Academic Programme

Drama for Life (DFL) is hosted by the Dramatic Art division in the Wits School of Arts. In 2008, the first year of student intake, 29 postgraduate scholars arrived from nine African countries. In 2009, 20 scholars from 10 countries successfully completed the DFL programme. In 2010, 15 scholars from 10 different countries succesfully completed the DFL programme. This year, 17 students from nine countries have arrived to start their DFL experience.

Drama for Life aims to offer Honours, Masters and PhD programmes that build capacity in HIV and AIDS education through applied drama and theatre.
It invites outstanding performers, drama and theatre practitioners, teachers, lecturers and researchers, theatre and film writers, film makers, performing arts managers and arts heritage researchers to apply for participation in the DFL academic training courses in 2012.

Download the following documents to find out more information about candidate requirements:
DFL_Aims_-_Candidate_Requirements_and_Course_Information_2012_(4).pdf
DFL_CALL_FOR_2012_ADMISSIONS_AND_SCHOLARSHIP_APPLICATIONS_(2).pdf
DFL_Application_Details_for_South_African_Students_(2).pdf
DFL_Scholarship_Application_Form_2012.pdf
Checklist_for_2012_Applications.pdf
DFL_AUDITIONS_AND_INTERVIEW_REQUIREMENTS_-2012.pdf
Wits_Application_for_Postgraduate_or_Further_Study_2012.pdf
Graduate_Studies_Handbook_(2).pdf
SAQA_-_Foreign_Qualification_Evaluation_Application_Form_2011-2012.pdf
DFL_Application_Details_for_Foreign_Students.pdf
Merit_Award_Application_for_2012.pdf

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Honours Courses

Applied Drama and Theatre IVA: Theatre of the Oppressed and related Contemporary Interventions
Course Outline:
It is a workshop-based course that develops the practical implementation of applied drama and theatre processes learned in the previous courses and introduces students to Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed theory and practises as well as other related Contemporary Interventions. Students will be required to identify a setting in which they would like to work and motivate their choice. After identifying the need/s of their specific population choice, they will be required to plan a workshop intervention based on aspects of Theatre of the Oppressed.

The focus of this course will be on the supervision of the students who are learning to use sophisticated theatre methods, as well as negotiate the roles of drama/theatre teacher, facilitator and or caregiver. Students will learn to facilitate their own groups, and they will learn to apply ethical practice.

Applied Drama and Theatre IVB: Community-Based Theatre
Course Outline:
This is a workshop-based course focusing on Applied Drama and Theatre within community settings. The course aims to introduce students to ways in which drama and theatre processes can be used in groups with specific goals in mind.

Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to consider the following:

• What effects do the politics of transformative, educative and interventionist applied theatre programmes have in particular community and educational settings?
• What is the relationship between the purpose of applied theatre practice, the art forms used and the community?
• How, and to what extent, can exposure to the skills and techniques of creating, producing and watching theatre, add to individual and collective well-being?
• How does your own practice and thinking add to the innovation of applied theatre practices?

Special Study Project: Capacity Development in HIV/AIDS Education through Applied Drama and Theatre in Africa
Course Outline:
This course is designed specifically for Drama for Life scholars. The course attempts a comprehensive approach to HIV/AIDS with the goal of building effective responses and capacity through Applied Drama and Theatre.

Students will participate in lecturers, seminars and workshops. The experiential workshops will be based on Playback Theatre Training Methods and Peer Education and Counselling Processes.

Long Essay by an Approved Topic: Capacity Development in HIV/AIDS Education through Applied Drama and Theatre Studies in Africa
Course Outline:
This long essay course is designed specifically for Drama for Life scholars. Scholars are expected to devise, research, plan and write about a comprehensive proposed HIV/AIDS Applied Drama and Theatre project in their respective countries in Africa, or they are expected to research a particular existing case study.

Introduction to Drama Therapy
Course Outline:

The course explores the roots of healing practices in drama and theatre within African and Western contexts and investigates the use of dramatic art forms to achieve the therapeutic goals of symptom relief, emotional, cognitive and physical integration, and personal and community development. 

Performing Arts Management IVA: Organisational Management: Individual Efficiency for Resourceful Business Practice
Course Outline:
The course Aims to:

• Challenge current perceptions of Arts Management, through practical and theoretical investigations.
• Investigate different organisational structures such as NPOs and CCs
• Address issues and means of realistic sustainability for creative industries.
• Provide effective tools for planning and implementation of artistic programmes within the world of work.
• Introduce students to basic financial and legal procedures.
• Encourage confident, innovative and professional presentation within arts business
• Present opportunities to network with existing arts organisations and to shadow professional practitioners in their workplaces.

Writing IVB: Fiction
Course Outline:
This course examines advanced story-telling techniques through extensive readings and intensive writing assignments.

Students will share their work in readings with their peers and contribute to constructive and wide-ranging discussion of their peers’ writings. Assignments will make up half the overall mark and the final draft of a project, decided in conjunction with the co-ordinator, the other half.

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Masters Courses

Theatre Studies and Performance Theory – Core Course
Course Outline:
This core course is mandatory for all performance studies, applied drama and theatre studies, theatre directing studies students and other students engaged within the paradigm of drama, theatre and performance research.
The course provides a rigorous academic and experiential dramatic learning space for collaboration, dialogue, and creative invention, with particular emphasis on contemporary performance theories and research methods and approaches, with particular attention to the research paradigms; Practice as Research and Practice-led Research. Students will be required to complete a Practice as Research project.

Drama in Education
Course Outline:
Drama in Education explores the pedagogy of drama with particular emphasis on an integrated theoretical and methodological approach to process drama, drama in education, role play techniques, play, and improvisation. The course also includes an integrated introduction to sociodrama within the educational sector and examines drama therapy’s relationship with drama in education. Students will be required to undertake intensive internships in primary and secondary educational institutions.

Performance Laboratory
Course Outline:
This course is based on the tradition of the theatre laboratory as a constructed space that enhances performance modes through creative research. The course offers mature MADA students, selected through rigorous interviews, an opportunity to develop unique performance signatures through sophisticated performance practices.
Students will engage with contemporary and traditional performance practices as methods of training, preparation and culturally informed modes of expression. The performance laboratory processes will be structured around pivotal points of training with a view to integration: performer, text and interpretation; physical actions; emotional intelligence; vocal range, dexterity and authenticity.

Theatre as Activism, Education and Therapy
Course Outline:
Through an integrated theoretical and experiential approach, this course will examine theatre as a force for personal and social development and educational change in Southern Africa.
Students will learn how to create collaborative theatre and how to work meaningfully with professional performers, community artists and or learners. Students will be required to create, facilitate, and perform an interactive theatre project for personal and, or social change.

Research Report
Course Outline:
A research report on an approved topic of no less than 20 000 words and no more than 30 000 words. The research report will receive staff supervision and should be linked to the student’s coursework programme. Students may select to complete the research report by creative research project (50%) and written research report (50%). In this case, the research report may be no longer than 20 000 words.

2012 admission for the Drama for Life postgraduate programme:

Application for admission into the Drama for Life Programme is open.

The closing dates for the applications for honour’s, master’s and PhD are:

• 30 November 2011 (South Africans only)
• 30 October 2011 (International students)

For application forms please see above or email Munyaradzi Chatikobo on munyaradzi.chatikobo@wits.ac.za.