
She records in Afrikaans and releases under the single name Carley, with a separate credit as Carley J attached to collaborative work. The releases carry a Carley Music phonographic credit, which is to say she has been putting them out herself rather than through an established label.
Three singles, three years, no album
The catalogue is short and deliberately paced. 'Baadjie' — Afrikaans for jacket — came out on 29 March 2024, a single track running roughly two minutes and filed under pop. 'Red Light' followed in 2025. 'Wag Vir Jou' arrived on 29 May 2026 and remains the most recent release under her own name.
There is no album and no EP. Apple Music's artist page lists the three singles and nothing else, which makes the release pattern clear: one song a year, each given its own moment rather than banked towards a long-player. For an independent artist covering her own costs that is a rational way to work, though it also means a listener arriving in late 2026 finds a total catalogue of about seven minutes of music.
A second Apple Music profile, under Carley J, carries a single credit: 'Welkom In Ons Wêreld', a various-artists track shared with Franco van Zyl, Claudine, Jaun-Piere Murphy, Lee Luka, Elsje, Caitie Rock, Johan van Rooyen, Ricky Faber and Carla Lee. The split between the two profiles is a practical problem — the collaboration does not appear on the page a casual listener is most likely to land on.
A cast built by open audition
The theatre job that dominates her year was not offered to her. Blazon Magazine reported on 8 June 2026 that Scenario Productions would stage Hairspray at Die Centurion Teater from 22 October to 7 November 2026, with tickets from R350, and that every part except Edna Turnblad — cast internally — would be filled through open auditions held on 4 July 2026, with the full cast announced by the end of that month. Tracy Turnblad was on that list.
By the time the Quicket listing went live, Van Vuuren's name was against Tracy, alongside Thiart Li as Edna Turnblad, Nadia Beukes as Velma Von Tussle and Gugu Dhlamini as Motormouth Maybelle. The creative team is Tiaan Kirsten-Lubbe and Lian Sachse as directors and executive producers, Luigia Casaleggio as musical director, Pinto Ferreira as choreographer and Ashleigh Ann Hilton on set and costume, with Kirsten-Lubbe also designing lighting and Kieran Pritchard on sound.
The producers have framed the revival around its politics rather than its nostalgia. 'Hairspray is not simply a feel-good musical,' Kirsten-Lubbe said in the announcement. 'It is about visibility. It is about voice. Its themes remain relevant globally.' Sachse's contribution to the same announcement stressed that the show's lead redefines what a musical-theatre heroine looks like, through her confidence and her argument for racial integration. Producers say the title has not had a professional South African staging in close to two decades.
What she says about playing Tracy
Asked in the September interview how she was approaching the part, Van Vuuren gave an answer about body rather than technique. Being a bigger woman herself, she said, means she does not have to pretend or imagine what that side of Tracy's experience feels like — she has lived it, and so the emotion she plays can be, in her phrase, completely real and true. In a show whose entire premise is a teenager being told she is the wrong shape for television, that is not a small piece of casting.
She was candid about being new to the backstage machinery of theatre, and said she leans on her live-music experience to compensate. Her pre-show routine, as she described it, is unglamorous: running lyrics mentally, quick warm-ups, staying in conversation with the people around her rather than retreating.
She also named the parts she wants next — Donna in Mamma Mia! and Jenna in Waitress — citing the music and the complexity of the stories. Both are roles for a singer who can carry a show rather than decorate one, which is a fair reading of where she thinks her range sits.
Where things stand at the end of September 2026
Four months on from 'Wag Vir Jou', there is no announced album, no announced concert tour and no new single trailed. What her name is currently attached to is a theatre run, and the strength of her position is that it is a lead rather than an ensemble credit, won in open competition against a field of auditionees only three months ago.
There is, as yet, nothing to read about her stage work in performance. The only substantial piece of writing about her in the trade press is the 7 September pARTicipate item, which despite being filed under a review headline is an interview conducted before the run opens. No critic has seen her play Tracy, and nobody claiming otherwise has a source.
The venue itself gives a sense of the company she is keeping. Die Centurion Teater's autumn programme runs Afrikaans-language work and Broadway titles side by side — a musical comedy in early October, Hairspray from 22 October, an Ingrid Jonker piece on 20 November, a Rocco de Villiers concert on 3 December. It is a working producing house with a subscriber-style local audience, not a receiving room for touring product, which means a three-week lead there is a real body of performances rather than a one-night showcase.
The show, now
Right now, seeing Van Vuuren perform means seeing her in a book musical rather than a gig. Hairspray runs at Die Centurion Teater, 123 Amkor Road, Centurion, from 22 October to 7 November 2026; the Quicket listing gives evening performances from 19:30 to 21:45, so roughly two and a quarter hours with an interval, and tickets start at R350. There is no support act — the shape of the evening is the Broadway score played by Luigia Casaleggio's musical direction, with Tracy Turnblad on stage from the opening number through to the finale, which makes it one of the heavier singing and dancing loads in the repertoire for whoever holds the part. Pinto Ferreira choreographs, Ashleigh Ann Hilton has designed both set and costumes for the 1960s Baltimore setting, Tiaan Kirsten-Lubbe designs the lighting and Kieran Pritchard runs sound; Kirsten-Lubbe and Lian Sachse direct for Scenario Productions. The cast around her includes Thiart Li as Edna Turnblad, Nadia Beukes as Velma Von Tussle and Gugu Dhlamini as Motormouth Maybelle. No reviews of the run exist at the time of writing because it has not opened — the only published account is Van Vuuren's own, in which she says she draws on live-music instincts backstage and prepares by running lyrics mentally and warming up quickly rather than isolating herself before the call.
Researched from quicket.co.za · brucedennill.co.za · blazonmagazine.co.za · music.apple.com · music.apple.com · music.apple.com · quicket.co.za