Ndiyapo Machacha

Botswana

Since she obtained her Bachelor of Performing Arts degree at Monash University in Australia in 2004, 26-year-old Ndiyapo Machacha has taught, performed, directed, written and produced work. Notably, she directed Athol Fugard’s Blood Knot for the 2007 Grahamstown Festival, had her work published in an anthology of short stories, collaborated and performed in a staging of The Vagina Monologues in Gaborone, and for two years was the co-ordinator for Project Phakama Botswana, a youth arts initiative.

Her commitment to community development led her to study towards her Honours degree in the Drama for Life programme at the University of the Witwatersrand, where her research topic is “In search of the absent voice: An analysis of process drama and how it can as a therapy interrogate and inform the communication culture of the at-risk woman within the context of HIV and AIDS in Botswana.”

It is through this research that Machacha hopes to implement initiatives that will interrogate the culture of silence that exists among women in Botswana. Thereafter she has aspirations of obtaining her MA in dramatherapy. Machacha is directing the production Speak Truth to Power, written by Ariel Dorfman, as part of the Speak Truth to Power Human Rights Forum to be held in August 2008.