Chasing

Dancer and choreographer Nicola Haskins choreographed Chasing for the Drama Department's 2012 Grahamstown National Arts Festival Fringe Festival offering. Chasing is a visual explosion with fast-paced choreography and an innovative physical language that explores the tragic and turbulent life of South African poet and icon Ingrid Jonker. The production explores her experiences of marginalisation, desire and belonging as encapsulated by the intensity of her poetry.

Alchemy of Desire/Dead Man's Blues

Written by Caridad Svich and directed by Ball State University's Wendy Saver-Mortimer, the play constitutes the Drama Department’s contribution to the NAF Student Festival. The play transports the audience to a world where spirits wander, trees stretch way up to the sky and deep below the soil, and the air is thick with history and heat - a world where ancient rituals have the power to re-unite lovers separated by death.

Communities around the world suffer great loss due to casualties of war as waves of grief, anger and confusion ebb and flow through the survivors. The death of a young soldier (killed in a recent war) sends his widow, and a community of women left behind, on a journey where the soldier’s ghost, fried chicken and other mysteries of spirit and nature come together in a search for pure grace. This is one woman’s story of moving on after experiencing a loss she never anticipated.