A young Wits drama graduate wins the Heineken National Playwright Competition

Campbell Meas’ play selected out of the 338 scripts entered for the 2025 iteration of the contest, judged the best of them all is headed for the stages of the National Arts festival in Makhanda later this year

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor

It is a script that has been worked on and put away several times for the past nine years and the writer never thought in her wildest dreams that one day it would be complete and even enjoy a spotlight at a major international theatre festival.

“I have worked on this script since 2016, immediately after graduating from Wits. I put this script away several times and never thought that one day it would be complete and be ready for the stage. But thanks to the support of a network of my friends, who in fact have worked with me to develop this script at the beginning by generously giving me ideas that resulted in this script,” said Campbell Meas in hers accepting speech at an event convened to crown the winner of this year’s Heiken Playwright Competition held at the beverage’s headquarters in Sandton on Monday evening, April, 14, 2025.

Her play was among 338 which were entered this year for this competition which sees the winner rewarded handsomely in several ways, including mentors assigned to them to fine-tune their script, a cash prize of R20 000 and an opportunity for the script to be produced as a fully-fledged play to grace the stages of the National Arts festival in Makhanda.

Her winning plays, which was originally titled The Mechanics of Play, saw Campbell assigned to a mentor, well academic and playwright Dr. Refiloe of Tshwane University of Technology, who assisted her in developing the play into a ready-to be performed product on the stages of the National Arts festival for 2025 in Makhanda. In the process the script underwent several makeovers that included a change of title from The Mechanics of Play to Vakavigwa, a Shona word that means they have been buried, she told the audience. Her mother is from Zimbabwe and father being South African.

The competition was created to give a voice and platform to emerging playwrights, while also providing invaluable mentorship and support to polish and perfect a play ready for the stage. 

 One of the key facets of the competition is that entrants are encouraged to write in their choice of language. This is the fourth iteration of the competition whose previous winners include Amy-Louse Wilson, Koleka Putuma and Sibongakonke Mama. 

 The finalists each receive R 5000 and are assigned a mentor to work with towards the completion of their play. The overall winner will not only have their work produced and staged at the 2025 National Arts Festival but will also win a further R 20 000.Campbell emerged as the overall winner out of the four finalists that made it this far out of the the 338 scripts that a panel of judges had to sift through looking for that play that stood out and and had poential to inject a life on theatre stages.

But how is Campbell Meas?

Campbell Meas is an actress, writer, director, facilitator, experimental film enthusiast and theatre maker. Graduating from Wits University with a BADA Honours in Performance and Directing, as well as receiving performance training from Indigo View Academy, she has been a part of theatre groups The Movement RSA and Jittery Citizens, performing in a variety of award-winning shows, most notably the Naledi winning Just Antigone.

Moving into the teaching space, she has lectured and taught at both Wits university as well as the Market Theatre Lab, recently being part of the FicSci cohort which saw her writing being published within their annual anthology of work. Her own projects deal with intimate stories that also push mediums to new creative spaces. The other three finalists are creative producer, filmmaker, writer and theatre practitioner Thozama Busakwe (Johannesburg)

for Sasikhe Sabhabha (IsiXhosa/ English), award-winning theatre director, teacher (University of Cape Town) and poet, Lwando Sindaphi  for I Will Teach You How to Share the Milk and BFA student (Bachelor, (Makhanda, Eastern Cape) for The Glass Ceiling. Congratulations to Campbell.