FESTS Project

I have re-envisaged the presentation outcomes from various courses into a festival format, that spans two annual festivals: the Rostrum Roulette Festival and the New dirACTions festival. These have successfully been implemented in the TUT Drama Programme over the past five years (2011-).

Presenting the work within a festival format that spans a week, offers the students a whole range of additional praxis learning opportunities through Business Simulated Learning. The festivals offer a variety of performance venues on the arts campus: the Rostrum theatre, transforming two smaller studio venues, as well as site-specific/ theatre on location options.

These festivals offer the opportunity to engage the entire department, all the students from first to fourth year are involved. The arts administration II B Tech students conceptualise and manage the festival; students specialising in directing showcase their works; first second and third year students are involved as performers and technicians as part of their Performance Techniques courses.

The drama student administrators of these annual festivals have reached out to embrace other students within the faculty that has led to the periodic inclusion of a film festival, word festival, platform for musicians, and curatorship of a faculty wide art exhibition. By mounting this festival annually, the buzz in the department spills over into the faculty and is infectious and the excitement tangible.