The University of KwaZulu-Natal (Howard
College Campus) Drama and Performance Studies Programme is proud to present The SPACE in B’Tween - a collectively
authored poetic drama.
Over the second semester of 2013, UKZN’s
Howard College Campus Drama and Performance Studies has had the honour of
hosting Dr Tawnya Pettiford-Wates from Virginia Commonwealth University in the
United States. She has come to the programmes as a visiting scholar and theatre
practitioner in an exchange that has seen her not only share her expertise by
feeding into the teaching and learning programmes but working intensively with
second and third year senior students. In a guided and workshopped process Dr.
T (as she is fondly called) has been crafting a theatrical production called The SPACE in B’Tween that will premiere
at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre from October 3 to 5.
Dr T. is a playwright, director, actor,
poet, writer/scholar-activist and teacher. She has appeared with the Tony Award
Winning company in the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Broadway production of For Colored Girls who have considered
Suicide / when the rainbow is enuf performing in both the national and
international touring companies. Having lived and worked in Seattle for over 23
years, she directed and performed at most of the major theatres in the town. As
Director she was awarded an Excellence in Directing Award for The Grapes of Wrath by the Kennedy
Center American Theatre Festival. She was honoured to receive the 2011 PACME
and the Rise Melton Award winner presented by President Rao of Virginia
Commonwealth University.
A key focus in Dr. T’s theatre work, is the
desire to create a space for self-empowerment of the dramatic artist through
the creation of original work based on personal story and personal history that
actively engages the barriers created by race, class, gender and identity that
are often ignored by classic theatre training in the conservatory model. She
has definite synergy and a home at UKZN’s Drama programme!
The
SPACE in B’Tween is performed in one act without an
intermission. It has seven cycles with a prologue and epilogue. In a visual and
emotional feat, the play interrogates how our respective identities are formed
through the “space in between” - spaces of the visible and the invisible, the
places where race, class, sex, gender and cultural continuum intersect and
disconnect from one another.
The audience is invited to become “critical
witnesses” not merely audience spectators. As a witness, the audience is given
an implicit responsibility for what they will see, hear and feel as the stories
are revealed in the music, poetry, drama and dance. It is of course up to the
audience what you ultimately decide to do with this responsibility? The company
of young and vibrant performers goes on a journey and the audience is invited
to come along!
“This “work-in-progress” is a poetic drama
created using a process called RPD- Ritual Poetic Drama Within the African
Continuum,” says Dr T. “It is a specific methodology designed as a tool for
artists to access their creative content, potency and power as artists. In
creating an alternative training model with particular interest towards
recognition of cultural identity and perspective as essential in the training
of the artist, the work intends to bring attention to the artist/as creator of
their own artistic expression and citizen/artist with an “engaged”
consciousness about the art that they create. In using this methodology in the
creation of original work in collective collaboration I hope to continue to
challenge ‘traditional’ models of arts training and in the process bring
attention and a critical interrogation of ARTS Education, standard practice and
training models. But also inspire the dramatic arts industry to actively engage
in new ways to transform, educate and empower the communities they serve
through applied arts, artistic intervention and activism”.
The SPACE in B’Tween runs at the Elizabeth
Sneddon Theatre from October 3 to 5. Tickets R40 (R20 students, scholars and
pensioners) only available at the box office one hour before the show.
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