TH498B: Performing Arts in South Africa – The Grahamstown Arts Festival Course

Course Overview

Focused around the National Arts Festival that takes place over ten days in Grahamstown, South Africa, students will experience the second largest theatre festival in the world (outside Edinburgh in Scotland) and the largest in the southern hemisphere. Join Prof. Megan Lewis, South African theatre and performance studies scholar, to see new plays and cutting edge international performances that we would not be able to encounter anywhere else; meet playwrights, actors, artists and other students interested in performance and theatre; and engage with, and reflect upon, the historic, sociopolitical, and creative contexts of the work we see. The performing arts will offer us a lens through which to examine questions of social justice, race, class and gender politics, history, language, memory, and the arts as not just a mirror to reflect society, but, as Bertolt Brecht suggested, as a hammer with which to shape it…

Why Take This Course?

• Immerse yourself in the culture, history, politics, and arts
of South Africa

• Experience the largest arts festival in the southern
hemisphere

• See incredible performances and meet the artists who
make them

• Learn from a passionate, knowledgeable professor

• Earn 6 credits (undergraduate or graduate level)

• Enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime learning experience in Africa

General Course Information

Course Leader: Dr Megan Lewis
Contact: meganlewis@theater.umass.edu

Apply: www.ipo.umass.edu/?go=SAfricaTheater

Application Deadline: March 1, 2013

Dates: June 23, 2013-July 10, 2013

Visit: www.theatreinafrica.weebly.com for more information