Mike van Graan is an award-winning playwright with 40 plays under his belt. His current works are TO LIFE, WITH LOVE (premiered at Artscape on 4 February 2025), I CAN BUY MYSELF FLOWERS (premiered at the Drama Factory on 6 February 2025), SO OVER THE RAINBOW (to premiere in the last week of April) and THE GOOD WHITE which will premiere on 1 May at The Suidooster Festival before transferring to the Market Theatre from 8 May. Mike also has a scripted dialogue - ABRAHAM's PROMISES - that takes the form of a panel discussion sparked by the question 'Are Jews safer today than they were on 6 October 2023?'. His most recent satirical one-hander - MY FELLOW SOUTH AFRICANS - won the performer, Kim Blanche Adonis, the Toyota US Woordfees Best Solo Award (October 2023) and the Best Solo Performance award at the inaugural Independent Theatre Awards (February 2024) where it also won the Best New Script award. MY FELLOW SOUTH AFRICANS was awarded a Standard Bank Bronze Ovation Award at the 2024 National Arts Festival. It was performed 149 times around the country. In addition to writing plays, Mike has extensive experience in cultural policy, building artists' networks both locally and across the African continent, and in advocacy. He has served as the Secretary General of Arterial Network, as the Director of the African Arts Institute and the Coordinator of the Sustaining Theatre and Dance (STAND) Foundation. In May 2024, he completed a 3-month writer's residency at the University of the Free State where he wrote a play, THE GOOD WHITE, set against the backdrop of the Rhodes/Fees Must Fall campaigns. This play will be co-produced by the Market Theatre (Johannesburg) and Die Suidoosterfees (Cape Town). He also used the time to update his 2014 script, RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS to 2024, the production of which was done with Bloemfontein-based actors and which had a short run at The Wave Theatre in Cape Town. Mike is currently concentrating on building a sustainable theatre practice as a writer/producer while also engaged in activities related to the Palestinian Arts and Culture Solidarity Collective (PACSOC), an informal network that seeks to support the Palestinian creative sector at this time when Palestinians as a whole are facing the most brutal existential assault by Israel and its liberal democracy enablers.
Mike van Graan is an award-winning playwright with 40 plays under his belt. His current works are TO LIFE, WITH LOVE (premiered at Artscape on 4 February 2025), I CAN BUY MYSELF FLOWERS (premiered at the Drama Factory on 6 February 2025), SO OVER THE RAINBOW (to premiere in the last week of April) and THE GOOD WHITE which will premiere on 1 May at The Suidooster Festival before transferring to the Market Theatre from 8 May. Mike also has a scripted dialogue - ABRAHAM's PROMISES - that takes the form of a panel discussion sparked by the question 'Are Jews safer today than they were on 6 October 2023?'. His most recent satirical one-hander - MY FELLOW SOUTH AFRICANS - won the performer, Kim Blanche Adonis, the Toyota US Woordfees Best Solo Award (October 2023) and the Best Solo Performance award at the inaugural Independent Theatre Awards (February 2024) where it also won the Best New Script award. MY FELLOW SOUTH AFRICANS was awarded a Standard Bank Bronze Ovation Award at the 2024 National Arts Festival. It was performed 149 times around the country. In addition to writing plays, Mike has extensive experience in cultural policy, building artists' networks both locally and across the African continent, and in advocacy. He has served as the Secretary General of Arterial Network, as the Director of the African Arts Institute and the Coordinator of the Sustaining Theatre and Dance (STAND) Foundation. In May 2024, he completed a 3-month writer's residency at the University of the Free State where he wrote a play, THE GOOD WHITE, set against the backdrop of the Rhodes/Fees Must Fall campaigns. This play will be co-produced by the Market Theatre (Johannesburg) and Die Suidoosterfees (Cape Town). He also used the time to update his 2014 script, RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS to 2024, the production of which was done with Bloemfontein-based actors and which had a short run at The Wave Theatre in Cape Town. Mike is currently concentrating on building a sustainable theatre practice as a writer/producer while also engaged in activities related to the Palestinian Arts and Culture Solidarity Collective (PACSOC), an informal network that seeks to support the Palestinian creative sector at this time when Palestinians as a whole are facing the most brutal existential assault by Israel and its liberal democracy enablers.
“Mike van Graan has deservedly gained a reputation as our leading contemporary political playwright – or if that seems too bald and simplistic a statement, as a playwright who is not afraid to tackle head-on the issues that confront us in the “new” South Africa.”
— - Rob Gaylard
South African Theatre Journal, January 2012
“Van Graan is a patriotic and committed democrat who has through his playwriting extended his cultural and civil society activism into any number of societal problems challenging the country, its people and its fledgling democracy.”
— - Brent Meersman
The Methuen Guide of Contemporary South African Theatre, 2015
“In taking the decision to present Mike van Graan with the award the Board stressed both his impressive literary work, his important role in shaping and monitoring post-apartheid cultural policies and his policy, advocacy and capacity-building work in the field of culture and its contribution to development, human rights and peace in Africa.”
— - The Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation
for Peace and Culture on presenting the 2018 Hiroshima Prize to Mike
“It takes a certain degree of fearlessness to be an excellent playwright….Right now, South Africa’s most controversial topic is land expropriation and Mike van Graan wades right into these murky waters with his latest satire, Land Acts. I love the way Van Graan’s extraordinarily sharp brain links several subjects together and knocks you for a six with the punchlines.”
— - Lesley Stones
Daily Maverick, May 2018
“Van Graan is one of South Africa’s most prominent, provocative and celebrated playwrights and the recipient of numerous national and international awards and accolades which bear testimony not only to theatre but to his broader contribution to the cultural landscape as well.”
— - University of Pretoria News
on Mike receiving an honorary Doctor of Philosophy Degree from the Faculty of Humanities in April 2018