{"id":209,"date":"2013-04-05T18:20:56","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T16:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/?p=209"},"modified":"2013-04-05T18:20:56","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T16:20:56","slug":"gipca-hosts-staged-conversation-between-writers-mike-van-graan-and-brent-meersman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/blog\/2013\/04\/05\/gipca-hosts-staged-conversation-between-writers-mike-van-graan-and-brent-meersman\/","title":{"rendered":"GIPCA Hosts Staged Conversation Between Writers, Mike van Graan And Brent Meersman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Award-winning and provocative playwright Mike van Graan engages in conversation with author and critic Brent Meersman about What it means to be a playwright in South Africa in the 21st Century<\/em><\/strong>, at GIPCA\u2019s Great Texts, on 16 April 2013 at 17:30.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPlaywrights who actually manage to see their work staged are thin
\non the ground in South Africa. Van Graan is one of the few practicing
\nplaywrights who has had significant success in the past decade with a dozen acclaimed works. He constructs morally complex situations and dramatically layered scripts dealing with highly controversial socio-political topics\u201d comments Meersman.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this staged conversation, Van Graan and Meersman consider what
\nrole and function theatre has in the new South Africa, asking if the “well-made play” has become an arcane activity, and how the playwright negotiates a culturally diverse audience and country.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mike van Graan<\/strong> is the Executive Director of the African Arts Institute (AFAI), a South African NGO based in Cape Town whose
\ntwo-fold mission is to help develop leadership for the African creative sector and to build regional markets for African artists and their creative works. Until recently, he also served as the Secretary General of Arterial Network, a Pan African network of artists, cultural activists, creative enterprises and others engaged in the African creative sector and its contribution to human rights, democracy and development on the African continent.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

After the country\u2019s first democratic elections in 1994, he was
\nappointed as a Special Adviser to the first minister responsible for arts and culture where he played an influential role in shaping post-apartheid cultural policies. In 2011, Van Graan was appointed by UNESCO as a Technical Adviser to assist governments in the global south to develop cultural policies aligned to the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. He was appointed as Artscape\u2019s Associate Playwright and is considered as one of South Africa\u2019s leading contemporary playwrights, having garnered numerous nominations and awards for his plays that interrogate the post-apartheid South African condition. Van Graan received the Standard Bank Standing Ovation award at the 2012 Nation al Arts Festival for his sustained contribution to the Festival as a writer and activist.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Author Brent Meersman<\/strong> has had an eclectic career, spanning the arts, commerce and political arenas. He is a compulsive traveller; at last count he’d been to 50 countries and travelled around all the continents, including the Antarctic. Since 2003, he writes for the national weekly, the Mail & Guardian<\/em>. He has written extensively for New Africa Analysis<\/em> magazine, London, reviewed work for the BBC and the London Financial Times<\/em>, and contributed to the Sunday Independent<\/em>, Business Day<\/em>, The Witness, Cape Times, Die Burger, The Weekender, The Wry Republic, Politicsweb<\/em>, and as a M&G Thought Leader<\/em>. Meersman is also on the editorial board of Critical Stages<\/em>, the journal of the International Association of Theatre Criti cs<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

His first novel, Primary Coloured<\/em>, was published in 2007,
\nfollowed by Reports Before Daybreak<\/em>; and his latest novel Five
\nLives at Noon<\/em> will be published in June 2013. Meersman\u2019s poetry collection Ophila and the Poet and other poems<\/em> (2010) includes poems that have appeared in New Contrast<\/em>, New Contact, Botsotso<\/em>, and Green Dragon<\/em>. His short stories have appeared in What Love Is<\/em> (2011), and his first published story was in The Invisible Ghetto<\/em>
\n(1993).<\/span><\/p>\n

Great Texts lectures take place on Tuesdays for the month of April.
\nThis lecture will take place on Tuesday 23 April 2013 at 17:30 at
\nHiddingh Hall<\/strong>, University of Cape Town (UCT) Hiddingh Campus, Orange Street, Cape Town, and is free. Refreshments will be served from 17:00; no booking is necessary. For more information on the Great Texts series, please contact 021 480 7156 or fin-gipca@uct.ac.za<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Award-winning and provocative playwright Mike van Graan engages in conversation with author and critic Brent Meersman about What it means to be a playwright in South Africa in the 21st Century, at GIPCA\u2019s Great Texts, on 16 April 2013 at 17:30. \u201cPlaywrights who actually manage to see their work staged are thin on the ground… Continue reading GIPCA Hosts Staged Conversation Between Writers, Mike van Graan And Brent Meersman<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}