Shortened bios
Mike van Graan Theatre Bio
Mike van Graan graduated from the University of Cape Town with a BA Honours Degree in Drama and was appointed as an Associate Professor in UCT’s Drama Department from 2015-2019. He is currently an artist-in-residence at the University of Pretoria where he has been commissioned to write a play on the Sustainable Development Goals.
Van Graan combines advocacy in cultural policy and general arts activism with his creative output as a playwright and producer.
To date, he has written thirty-two plays, with a quarter of them being commissions. His work generally explores the post-apartheid condition through drama and satire, and he is considered one of South Africa’s leading playwrights both for his prolific production and for the number of awards that his work has been nominated for, or won. Most recently, his play on African migration and refugees – When Swallows Cry – won the Naledi Theatre Awards for Best Production, Best Director and Best Script (2017).
He was appointed as Artscape’s Associate Playwright from 2011-2014 (Artscape is one of South Africa’s five nationally-subsidised theatres). He received the Standing Ovation Award at South Africa’s 2012 National Arts Festival for his sustained contribution to the Festival as a writer and activist, and in 2013 was appointed as the inaugural Festival Playwright where four of his plays were showcased.
Three of his plays have been translated: Green Man Flashing into Spanish and Greek, Brothers in Blood into Swedish and When Swallows Cry into Greek as well. Green Man Flashing (2004) is probably his most famous play, resonating with the #metoo campaign, and is regularly studied at schools and universities.
He is featured as a playwright both in The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary South African Theatre and New Territories: Theatre, Drama and Performance in Post-apartheid South Africa and was invited to write the final chapter – Epilogue: Theatre and the Post-Apartheid Condition for Theatre in Transformation: Artistic Processes and Cultural Policy in South Africa.
He was conferred with an honorary doctorate: PhD (honoris causa) in April 2018 by the University of Pretoria in recognition of his cultural activism and creative work.
Mike van Graan (Bio in 250 words)
Mike van Graan is the President of the African Cultural Policy Network and an award-winning playwright with thirty-two plays under his belt. He is currently an artist-in-residence at the University of Pretoria where he was conferred with an honorary doctorate in 2018 in recognition of his cultural activism and creative work.
After South Africa’s first democratic elections, he was appointed as a Special Adviser to the minister responsible for arts and culture, where he played an influential role in shaping post-apartheid cultural policies. He has served in leadership roles in anti-apartheid and post-apartheid cultural formations, as well as in Pan-African organizations like Arterial Network, promoting the creative sector and its contribution to human rights, democracy and development. He currently also serves as the interim secretariat for the nascent Global South Arts and Culture Initiative (GLOSACI).
Van Graan’s recent work in the international arena includes facilitating the Academy for Young Festival Managers (a project of the European Festival Association), producing the Toolkit on Fairer International Cultural Collaboration with IETM, Dutch Culture and On-The-Move and collaborating with the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture on a cultural entrepreneurship programme in Beirut.
He is the 2018 recipient of the Sweden-based Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture Award in recognition of his contribution to the fight against apartheid, to building a post-apartheid society and to the interface of peace and culture both in South Africa and across the African continent.
Mike van Graan (Bio in 50 words)
Mike van Graan is the President of the African Cultural Policy Network and an award-winning playwright with 32 plays under his belt. He is currently an artist-in-residence at the University of Pretoria where he was conferred with an honorary doctorate in 2018 in recognition of his cultural activism and creative work.