Gavin Krastin

Lecturer/Project Manager for First Physical Theatre Company and independent performance artist

Gavin Krastin is an award-winning performance artist, curator, artist mentor, project manager and occasional part-time teacher based at Rhodes University Drama Department. A Rhodes University and First Physical Theatre Company alumnus, Gavin graduated from the Drama department with a Master of Arts (specialising in Choreography, with distinction) in 2012. After graduating he taught for four years in the Theatre and Performance departments at the University of Cape Town.  

At Rhodes Drama Department Gavin works for the First Physical Theatre Company as administrator and project manager, where he is responsible for the design and implementation of the company’s activities, such as performance production, education, community engagement and embodied research. As an advocate for the First Physical Theatre Company Gavin strives to nurture and inspire an inventive and imaginative ethos in the realisation of artistic production, education and theatre technologies that feed the theatre industry and our communities. 

When not managing First Physical Theatre Company, Gavin operates as an independent performance artist and actionist. His live art practice is inspired by the environment, histories and performative identities embedded in the current shifting post-colonial and de-colonial socio-political climate. His artistry agitates the permeability and politics of boundaries: of the body and how it is represented; of theatre and performance conventions; and of gender and space. Rather than using performance as a means of escaping the politics of the body, he uses it as a means to occupy, subvert and challenge notions of presentation and representation. Working in the ‘glocal’ market with alternative constituencies of knowledge, Gavin travels his performances and workshops across South Africa and has also performed, exhibited and taught in the USA, Canada, England, Wales, Scotland, Prague, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil and Switzerland. You can see his work at www.gavinkrastin.com. 

Last Modified: Wed, 24 Apr 2019 12:36:42 SAST