Siya Mayola

Biography

Born Siyabonga Ricky Mayola on the 10th of May 1988 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. His mother was a nurse and his father a teacher.

He attended primary school at Victoria Park Grey Primary and Sundridge Park Primary, then attended Alexander Road High School, where he matriculated. He next attended Stage World Theatre School in Port Elizabeth for a year, then moved to Cape Town, to attend the AFDA theatre and film school. He was there for four years, achieving his honors in performance.

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

He made his film debut in 2011,appearing as "Baby Face" in the American independent movie [[[419]] (filmed in Cape Town). Other films include The Brave Unseen, Poppie Nongena (2019)

TV appearances include the role of "Bongani Mapanga" in Amaza (2014)

Stage performances included the workshop play Faces of Betrayal (AFDA, 2012), Blacks Sails (2014), "Willie" in Master Harold and the Boys,

In 2012 he appeared in was one of the main cast in "Faces Of Betrayal", a , directed by Dr.Christopher John and Caroline Duck. Faces of Betrayal explores the lives of young people living in Cape Town through a series of events involving moments of betrayal. That was AFDA Cape Town's first theatre production which went on to be performed at the Grahamstown Festival and in Cape town. That same year, he received the Award for Best Supporting Actor at the annual AFDA awards for his performance as a South African Policemen in the short film "The Brave Unseen" directed by Duan Myburg. The Brave Unseen won Best SA Short film at the Durban film festival and was the opening screened film at Out in Africa SA program. At the end of 2012 Mayola went on to film a documentary in Antarctica for two and a half months.

Early 2013 Mayola appeared in "Blacks Sails", an upcoming television drama series created by Jon Steinberg and Robert Levine for Starz, which is set to debut in January 2014. He was cast as a Young Slave, where he had to learn how to speak Yoruba, a Niger-Congo language spoken in West Africa.

In late 2013, Mayola appeared in a leading role in the short-lived SABC 1 13-part drama series, Amaza, which had 7.5 million viewership when it aired in 2014, playing the part of a young artist Bongani Mapanga.

Mayola has been involved in many Film/Tv and theatre productions over the years. In 2022 he won "Best Supporting actor" for his role as "Willie" in the Fugard classic at the annual Fleur Du Cap awards 2022, Master Harold and the Boys alongside Desmond Dube and Kai Luke Brummer.