Centre for Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies

Fezekisa Wulana

Fezekisa Wulana, 24, is a third year student at the University of Cape Town, studying Theatre Dance and Performance, specialising in theatre making. He started his theatre journey at a private arts institution in Pretoria, located at the South African State theatre, Puo Media, where he got coaching from the late and honourable Sibusiso Khwinana, who directed his first big show The Crucible, where he played the role of supporting lead; Reverend Parris. In the same year, 2018, he opened for a musical show Se Rona Ke Sarona, directed by Mandla Ntlaks. Since being at UCT, he’s been casted in four final year/honours productions, making him a familiar face on stage.

Geoffrey Hyland

Associate Professor. BA UOVS, HDE, BA (Hons) Cape Town, MFA York Directs theatre, opera and dance professionally. Teaches across a range of courses with particular interest in directing, acting for stage and camera, and design. Special focus: the staging of gender and sexual politics in theatrical productions. Directing Shakespeare. Associate Teacher: Professional Actors Lab, Toronto, Canada. Has taught in Canada, the UK, New Zealand and the USA. His work has also been seen in Ireland, Germany and Peru. He has directed well over 100 theatre productions in his career. Some highlights include Madame de Sade, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Women Beware Women, Wounds to the Face, Slowly, Opera 5:20, Kissed By Brel, Blood Wedding, as well as Othello, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, All’s Well That Ends Well, Titus Andronicus and Twelfth Night. Fleur du Cap Award for Young Directors, Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Drama, Kanna Awards for Best Dance Production and Best Technical. Fleur du Cap Award, Vita Award and Kanna Award nominations for Best Director.

Gerard M. Samuel

Dr. Gerard M. Samuel holds a PhD from the University of Cape Town entitled Dancing the Other in South Africa (2016). His thesis draws on the ontologies of marginalisation for older dancers suggesting the term ‘body-space’ as a theoretical tool to observe bodies and dancing as states of becoming. Gerard is part of an international research project Knowledge Production, Archives and Artistic Research supported by the University of Copenhagen; Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation; and Danish Cultural Institute. He is currently researching a co-authored book with leading scholars in Brazil, Peru, India, Denmark and Namibia which he hopes to publish as ‘south-south dialogues in Dance: performance and pedagogy’ (working title) shortly. Gerard developed LeftfeetFIRST dance theatre – a youth dance company with dancers with disabilities in his home province, KwaZulu-Natal. His publications including “Shampoo dancing and scars ...” (2011), and “(dis)graceful dancing bodies…”(2015) are integral to the UCT Dance curriculum. His interest in yoga and knowledge of bonsai and roses continues to bloom. Gerard is Director of the School of Dance at the University of Cape Town (UCT) since May 2008. He also holds a Diploma in Ballet (1984) and enjoyed a career as ballet dancer and choreographer. Gerard obtained a Master of Arts degree from the Drama and Performance Studies Programme at the University of Natal in 2002.

Iman Isaacs

jackï job

job’s predominantly independent career has been eclectic, with performances ranging from experimental solo theatre work, to choreographing classical operas, directing and choreographing theatre works and commercials, as well as hosting television shows. job lived in Japan from 2003-2011. During this time, she developed the application of Butoh principles to her performance methodologies. As a performer she draws from the indigenous as a way to develop the avante-garde. Her PhD study interrogates liminality from a corporeal perspective and how particular psychophysical performance processes and practice can contribute to the meaning of personhood and transformation in South Africa. The academic articulation of her works have been published in journals and volumes related to feminist discourse, soma-aesthetics, philosophy, theatre and butoh. She has been awarded with the David and Elaine Potter Fellowship, the Bunkacho Cultural Fellowship and the NRF Thuthuka Grant. Research Interest Interrogating how the application of non-western and indigenous performance methodologies and philosophies, such as butoh, can enhance performance processes and perspectives of the body. Developing theory and a philosophy of the body related to liminality and what it means to be a person in transformation in South Africa.

Jacqueline Kehilwe Manyaapelo

Jackie Manyaapelo was Artistic Director of Jazzart Dance from 2010 to 2013. She has performed, choreographed and collaborated extensively, notably with Neo Muyanga, Sibongile Khumalo, Alfred Hinkel, Mark Fleishman and Magnet Theatre and Ina Wichterich. Jackie's first experimental work was a collaboration with visual artist Khaya Witbooi for the Pan African Market. In 2015 she directed and performed her first solo work, Satisfaction Index and a year later took on the lead role in Janni Younge’s The Firebird choreographed by Jay Pather. A former ICA Fellow, Jackie is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Theatre and Performance and Teaching at the University of Cape Town while working as an independent dancer and choreographer.

