Mike van Graan’s To Life, With Love featuring John Maytham returns due to popular demand from 12-30 August at the delightful pop-up theatre Societas Theatre in Kloof Street, Cape Town.
Directed by Josh Lindberg, the play premiered at Artscape in February and has played to sold-out houses at The Drama Factory, at the Franschhoek Literary Festival and at venues along the Garden Route, earning generous audience and critical responses wherever it has been performed.
John Maytham commissioned multiple award-winning playwright Mike van Graan to write him a one-person play with a blank canvas regarding themes. Inspired by Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal and drawing on Helena Dolny’s book, Before Ever After, Mike developed To Life, With Love, a poetic piece featuring the character Thomas Michael Faulkner. Thomas has experienced love, professional success, personal loss and social affirmation. Then, in his sixties, Thomas is diagnosed with a dread disease. There is a great chance of recovery, but Thomas is confronted by his mortality. With many good years ahead, Thomas makes choices about how he will live.
Media reviews and written audience responses to the show include:
a beautifully rendered mediation on life, end of life and how to live meaningfully and transcend grief and disappointment… Van Graan’s writing is exquisite. Direction (and design) by Josh Lindberg ignites the one hander with energy… Maytham’s performance is the sheer terror and fear that accompanies the advent of illness… Maytham nails it in his visceral portrayal – through his body as vector of pain’ Robyn Cohen, The Cape Robyn
Riaan de Villiers, the minister at the Groote Kerk in Adderley Street, has always wanted to use the hall as a theatre space. He met Van Graan after attending a staged reading of Abraham’s Promises, and the collaboration took root with My Fellow South Africans already having been performed in the hall.
‘The longer a play has a life, the longer it earns income and contributes to a sustainable livelihood’, said Van Graan. ‘But there are so few theatres for the number of independent theatre-makers out there. It makes sense then to access church, school and other infrastructure to create some kind of circuit for theatre, and to access new audiences.’
- Twenty percent of the box-office income will go to the Groote Kerk and its support for orphanages in different parts of the province.
WHAT: To Life, With Love WHERE: 12-30 August at Societas Theatre, a pop-up theatre in the hall of the NGK Church, 55 Kloof Street, Gardens, Cape Town 8001 WHEN: 12-30 August BOOKING: Quicket. Preview 12 Aug R107.85 Tues to Thurs R R134.26T | Fri & Sat R165.95 INFO: Mike van Graan C 0829003349 | E art27m@iafrica.com. | VISIT Age restriction: No under 13s PHOTO: Bronwyn Lloyd
