At 12.00pm this afternoon, the CEO of The National Arts Council, Ms Annabell Lebethe, officially opened the ‘So you think you can write?’ script reading and mentorship programme, an NAC initiative to develop young playwrights and which affords writers the opportunity to work with industry professionals and actors to have their scripts developed to the highest standard before moving into production.


The programme kicked off with the reading of Thami Mbongo’s script, Colourless City, which ended to thunderous applause from the audience.  Colourless City is a daring script which talks about a budding love between Debbie, a Coloured girl from Cape Town and Dali, a Xhosa boy who’s just arrived in Cape Town from rural Eastern Cape.  It tells the story of the complex race relations which exist in Cape Town between Coloured and Black people. 


‘The script reading process has been very enlightening and educational for me as an aspiring playwright as I received a lot of insight into the writing process and over the last few weeks the development of my script has been enormous!’, said Thami Mbongo.


Bongi Ndaba, a senior writer for Generations, was the mentor who worked with Thami over the last few weeks, and has seen a lot of development in Thami as a writer – and also in his script.  Ndaba said, ‘I’ve been pleasantly surprised by Thami, particularly after we arrived in Grahamstown, as he has shown tremendous commitment to the writing process and making his script the best possible read’.


Janice Honeyman, a Cape Town based Directing Guru and Writing Teacher will work with Thami Mbongo on further developing his script, and will continue to work with other writers after the reading of each of their scripts. 


The programme will continue later in the day with Making Mandela, a script by Jenine Collocott and Nick Warren being read at 16.00pm, and tomorrow – Friday 2nd July, The Rollercoaster by Susan Santos will be read at 10am, with the last reading being Me, Friend and Vat en Sit by Bongani Madondo being read at 12.00pm. 


Eugene Marillier-Malotana is the Co-ordinator of the programme in Grahamstown with Bongi Ndaba and Mncedisi Shabangu as the writer mentors.