BUILDING COMMUNITY THEATRE IN MZIMELA

Dr Jutka Devenyi, Arts and Culture Researcher and Intervention programme Manager for the Centre for HIV/AIDS Networking (HIVAN) will host a forum on November 23 from 12h15 to 14h00 in the Seminar Room, MRC Building, 491 Peter Mokaba Road (Ridge Road), Overport, Durban.

Jutka Devenyi is currently employed by HIVAN and is involved in a NDA-funded project which aims to establish a cooperative with unemployed youth in Mzimela. The cooperative is engaged in creating crafts, dramatic performances and various other services relating to the traditional and contemporary culture as well as to the local ecology for tourists visiting the area.

Jutka's academic interest focuses on building bridges between applied theatre and science, especially HIV research. Having worked mostly in the USA at Cornell University, the City University of New York Graduate Centre, and Hunter College, She was also the Head of the Actors Studio Drama School, MFA Theatre History Division at the New School in New York City for over ten years and the Co-Director of the Drama Programme of the University of Auckland for two.

She completed her MA in English and Comparative Literature at the Eotvos Lorand University of Liberal Arts in Budapest, and received her PhD degree in Dramatic Arts at the University of California-Santa Barbara. She is the author of Metonymy and Drama: Essays on Language and Dramatic Strategy (Bucknell UP).

She directed and designed several contemporary European and American plays, presented in Santa Barbara and at Cornell University and at various venues in New York City, in French and in English. She taught improvisational exercises to disabled homeless women at the UN International Centre in New York City, and worked with the LAPD (Los Angeles Poverty Department), a community-based art programme designed to create theatre for and with the homeless of Skid Row. She has just finished creating a guerrilla performance at DUT called In the Taxi.

More information from Forum Co-Ordinator Stewart Kilburn on 031 260 3331, or email: stewartk@hiv911.org.za or visit www.hiv911.org.za