Good day. Today we are going to talk to you about the Drama Department at
Stellenbosch University and the programmes that we offer and,
of course, the extramural activities that we do at this Department.
First we want to say, what is drama? The actor William Dafoe, he said that creating theatre
is about wanting to challenge people. And so, hopefully at the Drama Department, what we want
to do is we want to help you to create work that challenges and inspires people and that teaches
you and your audience how to think and how to challenge
the societal constructs that surround us. Stellenbosch University’s Drama Department,
we are a student-focused drama department, and I’m going to show you some pictures here,
where we want to foster a creative learning environment.
We really want you to feel at home at our University’s Drama Department and so we create various opportunities for you
to explore your own creativity and to create work that resonates with you and your peers.
There are two streams at Stellenbosch University’s Drama Department.
There is the performance and acting stream and then the technical and management stream.
I’m going to begin by speaking about the performance stream. In the performance stream you hopefully learn
and develop and refine various skills to hopefully become an actor or a performer.
If we turn our attention here, you will see that we have three core performance components and those are acting,
voice, and movement. I’m very briefly going to speak about each one of those components.
In the acting stream you will learn various approaches to creating a character
and maintaining a performance on stage. You will have the opportunity to perform several genres,
from comedy to drama, and various styles, everything from Shakespeare to realism.
We teach you various approaches to constructing a character from the outside in and the inside out.
Of course, the course also provides students with the opportunity to practice screen acting.
However, our focus does remain on stage acting as this is I think one of the classic components
that you can transfer then to the screen.
Back to the slides for a moment. The next component that we focus on is movement.
Of course, movement training provides you with
the tools and opportunities to liberate your body from habitual psychophysical patterns,
including poor posture, ineffective alignment and, of course, limited dynamic expressive range.
Throughout the course, what we want to do is we use improvisation as a foundational
strategy to explore and refine movement techniques in choreographic approaches.
Movement training not only provides technical and choreographic skills necessary for performance,
but also hones skills such as collaboration, facilitation, and general team work.
Back to the slides here. The next point that we focus on is, of course, voice.
We are very proud of our voice component at Stellenbosch University.
Our voice and speech training focuses on developing your voice in a holistic and a creative manner.
We want you to be confident,
comfortable, and clear in both English and Afrikaans performances.
We’re, of course, language friendly and we encourage bilingualism and we’re understanding
about where you come from as a speaker. We work at skills such as expanding the breath,
developing your vocal range, and finding straight and clarity in sounds.
We work on a variety of poetry and prose and monologue texts and play with vocal improvisations.
The accents course in our second year further develops your versatility as a performer.
We want you to be energetic, confident, and sensitive and expressive speakers.
Besides the three core skills of acting, voice, and movement, you also have the opportunity to
specialise in various other skills and practices. Should you decide to continue with your fourth
year or an honours degree, the other skills that we have are listed here on the slides.
We’ve got directing, cabaret, puppetry, children’s theatre, speech and voice, radio, writing, acting,
physical theatre, applied theatre. We have a very wide spectrum of specialisations that you can
choose from at our Department.
Then we also offer the second stream, which is technical and management training. In
the technical stream you will be taught a wide variety of skills, such as design, props, décor,
costumes, sound and lighting, along with various other classes that supplement these disciplines.
Of course, the course aims to hone students into well-rounded technicians
for a multitude of technical careers within theatre, as well as other performance mediums.
We’re going to look at some of the components of the technical management training stream.
We have stage and production management where we focus on planning and managing a production.
You will gain a thorough knowledge of stage management theory and you can apply this knowledge as a stage
manager during the course. You will learn how to analyse a text, plan and budget for a production
with constant problem solving and preproduction, through of course to postproduction.
Then the design. It forms an integral part of our course and theatre in general and you will have a
thorough knowledge of the role of a designer and the design process and be given the opportunity
to apply this to productions. You will also explore various styles and periods,
ranging from the arts and craft movement to postmodernism.
Finally, I think it’s next to last, you will be able to do some décor and prop work.
You will be exposed to the basic tools and materials and techniques
in décor, prop, and mask construction. We will teach you to execute a prop, a set piece,
and a mask from the planning phase to the final product using, for example, sculpting, moulding,
fibre glass, and other tools and materials.
Then make-up. We teach you design and application techniques for stage make-up and straight make-up for men and women,
ageing make-up and fantasy make-up, and we equip to apply and design their own make-up for theatrical productions.
Then costumes. You will learn the complete process of a construction of a piece of clothing.
This training equips you with the necessary knowledge of basic sewing skills and principles
which can be used to make, change, or maintain a costume. You will gain practical experience
from costume formation and design of a costume to the final product.
Then sound, lighting and video, we’re of course very excited about this part of
the course where you will be prepared to create sound for a production, to light a production.
You will learn to set up PA systems and operating an analogue sound desk, you’ll learn QLab, sound
editing, rigging, focusing of lights, operating a lighting desk, and executing a lighting design.
Of course, during your second and third years of study you’ll be introduced to video production and
editing which you can, of course, continue with in your fourth year should you choose to do so.
Then we have the theory modules where you will learn about the history of drama and
theatre internationally, also in South Africa.The workings of the South African theatre industry.
We are very, very lucky at our Drama Department to be very well connected to the theatre industry
and people that work in our industry.
What we do is we want to help you make connections with the people in our industry.
Through the various modules and activities of our Department we help you to do that.
Then styles and approaches to theatre-making. We also cover the philosophy of drama and performance. Analysis of performance texts and their context.
Then besides the core modules and theory and practical work that you will do at the Department,
we also have extracurricular activities and this includes, if we just return to the slide, it includes productions.
Our productions at our Department, we’re very, very proud of them, they’re very successful.
We usually try to do three or four productions per year.
The number of the productions change depending on who the students are,
the educational opportunities for a show. But we do everything, from classic theatre to avantgarde theatre to postmodern theatre to realism.
We really cover the spectrum of theatrical styles in our departmental productions.
Then we are also extremely proud of the
Premiere Theatre Festival and this is one of the most exciting aspects of studying drama
because at this theatre festival you will be able to create your own production.
In this production you get to perform in this festival and there’s of course money prizes
involved and many performance opportunities for the winning productions to perform at festivals and tour the country.
Last year we were very lucky to have two of our productions on DStv.
We are extremely proud of this festival and proud of our productions at the Department and
should you come and study drama here, you are more than welcome, you are encouraged
to participate in these activities.
Just some frequently asked questions.
We are open to both Afrikaans and English at our Department and most of the work that
you will do is in English and/or in Afrikaans. But we do encourage bilingualism.
We want you to be proficient in both languages because in our current industry the proficiency in these
languages will help you to gain a career.
We are in the process of introducing a third language as well, but this is something that we are looking for in the long term.
Then Dramatic Arts as a school subject, you do not need to have had Dramatic Arts as a school subject.
It won’t necessarily be a help or it won’t impede your progress at all.
If you had Dramatic Arts, that’s wonderful, but if you did not have Dramatic Arts at school, it doesn’t
matter, we will help you to gain those skills.
Then finally, there is an audition component.
In the course you will have to, of course, be able to perform, so we do auditions to help sieve
the students that we get.
We only allow about 60 students in our course per year.
If you do the performance stream you will need to do an audition. If you want to do the technical
and the management training stream, you’ll have to do an interview.
But information for the auditions will be sent out after applications are done.
Finally, I want to thank you for listening and I hope to see you at Stellenbosch University’s Drama Department.