Following its successful 2020 UJ Playwriting Lab, UJ Arts & Culture, a division of the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture (FADA) is proud to announce the 2021 Playwriting Masterclass series. Innovative in approach the UJ Arts & Culture PlaywritingLab is leading the pack in producing new, original works. The Masterclass series runs from May 2021 and is free to all playwrights, UJ students and interested members of the public.
Four professional playwrights; Makhaola Ndebele, Princess Zinzi Mhlongo, Tlotlego Bonno Gaogakwe, Selloane Mokuku will guide the UJ PlaywritingLab writers through the online programme on a week-by-week basis. The programme will also include recorded readings of a limited number of plays written in 2020.
Seasoned theatre director Princess Zinzi Mhlongo will take playwrights on the journey from page to stage, focusing on how a published script is brought to life for an audience with emphasis on the original intension of the playwright. Mhlongo has over 20 years of experience as a director. Her professional directing debut, And the girls in their Sunday dresses, met with critical acclaim both in South Africa and at the Edinburgh Festival and Afrovibes Festival in the United Kingdom. In 2010 she was selected as one of 12 theatre makers from across the world to participate in the Theatre Foreman Festival in Braunschweig, Germany. Following this, Princess was selected as one of four international young directors to take part in the Salzburg Austria Young Directors Project in 2012, where she showcased her production Trapped. In the same year she was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year for Theatre 2012.
About UJ Arts & Culture
UJ Arts & Culture, a division of the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture (FADA), produces and presents world-class student and professional arts programmes aligned to the UJ vision of an international university of choice, anchored in Africa, dynamically shaping the future. A robust range of arts platforms are offered on all four UJ campuses for students, staff, alumni and the general public to experience and engage with emerging and established Pan-African and international artists drawn from the full spectrum of the arts.
In addition to UJ Arts & Culture, FADA (www.uj.ac.za/fada) offers programmes in eight creative disciplines, in Art, Design and Architecture, as well as playing home to the NRF SARChI Chair in South African Art & Visual Culture, and the Visual Identities in Art & Design Research Centre. The Faculty has a strong focus on sustainability and relevance, and engages actively with the dynamism, creativity and diversity of Johannesburg in imagining new approaches to art and design education.
https://arts.uj.ac.za/