29 June 2005
At a recent award ceremony in London, South African writer and performer Greig Coetzee won a Sony Radio Academy Award for his Banana Republic. The comedy-drama aired in April 2004 on BBC Radio 4, with Coetzee performing alongside Tracy Ann Oberman, a star of the British soap opera Eastenders.
Banana Republic was awarded third prize in the category Best Radio Drama of 2004, a significant achievement given the huge number of radio dramas broadcast in the UK every year.
The play was commissioned by the BBC when a corporation producer saw Coetzee's stage play Happy Natives during its run on London's West End in 2002.
After writing the script, Coetzee was flown to London to record the play alongside Oberman.
Also in the cast was former Springbok Radio star Don McCorkindale, now a UK resident. McCorkindale played the title role in the long-running 1970s Springbok Radio series My Name is Adam Caine.
Coetzee has just completed a tour of Singapore and the UK with his stage hit, White Men With Weapons. This local theatre classic, winner of two awards at the Edinburgh Festival, will tour Australia in September and October.
Coetzee also took the revived production of White Men With Weapons to the 2005 Grahamstown festival, to mark the 10th anniversary of the play's first performance there in 1995. It has now had close to 700 performances in 12 countries on four continents.
Also at the Grahamstown festival in July was Coetzee's latest play, Johnny Boskak is Feeling Funny.
"It's apt that the two plays should be performed in tandem, as Johnny Boskak is based on a character from White Men," Coetzee said. Coetzee wrote the entire piece in rap-style rhyme, describing it as "a cross between a road movie and a rock opera".
Johnny Boskak includes Durban's guitar wizard Syd Kitchen, who composed original music which he plays live on stage as a soundtrack to Coetzee's performance.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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