Calvin Ratladi is grateful to the handful or so of people who, at the last minute, opted out of studying drama at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) in 2013. They inadvertently opened up the world of theatre for him, a journey that’s seen his achievements benefit not only him, but the University of Pretoria (UP) and the public at large.

Initially, he was rejected for BTech Drama. His audition, he says, “was horrible”. Three weeks after TUT had reopened for a new academic year, they called to say a space had opened up and wanted to know if he was still interested. He grabbed the opportunity.

“Four years later, I graduated cum laude,” Ratladi recalls. “But thank God to those seven people who didn’t come.”

Now Ratladi lectures second-year, third-year and honours students in directing, performance studies, drama and film history in UP’s Drama Department in the School of Arts. And on 10 April, he clinched one of South Africa’s top accolades in the arts – the 2025 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Theatre. As Ratladi puts it, previous Standard Bank Young Artist Award winners are “not just artists who are creating work” but “industry leaders”. He joins a list of more than 180 industry leaders who have been recognised with this award since the early 1980s.

The truth is, he wouldn’t have been completely in the lurch if he hadn’t studied drama. He’d been awarded a bursary in a high school debating competition to study agriculture, and had completed two years of a diploma in crop production at TUT. He was about to do the year of work-integrated learning required to complete the qualification, but was somewhat reluctant because his heart was in the extra-curricular drama activities he’d been doing through TUT’s leadership development Top Junior programme, which had included volunteering at a state theatre festival.

Now his move to the arts has been such a hit, he thinks even his family has forgotten that he’d studied crop sciences – though Ratladi cannot forget that one of his former classmates now owns a farm that cost R22 million.

“When I meet him, I’m like ‘Oh ja’,” he says with a smile as he ponders what might have been.

Ratladi is rich in other ways: his theatrical creations have seen him travel the world, score a job at an institution he loves, be on national television and win multiple awards. And this is just the beginning.

“I want to get my master’s, but my ultimate dream is to become an artistic director of a theatre, because you get to shape the language of theatre. Being at an institution like UP is preparing me psychologically for a bigger, more diverse conversation.”

He is passionate about many things.

“Fiction is a world I fell in love with,” he says. “I just fell in love with writing, and I saw myself doing it for life. But at the same time, I was very much interested in studying law. For some reason, I still am interested – I haven’t shaken off that feeling. As I went on to consume theatre and television, I expanded my love for theatre and storytelling generally.”

But the passion he speaks about most emphatically is his feelings for UP.

“I love being at UP,” he says with dramatic emphasis. “For me, UP has been a space where I’m not only teaching and being a knowledge contributor, but I also receive [knowledge] from the students. It’s a two-way street. I like how open-minded the institution is.”

Stealing the show

Before the Standard Bank award was made public, Ratladi had contacted agents to arrange auditions (without mentioning the award, as he’d signed a non-disclosure agreement) for his sponsored production at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda in June/July, which is part of his prize.

He’ll be directing Breakfast with Mugabe, written by British playwright Fraser Grace and first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2006. After the festival, it will have a season at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. Being Ratladi – whose non-linear, creative thinking borders on the audacious – the first role he is auditioning actors for is not the lead, but Mugabe’s bodyguard.

“I’m always interested in the roles seen as close to nothing,” he says. “I’m interested in what range and nuances the bodyguard can bring. The other roles are delivering a lot of text, but there's so much we can learn about this household, this presidential house, just from watching that guy.”

The Standard Bank award is Ratladi’s biggest accolade thus far, but not the first recognition of his excellence. He previously won two Standard Bank Ovation Awards for plays staged at the National Arts Festival, both of which he’d written. In 2019, he won both the ImpACT Award for Young Professionals (Theatre) and the Naledi Theatre Award’s Lesedi Spirit of Courage honour. And in 2022, he was honoured with the Outstanding Person with Disability Award at the South African Film and Television Awards. Ratladi lives with what he’s described as “diverse functionality” rather than “disability”: kyphoscoliosis, a spinal condition characterised by a curvature of the spine.

His recognition is not only national. After performing in an 11-minute poetic dance piece called Plunge Avatar ­– choreographed by David April, now his colleague at UP, and written by former Young Artist winner Sylvaine Strike – and performing in a festival of all 11-minute works at the Centre for the Less Good Idea (a venue initiated by artist William Kentridge, another Young Artist winner), Ratladi was commissioned to do a solo show at the SPIELART Theatre Festival in Munich, Germany.

He’s also performed his original works at other international festivals: the Red Bridge in Luxembourg, Theaterformen in Germany and the Zürcher Theater Spektakel in Switzerland.

In South Africa, he’s best known for his role as Goloza in the Mzansi Magic TV series Shaka iLembe. The second season kicks off in June.

“It’s tough to say you're enjoying such work,” Ratladi says. “But one thing I can say is that I’m growing with that production and that role.”

Initially, he was a bit hesitant to do the part.

“Having read a few drafts, my biggest fear was perpetuating a certain stereotype around how certain bodies carry supernatural powers. Africa has a very violent history of people living with disabilities. That’s a fact. Luckily, the producers listened to me, and they constantly worked around not perpetuating that. I respect Bomb Shelter productions for listening, because they could have said ‘take it or leave it’.”

All his roles now form part of his master’s in performance-making at UP, supervised by Dr Kristina Johnstone and Dr Lelia Bester.

“My research involves reflecting on my previous work, how I’ve made it, and how my embodied experiences and the spaces I’ve lived in, and the social and cultural climate that I was born in and am existing in, in South Africa, somehow find themselves in my work.”