The publication of The House of Truth & Bloke and His American Bantu: Two Plays brings my work as a playwright full circle. The two biographical plays that make up this publication have both graced some prominent stages with resounding success.

The House of Truth is a play about Can Themba (1924–1967), a writer and journalist who worked for Drum magazine between 1953 and 1959. Similarly, Bloke and His American Bantu is a play about the friendship between American poet Langston Hughes (1901–1967) and William Bloke Modisane (1923–1986), a South African writer who also worked for Drum magazine in the 1950s. Themba and Modisane were both part of the pantheon of journalists who revolutionised South African journalism in the 1950s. The lives of these two scribes are intertwined in many different ways but also have a number of divergences. Although they were contemporaries, the experiences explored in these two plays differ remarkably, as much as their periods and settings are different.

I wrote The House of Truth in 2015 as some form of a catharsis amidst a toxic combination of pressing deadlines imposed by both my professional and pedagogic undertakings. I was reading towards my doctoral degree while working for a government department on a full-time basis. The combination of government bureaucracy and academic demands was overwhelming and, quite paradoxically, I was at the same time both fascinated and inspired by the dynamism of Can Themba's life, which is what I was researching. I had the urge to take a break from the academic project and seek refuge in a creative outlet. Visualising the life of Can Themba unfolding before me, I explored it through writing a play, which had a cathartic effect. I presented the play script to venerated actor and director Sello Maake kaNcube, who had starred in the first stage adaptation of Themba's The Suit in 1993.

I titled the play The House of Truth because by writing it I was able to enter and invite everyone into Themba's world. The House of Truth was Themba's modest abode at 111 Ray Street in Sophiatown in Johannesburg, and he named it as such because truth telling was central to his being as a writer, journalist and a teacher.