Jay Pather

Jay Pather is a choreographer, curator and academic. He is Professor at the University of Cape Town where he directs the Institute for Creative Arts. He curates the Infecting the City Festival and the ICA Live Art Festival in Cape Town, the Afrovibes Festival in four cities in the Netherlands and co-curates for Body, Image, Movement in Madrid; Spier Light Art in Cape Town and the Africa 2020/21 Season in France. Recent productions include What Remains for which he won a Fleur du Cap award for Best Direction and a Creative Art Award from UCT. Publications include articles in Changing Metropolis ll; Rogue Urbanism; Performing Cities; Where Strangers Meet; Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm; New territories: performance in post-apartheid South Africa and a book, Transgressions, Live Art in South Africa. A current publication is Restless Infections, Public Art in South Africa. He was Fellow at University of London, served as juror for the International Award for Public Art, as Board Member for the National Arts Festival, and was recently made Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government.

Jenni-lee Crewe

Jenni-lee is currently lecturer in scenography at the Centre for Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of Cape Town. She was at Rhodes University for her undergraduate and honours studies and worked with the First Physical Theatre company, before obtaining her MFA in theatre design from Tulane University in New Orleans. Returning to South Africa, Jenni-lee lectured in theatre design in the School of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg until 2017. She is a fellow of the Ampersand Foundation and a Naledi award winning theatre designer and artistic director of Flying House, an organisation dedicated to designing spaces that help people connect, create, innovate and grow.

Leigh Bishop

Lisa Wilson

Lisa Wilson is Senior Lecturer and PhD candidate in the Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her doctoral study focuses on decolonizing dance pedagogies in higher education. She has published in the Caribbean Journal of Education, South African Dance Journal, Journal of Dance Education, Research in Dance Education, Jonkonnu Arts Journal, International Journal of Education and the Arts, Dance Current Selected Research and has authored several book chapters. Her performance research which is framed around a feminist artist-teacher-academic self-ecology have been disseminated at multiple African and international contemporary dance festivals/conferences such as Jomba Contemporary Dance Festival, Baxter Dance Festival, Confluences, Adelaide Dance Festival, Dance Umbrella Jamaica, and educational workshops.

Mandla Mbothwe

Mandla Mbothwe is a multi-award-winning South African theatre-maker, published playwright, researcher, festival curator, director and art teacher who has been in the industry for over twenty years. Over the years he has created and presented theatre productions of high quality, which have been staged across South Africa and abroad. He has conceptualized and curated multiple commissioned international festivals, awards ceremonies and colloquiums. He has presented papers and public lecturers on art and pedagogy and is a published theatre maker. He successfully heads various institutions and serves others as a lecturer, curator and board member. Mbothwe is the founder and Artistic Director of Mud&Fire Parables, a creative arts service provider specialising in curating and conceptualising interdisciplinary cultural programs, arts development and job creation. The company’s mission is to contribute to cultural production that is for the community by the community in an effort to reclaim the collective stolen memory. He is co-artistic director of the Magnet Theatre Company and has served as Artistic Director of the Steve Biko Foundation from 2011-2013, and creative manager of Artscape Theatre Centre in 2014-2016. In 2020, Mbothwe directed and co-founded the Malibongwe Women in Theatre Project/Festival as well as an online stop-gender based violence campaign, Body of Evidence. Mbothwe’s written and directed works include Not a Prison, Kuthethi’thongo, 9437 to Stadt , Isivuno Samaphupho, Ingcwaba Lendoda Lisecankwe Ndlena, Umyezo weZandi, Inxeba Lomphilisi, Voices of Women,Ukutshona ko Mendi..did we Dance (2011/12/13) , Side sibebanye noMendi, Ndabamnye no SS Mendi (2017), Biko’s Quest (2014), G7-Okwe Bokwe (2017/18/19), Biko-Rising (2018/19), Iyazika (2017), Nguvu yaMbegu (2018/19), His Quest (2018). These works excavate and celebrates the narratives and aesthetics of his indigenous spirituality and culture.

