Trying to digest everything that’s happening in the fast-moving Nataniël’s life is exhausting.

Last week he was still performing in a short post-Christmas season of his pre-Christmas show in Pretoria, something he does every year because the initial season is booked out so quickly.

There’s also his latest book of short stories, Nicky & Lou - 46 stories (Human & Rousseau), which was launched late last year and is already in its fourth print run.

Next week, last year’s Emperors Palace show, Combat, will be released similarly to the British National Theatre’s Cinema Nouveau releases. And already he is rehearsing for his next Emperors show, which opens in the middle of next month.

That’s apart from the fact that he has a shop that constantly demands attention, a new charity that is in line with his Child Welfare support as ambassador for the past few years, plays a role in the food industry and is kept busy with his first priority - shopping!

One would have thought that with a shop of your own, the shopping thing would die down a bit. No, says Nataniël. He cannot resist beautiful things and if he had enough money, he would have retired and spent all of his time shopping.

“I don’t buy only for myself,” he says, and that’s true. He has a reputation for being generous to all his friends and family.

But back to the real world and work. Writing, which you would have assumed is something that comes easily, isn’t much fun at all, says the great storyteller. What he does enjoy is accessing and working the stories in his head. “I’m a pacer,” he notes.

Sitting still isn’t his favourite thing and because that is the state in which you write, he postpones it as long as he possibly can.

Anyone reading this latest bunch of short stories (all of them from his most recent shows, adapted to work in book form) will be giggling their way through the madness and sometimes melancholia of a Nataniël story.

“I don’t think they’re particularly clever or funny,” says the showman.

But, he explains, once these stories finally appear in a book, he has told them about 500 times on stage.

“By that time I don’t have any judgement left.”

With his new show, for example, Black White Man Woman, which opens at Emperors Palace on February 16, the stories are written and rehearsed in his head.

“They’re part of my memories. The first time anyone - myself included - hears them out loud is on opening night. I’m not an actor who learns his lines, I simply read the stories over and over until they’re part of me,” explains the raconteur.

And the reason he doesn’t rehearse the stories before opening night is his fear that the band won’t laugh and then he won’t have faith in the material. Could you resist a line like “Because of her religion she doesn’t use the word ‘nipple’, instead she said there was a ring through his ‘right antenna’”?

Even though the intriguing title seems to imply the show deals with race, it’s never that simple. He is playing with concepts that point to this country where history, politics, colour and tension have been dominated for years by black and white, while the majority of the world’s population does not fall into one of these two categories.

“It’s those things we keep missing in-between,” he says. That’s about as much as he will divulge because he understands the element of surprise that is so much a part of any of his performances.

His short Christmas season, for example, was titled Ryk Neethling Doesn’t Talk to Me. For the last two shows at the Centurion Theatre and one in Cape Town, the swimmer appeared at the end of the show.

“People just went crazy,” he says. And that gets his soul tingling.

For his new season he has gathered a young troupe who are becoming regular musicians, led by accompanist Charl du Plessis, as well as two two singers, Nikolaas Swart and Lindiwe Bungane, who was the winner of Project Fame when Nataniël was a judge.

“Her voice can strip paint from walls,” he says and notes that female voices inspire and move him.

The music and the costumes are contemporary rather than in period as per his last three shows, Coronation, Cathedral and Combat, which he also describes as darker shows. It is Combat that will be released at cinemas on Friday.

This marks the first theatre production in SA to be screened at cinema complexes - much like the British National Theatre productions that screen on the Ster-Kinekor Nouveau circuit. The difference is Combat will be screened on general circuit (Ster-Kinekor and Nu Metro) from Friday to February 9.

“We had made the DVD as a matter of course,” he says of the film shot by producer Deon de Bruyn. They simply had to add subtitles to the few Afrikaans stories. It gives diehard fans the chance to see the show on screen, but also allows the rest of the country the opportunity to see what all the fuss is about.

Nataniël’s annual Emperors Palace shows are too big and costly to travel, but in the past few years, this is where his creative soul was focused.

If you have never seen this exotic creature at work, it’s exhilarating to catch his creative storytelling, wallow in the outrageous costumes and spectacular stage scenery that appears as if in a pop-up book and to listen to him tell the most extravagant stories in a language (Afrikaans and English) he has made his own.