Ovation awards for Rhodes

Awards for the best works at the 2016 National Arts Festival were announced at a function at the Monument in Grahamstown on Sunday, 10 July. Rhodes University Drama Department, students and staff all scooped awards.

Rhodes University's Drama Department won the Best Student Production for Nyanga a devised play that transposed Arthur Miller’s Crucible to the Eastern Cape. Nyanga’s director, Masters student Thembela Madliki won the award for Most Promising Director.  Madliki also received a nomination for the Most Promising Playwright of the Year Award.

HOD of Drama, Professor Gary Gordon, was presented with a Standard Bank Standing Ovation Award to honour his longstanding creative energy in South Africa’s cultural life and his enormously significant contributions to the vitality of the National Arts Festival’s Main, Fringe and Arena programmes.

Recent Masters graduate Lexi Meier, and current Masters student Sam Pennington, both received Ovation awards for their festival productions: Fabric of the Universe and Falling off the Horn, a production devised with Grahamstown theatre group Uyubona ke, which explored Xenophobia through visual theatre.

Honours graduate (2016) Tyson Ngubeni, received an encore award for his production ‘Dark Ages’, a comedic autobiographical exploration of colorism and xenophobia in South Africa.

 Source: https://www.nationalartsfestival.co.za/news/student-theatre-awards-2016/

 Photo: CuePix/Gemma Middleton