Julian Seleke Mokoto

Julian Seleke Mokoto (also Julian Seleke-Mokoto) (19**-) is a playwright and theatre director.

Director of Abangani Community Arts in Soweto and Abangani Theatre Productions.

Biography

Hailing from Naledi, he spent his youth focused on soccer, but then he was exposed to theatre by a friend whom he accompanied to a performance of Gibson Kente's Things Are Bad Mzala, featuring Eric Sugar Mlangeni and was thus inspired to join a drama group. Once he was cast in a leading role in a performance he was hooked.

From the start he took on multiple duties and by his second stage role, Khathatso, he realised that he was a born actor and decided to abandon soccer. He then tried his hand at writing plays and came up with a hit called The Cause. A director from Grahamstown was impressed and invited him to their annual festival. He was also invited to take the play to Zimbabwe and Botswana. After writing, directing and acting in a play called Hold Up The Sun, he decided to quit acting and concentrate on writing and directing. He told Sun Buzz: “The idea was to create employment for other actors, because acting is their livelihood. Today I am proud that all my plays are performed to full houses. The reason I manage to put numbers in seats is because I write about social issues that are relevant to my audience. They identify with our stories. I have never written a flop!” Julian said. Though his shows have been successful, he says playwrights like him are not given enough chance to showcase their plays at places like the Market Theatre, the Baxter Theatre, The Playhouse, Windybrow and the bigger commercial theatres

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

Has created productions such as Shattered Dreams, Mary, the unfaithful Woman, Blind Mind, The Last Mile, Tapping Hearts and The Cause. Wrote and directed Hold Up The Sun (1995) at the the Abangani Community Arts in Soweto and staged at the Grahamstown Festival and in the Windybrow Theatre. Wrote and directed Money Maker, which opened in 2009 at the Windybrow Theatre and was revived in 2013 at Mmabana Studio 1, a sexually explicit and very popular play about sex workers. The Lies that Women Tell (2012), with TV personality Nomsa Buthelezi. She Died Dreaming (2013), a play about four women trying to find love, presented by the Playhouse Company at the SA Women's Arts Festival in Durban.