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03 September 2018 Photo Dion Van Niekerk
Drama department gets moving with physical theatre
Elements of physical theatre incorporated in this year’s production of Tok-Tok. Pictures are Charl Henning and Erick Strydom
Dion van Niekerk, a lecturer at the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of the Free State (UFS), had the unique experience of attending a seven-day Physical Theatre summer school at Retzhof Castle in Austria. Also on the course were Charl Henning, a master’s student, and Erick Strydom, a former student, 

“We learned about the physicality of theatre, which means training for nine hours a day,” Van Niekerk said. “We researched the connection between physical action and voice, gesture, movement, dance and word.” 

New approach to teaching aspiring actors

Many theatres are doing away with sets and costumes and focus mainly on the actors’ bodies. You will find it in mime, clowning and dance. It is a way of telling stories by using only body language. “It gave me insight into what is happening in theatres across Europe,” Van Niekerk said. It also provided the opportunity to benchmark against the rest of the world.

Van Niekerk brought back a new approach with which to train students in the department, and a new way of working with actors. “The relevant training is to make theatre accessible to everyone,” he added. Without a word being said on stage, theatre will be able to accommodate hearing-impaired audiences and cut across all languages.

Physical theatre will do away with barriers

“Physical theatre can accommodate everyone. It will cross boundaries as it will become a common entertainment language,” Van Niekerk said. Putting emphasis on physical theatre was also a way to see what the rest of the world was doing in terms of theatre and training.

Van Niekerk and his team incorporated what they had learnt in Austria into a play called  Tok-Tok, which was performed at the Free State Arts Festival earlier this year.  The summer school took place from 29 June 2018 to 5 July 2018.

News Archive

Prestigious Helgaard Steyn Prize to be awarded to UFS composer
2010-11-08

 Hans Huyssen.

The composer Hans Huyssen, affiliated with the Department of Music at the University of the Free State (UFS), is to be the current recipient of the prestigious 2010 Helgaard Steyn Prize, the prize-winning work being Huyssen’s Proteus Variations (2006).Annually this award is administered and presented to a selected composer, painter, author, or sculptor by the Universities of the Free State and the North-West on a rotating basis. The judges for this year’s prize were Prof. Bertha Spies, Research Fellow, North-West University, and Professor Extraordinary, University of Pretoria, and Mr Noel Stockton, Senior Lecturer at the University of the Free State.

Hans Huyssen’s musical activities encompass the diverse poles of early and contemporary Western and African music, often in an attempt to assimilate the essential qualities from all these fields. His intense focus on contextuality suggests that he approaches music as a profoundly social force which has a particular role to play in our ‘new’ diversified South African society.

The Proteus Variations were commissioned by the Deutsche Welle Radio for the South African National Youth Orchestra 2006, and were premiered at the Beethoven Bonn Festival during 2006. These variations are described by the composer as “a musical representation of South Africa’s manifold Proteaceae”, named for the Greek god Proteus who, at will, was capable of assuming a spectrum of shapes and appearances. As the composer states: “It is worth noticing that a Protea is South Africa’s national flower. What could be more appropriate in providing a key to an opposite perception and understanding of the country’s diverse cultural expressions? In this regard it is my hope that the Proteus Variations may contribute a little to the wide scope of cultural responses necessary to begin to do justice to the extremely rich tapestry of our immediate cultural and natural surroundings”.

The prize of R170 000 will be awarded to Hans Huyssen by a representative of ABSA Trust, who is one of the trustees of the Helgaard Steyn Trust, in Bloemfontein on 8 November 2010.

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