| What: To Life, With Love by Mike van Graan Featuring: John Maytham Director: Josh Lindberg When: August 12-30, 2025 Where: Societas Theatre, Cape Town, in the hall of the NGK Church, 55 Kloof Street, Gardens Bookings: Quicket. Age restriction: No under 13s For more information or to use the show for fundraising or educational purposes, contact Mike van Graan at 0829003349 or email art27m@iafrica.com. Also see https://mikevangraan.co.za |
Mike van Graan’s acclaimed play, To Life, With Love, featuring John Maytham will be on for a three week run, from August 12-30, 2025 at Societas Theatre, Cape Town. This pop-up theatre is in the hall of the NGK Church, 55 Kloof Street, Gardens, behind Tiger’s Milk and Postnet, opposite the Lifestyle Centre with ample parking. Twenty percent of the box-office income will go to the Groote Kerk and its support for orphanages in different parts of the province. Amazing. Read on for more:
Mike van Graan’s To Life, With Love featuring John Maytham returns due to popular demand at pop-up theatre
Mike van Graan’s To Life, With Love featuring John Maytham, the highly regarded Cape Talk host and trained actor, returns due to popular demand at the delightful pop-up theatre Societas Theatre in Kloof Street, Cape Town.
Directed by Josh Lindberg, the play premiered at Artscape in February 2025 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.
To Life, With Love will now have a three-week run from August 12-30, 2025 at Societas Theatre, a pop-up theatre in the hall of the NGK Church, 55 Kloof Street, Gardens (behind Tiger’s Milk and Postnet, opposite the Lifestyle Centre with its ample parking).
Tickets are available through Quicket.
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
Outstanding. So relevant, so thought-provoking. John Maytham (is) brilliant. Thank you. Everyone should see this show.
Amazing. Thought-provoking. Inspiring.
Outstanding work. Wonderful script and faultless performance. Thank you!
Extraordinary writing, acting, production! What a team. Blown away by all this talent. This show needs to be seen!
A most moving performance that really hit in the solar plexis. So insightful and empathetic. It will stay with me for a very long time. Thank you!
Thought-provoking and relatable. Just wow!!!
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.
*Societas is a Latin word that means ‘society’ and could also mean fellowship, association and alliance. It Roman and civil law, societas means partnership.
The hour-long performance runs:
Tuesdays to Saturdays at 19:15
Saturdays at 16h00
Tickets are available through Quicket.
Tickets for the preview on August 12 cost R107.85
Tickets for Tuesday to Thursday cost R134.26
Tickets for Friday & Saturday cost R165.95
Age restriction: No under 13s
For more information or to use the show for fundraising or educational purposes, contact Mike van Graan at 0829003349 or email art27m@iafrica.com. Also see https://mikevangraan.co.za
Performer: John Maytham
John Maytham trained as an actor at Rhodes University and appeared in King Lear, the first play presented at the first National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 1974. He performed professionally in a number of productions before switching to radio when he joined the News Programme at Radio 604. He helped to establish Cape Talk and was the first host to switch on the mic in 1997. Since then, he has become synonymous with Cape Talk and as a much- respected host, he has grown a large audience for his afternoon John Maytham show.
Director: Josh Lindberg
Josh Lindberg hails from an illustrious theatre family but has established himself as a highly respected creative in his own right. He is the Creative Director and Executive Producer for HQ Worldwide Shows and Spiral Productions, conceptualizing and executing major events both locally and abroad. He is an accomplished theatre director who integrates design into his work. Most recently, he walked off with the major design awards at the Fleur du Cap and Naledi Theatre Awards for his set design for The Promise, directed by Sylvaine Strike.
Writer: Mike van Graan
Mike van Graan is a South African playwright and producer based in Cape Town. He served as the Coordinator of the Sustaining Theatre and Dance (STAND) Foundation, an initiative to support the South African dance and theatre sector through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. He has extensive experience in policy formulation and advocacy and in building artists’ networks, both in South Africa and across the African continent. He served on the expert facility of UNESCO’s 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions from 2011-2018. He was the head writer of the team that produced Breathing New Vision into Theatre and Dance: National Theatre and Dance Policy, commissioned by South Africa’s Department of Sport, Arts and Culture in 2021/22. As a playwright with 40 plays under his belt, he is regarded as one of South Africa’s foremost contemporary playwrights having garnered numerous awards and nominations for his work which generally engages the personal and the political.
About MVG Productions
MVG Productions is the sole proprietorship of playwright Mike van Graan through which he produces and tours his plays. It is also the vehicle through which he pursues the holy grail of independent theatre-making i.e. a sustainable livelihood. Individual Subscribers and Angels are integral to this pursuit. For more info, see https://mikevangraan.co.za
Acknowledgements
Two books in particular that have informed this work are Being Mortal by Atul Gawande and Helena Dolny’s Before Ever After.
PDF Scripts
The script is available as a designed PDF and includes a living will template for R250.
✳ John Maytham in To Life, With Love by Mike van Graan. Photo: Bronwyn Lloyd.
