Mike Van Graan Takes Central Role

The prolific provocateur Mike Van Graan currently has a play on at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, called “The Good White,” directed by Grey Homann, the Artistic Director of the Market Theatre. Set against the backdrop of the Fees Must Fall Campaign #FeesMustFall, this play is an interrogation of the post-1994 “non-racial project”. The four characters tease out the iniquities that are part of the ever-evolving South African political landscape. Sitting in the audience, one knows that Van Graan has once again hit the nail on the head, as ripples travel in and around the theatre with fellow audience members clicking their fingers and exclaiming “Yoh!” whilst Van Graan titillates and prods at all those unspoken prickly truths laying them bare for all to witness.

Post 1994, one could never have imagined a scenario that would see select white South Africans leaving the country as refugees for the USA. As South African politics continue to play out, there is no shortage of material for Van Graan around which to continually flex his creative muscles. With acerbic aplomb, he keeps his audiences growing and coming back to indulge in more, squirming as they peep into the mirror that he reflects back at them. Van Graan says: “Theatre is about holding a mirror up to society, so that we can see what needs to be addressed. I need to comb my hair, I need to wash my face, I need to squeeze this pimple.”

With 40 plays under his belt, the theatre director, cultural consultant and activist unpacks a little of what makes him tick. Van Graan recognized that a lot of the work that had been done in the policy realm and advocacy and network building, had not realized the results that he wanted, which was to change the macro conditions so that people at a micro level are able to live more sustainably as artists. He explains that although they produced fantastic policy, the dearth of effectual politicians and competent bureaucrats resulted in the policies not being implemented. He explains: “Since 2023, I took a decision that I was going to try to make a living primarily as a playwright/producer and also then extend my writing genres to include novels and maybe television and movies, so as to really live by my creativity”.

Van Graan stresses that one of the key challenges in Africa and South Africa is poor leadership. He says: “I think that if we had much better political leadership, we’d be in quite a different place as a continent and as a country. Ultimately our leaders do not seem to be guided at all by the aspirations of the people in their respective countries. They are guided by a whole lot of other things like political opportunism, self-enrichment and power for its own sake, where the levels of corruption and incompetence get worse and worse. If we had better leadership in this country, this would be a very different place. The goodwill that we inherited in 1994 has been squandered and that has to do with incredibly poor leadership and nothing else”.

In his recent satire “My Fellow South Africans”(2022), his aim was to provoke people into thinking about how they were going to vote in the 2024 May elections. “The point was to put into the public domain the kinds of things that you wanted people to think about when they went to the ballot box, because our country needed a resetting after 30 years of ANC rule. We had to do something different. My aim was to provoke, catalyze and then to have discussions with people afterwards.”

Van Graan trained as a teacher. Because of his racial classification, as a Colored youth, he was expected to attend the University of the Western Cape. He wanted to attend the University of Cape Town to get the best education and in order to do that he had to apply to the Department of Colored Affairs for a permit. The permit he received was for Drama. On graduating, he applied for work as a teacher, but didn’t manage to secure a job. He did, however, get work within student organizations which then took him in the direction that he’s gone in.

Van Graan’s calendar for the year is jam-packed with seven projects that are on the cards. These are “The Good White,” “To Life, with Love,” “I Can Buy Myself Flowers,” “Over The Rainbow,” “My Fellow South Africans,” “Return Of The Ancestors,” and “Abrahams Promises.” Besides these, Van Graan says: “I’m working on one or two pieces that I want to have more of an international exposure, because in terms of my business plan I need to have some work that is generating euros and dollars so as to subsidize the work that I do here.”

As a character in his own story, with equal measure of passion, integrity and independence of thought, Van Graan is gratified with the role that he has played and is playing. Explaining he says: “I’m pretty cool with what I’m doing at the moment. I’ve been fortunate to have lived the kind of life that I have. Although I haven’t made much money, I’ve lived a very rich life and I’ve been able to explore and see places and do things that people who have earned much more money than I do have not yet been able to realize. Being able to work in theatre and trying to impact on our society or trying to have an impact on people’s lives and on their thinking, I think that that’s a real privilege and a real gift.”