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

Course Leader: Dr Megan Lewis
Contact: meganlewis@theater.umass.edu
For more about me, visit my faculty profile at UMass

Application Deadline:
Rolling beginning December 15, 2012. Final deadline MARCH 1, 2013.
APPLY ONLINE: www.ipo.umass.edu/?go=SAfricaTheater

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Photos are used with deepest respect for the following artists:
Yael Farber, Re/Mix Dance Company, Expediesies, Iain "Ewok" Robinson, African Family Puppeteers, M. Schurter

Copyright 2012 Megan Lewis, Department of Theater, University of Massachusetts Amherst. All Rights Reserved.