Mike van Graan’s To Life, With Love featuring John Maytham, Cape Talk host and actor (pictured left), returns due to popular demand at the pop-up theatre Societas Theatre in August.
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.
To Life, With Love will now have a three-week run from 12-30 August 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).
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.
New venue for To Life, With Love
Riaan de Villiers, the minister at the Groote Kerk in Gardens 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,” says 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 and when: Societas Theatre, Gardens from 12 to 30 August 2025
Tickets: Quicket
WS
