Re-considering intercultural actor training in South Africa today: ‘borrowing on our own terms’

Abstract

This article focuses on intercultural actor training at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 2005/2006; it argues for a studio curriculum theory and praxis as one of ‘Borrowing on our own terms’. To achieve this, the following areas are explored: (a) the context of the city (noting the apartheid and colonial past); (b) South African Township political theatre as informing a core approach to acting pedagogy; (c) the focus on a concept-driven curriculum which aims to interact with an intercultural ethos. This notion locates itself in dialogue with historical and global approaches, which enables ideas from the world to be incorporated. Thus, the intention is on a re-considering of actor training where the focus is on the city (Johannesburg) and various global ideas being incorporated on our terms (i.e. resisting the ethics of appropriation by past hegemonic and pedagogical practice). Informed by these notions, training, de facto, implies a resistance to centuries of appropriation by the colonial and apartheid project. Our ethos was: ‘we have our traditions, our uniqueness; now what do we wish to incorporate from the world; in this way we might reconfigure the ethical debates of interculturalism and borrow what we want’.