Peter Bode

Peter Bode is a radio journalist, social historian and an award-winning television producer/director.

Also credited as Peter W. Bode

Biography

He began studying photography in England, moved into television in London, and later co-founded a production company with actress, production assistant and editor Lillias Bode (néé Lillias Tait), his creative partner on most projects for decades.

From studio dramas and art shows to documentaries and game shows, he’s worked across nearly every format — often with a camera in one hand and a mission in the other. Ranging from anti-apartheid documentaries to cultural celebrations, Peter’s work has always had purpose. Career highlights include directing Cape Town’s Olympic bid video, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Nigerian Idol, and a year filming East Africa's Got Talent in Kenya. His memoir Pidgin and Pepper Soup (2024) shares four wild years of producing television in Nigeria.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

His film and TV career included doing the vision mixing on the TV movies Die Heks (1976), Much Ado About Nothing (1977), Ducktails (1977) and Die Seepsteen-bataljon (1978); serving as the assistant producer on the TV films The Chicken Run (1979) and Fever Ward (1980); and writing/directing the documentary Mimi Coertse: Queen of the Night (1992, credited as Peter W. Bode).

He ran his own production company for many years, producing magazines, talk shows, game shows, studio dramas and documentaries specialising in outreach programmes and numerous series on art and culture.

Credited as Peter W. Bode, he wrote an influential series of ten articles called A History of South African Theatre (published in Scenaria, numbers 21, 23 to 27-30, 32 in 1980-1982).

A notable recent project has been Theatre Lives, a series of interviews with a range of prominent theatre personalities. The interviews are by Bode himself and are filmed by Lillias Bode. The site aims at recording and documenting the theatrical past of South Africa.