From 10-16 August, twelve writers will be participating in a radio drama residency in Mpumalanga, South Africa.

Hosted jointly by the Performing Arts Network of South Africa (PANSA), the British Council and BBC World Service Drama, the writers will work intensively with Marion Nancarrow, Executive Producer for BBC's World Service Drama and award-winning British playwright, Tina Pepler.

Writers who will be part of the residency include:

• Alan Glogauer (Cape Town)
• Kobus Moolman (KZN)
• Desmond Ntshalintshali (Gauteng)
• Ntsako Mabunda (Pretoria)
• Andrea le Sueur (Cape Town)
• Iain Paton (Gauteng)
• Brett Bailey (Cape Town)
• Tamantha Hammerschlag (KZN)
• Vanessa Levenstein (Cape Town)
• Lebogang Lokwalo (Gauteng)
• Mike Brownlee (Cape Town)
• and a guest writer from Botswana.

They will each bring a script-in-progress to work on.

The residency aims to encourage stronger writing for radio and will include immersion in radio ideas; adaptation; concentration on character; ideas for sound and a strong element of one-to-one sessions. One day will also be spent honing a scene for radio, which will be recorded by actors, played back and discussed.

The residency is the second phase of a project, the first having taken place in 2002 with a series of highly successful radio drama workshops around the country run by Nancarrow and Pepler, who were incredibly impressed with the standard of writing in South Africa. The third phase will be the broadcast of a selection of local scripts in 2004. A legacy of the workshops held last year is the formation of a Cape Town-based group of writers, which encourages consistent monthly meetings and ongoing analysis of new scripts generated by the individuals within the group.

Kobus Moolman, a residency participant and one of the writers in the KZN leg of the workshops in 2002, subsequently won second prize in the African Performance Competition, broadcast by the BBC World Service.

For more information on the residency project, please contact the PANSA National Office.