Grahamstown is losing a highly talented and socially aware Rhodes drama graduate, who was recently awarded a prestigious fellowship to further his studies in the Mother City.
Grahamstown is losing a highly talented and socially aware Rhodes drama graduate, who was recently awarded a prestigious fellowship to further his studies in the Mother City.
Richard Antrobus, a Grahamstown local who completed his Drama Masters at Rhodes, has been awarded a fellowship at the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA) at the University of Cape Town next year.
He graduated in 2010 after completing his Drama in Contemporary Performance thesis with distinction. His dissertation was "The Advent of the ‘Festivore’: An Exploration of South African Audience Attendance in the Performing Arts at the National Arts Festival", and looks at South Africa’s changing theatre audience profile, and explores factors that draw people to live performance art.
Meanwhile, his coursework focused on the body at risk in performance. As a GIPCA fellow, Antrobus proposes to continue this exploration of the many facets of contemporary performance, culminating in a final project which makes use of multi-media, live camera feed, pre-recorded footage and simultaneous live performance from actors and dancers.
Antrobus’s contribution towards the host department may include teaching and assistance in the facilitation of practicals in the areas of movement, voice, mime, physical theatre and theatre-making, especially in the Theatre Performance and Performer's Diploma undergraduate programmes.
"It's such an exciting and invaluable opportunity for me and I look forward to gaining new experience as a performer, scholar, and as well as teacher of the arts," he said.
He also looks forward to working under the guidance of renowned theatre practitioners, networking and living near the mountain. "But I will also miss G-town, my family, friends as well as colleagues at the Rhodes Drama Department and at DSG where I currently teach part-time."
Although he will be based in Cape Town he will still frequent Grahamstown to check up on his new locally based outreach and development company, 'OddBody Theatre Collaborative', which is in the midst of being registered as an NPO.
The collaborative was born out of the Phezulu Stilt-walking Project, which originally started in May 2009 as a development initiative to revitalise the National Arts Festival and bring the “carnivalesque” atmosphere back to the streets.