Mark Fleishman

Maxwell Rani

Mbongeni N. Mtshali

Mbongeni N. Mtshali has a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He currently Heads the Theatre Section in the Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies. Mtshali is a multidisciplinary performance practitioner, working across a range of disciplines including dance and movement composition and performance, animation and puppetry, and site-specific performance installation among others. Recent professional recognitions include The Standard Bank Silver Ovation Award and the Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards for his achievements in directing and performance-making. Mtshali’s primary research interests, which animate both his practical and theoretical enquiries, are in black queer/femme performance in South Africa as well as Africa and its diaspora more broadly. He is particularly interested in how the unruly aesthetics of black queer/femme performance challenge nationally sanctioned performance repertoires and the national frameworks of African respectability, cultural intelligibility, and ethnonational belonging in which they are vested. He has more recently turned to thinking about queer genealogies of African decolonial world-making in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean.

Morné Steyn

Morné Steyn is an artist-scholar and lecturer at the University of Cape's (UCT) Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies (CTDPS). He has performed in a diverse variety of professional theatre and film productions and holds an MA (Drama) degree in Gender and Performance Voice studies from the University of Pretoria (UP). He is interested in and currently explores the intersectional dynamics of voice and body politics in performance context(s). Currently, his pedagogic and research focus explores re-contextualising the impact of power structures/relations embedded in gender; race; and class, as well as abled-bodiedness within the performance training environment. Morné is also a Certified Lessac Voice and Movement Teacher® (USA) as well as a qualified Yoga Instructor. He has shared his work on bodymind/voice and performance at multiple national and international forums and platforms. Furthermore, Morné has organised, facilitated and co-taught workshops, as well as, course module subjects related to and in the fields of performance and acting studies; performance voice and; creative movement studies.

Mwenya Kabwe

Rob Keith

Sara Matchett

Dr Sara Matchett is the Director of the Centre for Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies. She is an Associate Professor in the CTDPS. She is also the Artistic Director of The Mothertongue Project women's arts collective, an Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework® and the Fitzmaurice Institute's Regional Director for Africa. Her teaching profile centres around practical and academic courses which include, voice, acting, theatre-making, applied drama/theatre, and performance analysis. She is especially interested in interdisciplinary modes of creating. Her research explores the body as a site for generating images for the purpose of performance making and specifically focuses on investigating the relationship between breath and emotion, and breath and image, in an attempt to make performance that is inspired by a biography of the body. As co-founder and Artistic Director of The Mothertongue Project women’s arts collective, Sara has experience in the field of theatre and performance in South Africa and the globe. She is an experienced teacher with a demonstrated history of working in the higher education and NGO sectors. Skilled as a Teacher, Researcher, Performance-Maker, and Vocal Coach. She is a committed education professional with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) focused on Theatre & Performance making from the University of Cape Town. Her particular interests are in embodied practices that focus on presencing, co-sensing, co-llaborating and co-generating as a way of transforming egosystems to ecosystems.

Terri Elliott

Terri completed her Masters degree with a focus on both Directing and Applied Theatre. She is passionate about the ways in which drama can be used in education and how theatre can move from the stage into different spaces to elicit change. Terri worked in various capacities within education before lecturing as well as working on several projects for the Western Cape Education Department. In her teacher-training workshops, she explores the benefit of drama as a cross-curricular teaching methodology. She has co-authored a series of Creative Arts textbooks for the new CAPS syllabus and has worked in community development and training as well as in theatre management. She has published in Research-in-Drama-Education (RiDE) and assisted in the organisation of the ITYARN conference that was held in Cape Town in 2017.

Veronica Baxter

My research interests are applied theatre and drama and developing appropriate research methods to evaluate the impact of drama, theatre and performance. My teaching praxis is focused on aspects of research methodologies for undergraduate and postgraduate students, applied theatre and drama, analysis of performance texts, theatre ‘history’, and documentary theatre. I convene the MA Research and MA Applied Theatre programmes and supervise PhD students in cognate areas. Supervision interests include applied theatre and drama, with special interest in health and wellbeing, South African and African theatre, aesthetics and documentary performance. In 2018 I founded the Second Chance Theatre Project in collaboration with NICRO and the Western Cape Dept of Correctional Services, that investigates social reintegration, health and wellbeing through theatre.

CTDPS People

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