Michael Williams

Michael Williams is an arts adminisrator, and a writer of plays, musicals, operas, and novels

Biography

Michael started his opera career working as an Assistant Director for New Sadler’s Wells Opera in London, touring productions throughout the UK. He returned to South Africa and worked for Cape Town Opera for the next twenty years as head of Outreach, opera director, General Manager and finally as Managing Director. He moved to Buxton, England in 2018 and, asof 2024, is Chief Executive Officer of the Buxton International Festival.

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

As Arts administrator

He was Managing Director of Cape Town Opera.

As writer

Opera and Musicals

He wrote book and lyrics for the Stephenson musicals Who Killed Jimmy Valentine?, Animals, Wonderfully Wicked which have toured theatres throughout South Africa. In 2017, his musical Tiger Bay – The Musical (James), commissioned by the Wales Millennium Centre, opened at Artscape in Cape Town and transferred to the Donald Gordon Theatre in Cardiff.

He has written operas for young people based on African mythology (published by Heinemann Press in the anthology South African Operas for Young People), as well as the libretti for symphonic operas that have premiered around the world.

He has written the libretti for several symphonic operas with Roelof Temmingh which premiered in opera houses in Pretoria, Windhoek, and Cape Town.:

• Enoch, Prophet of God (1995)
• Sacred Bones
• Buchuland (1998)

He wrote the lyrics for a jazz opera, Love & Green Onions (Weale) based on Zakes Mda’s novel Ways of Dying which was invited to open the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.

NorlandOperan in Sweden commissioned and produced two of his operas Poet and Prophetess (Larsson-Gothe, 2008) and The Elephant Man (Unander-Scharin).

He wrote the book and lyrics for Mandela Trilogy (Van Dijk/Campbell) which toured to theatres in Ravenna, Munich, Manchester, London, Birmingham, Southampton, Dublin, Cardiff, Dubai and Hong Kong.

Plays

He began writing "radio plays" while studying at University of Cape Town. His plays include:

• Savages (1982)
• Water Carriers (performed in theatres in Indianapolis, Brooklyn and New York)

Other works

Williams had his first novel published when he was twenty-five years old. He is a prize-winning author of thirteen novels, including the highly praised young adult novel Crocodile Burning.

Sources

Buxton International Festival Website, https://buxtonfestival.co.uk/about-us/team

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4906950.Michael_Williams