Teaching, research and creative work in the discipline of Drama and Performance Studies are regarded as holistically interrelated, and arise from the three major foci identified earlier: Theatre Studies, Dance Studies, and Applied Theatre Studies.  In addition, Drama and Performance Studies recognizes practice-based/led and performative research.

Members of staff are expected to engage in research and creative activities.  It is recommended that each staff member should produce annually a paper at a conference and/or a creative contribution and/or publish an article.  These areas are not mutually exclusive and are considered equally valid and valuable.

STAFF RESEARCH AND CREATIVE WORK

• Tamar Meskin
• 0312601139
• meskint@ukzn.ac.za
• Research & Creative Work

• Lliane Loots
• 0312601142
• lootsl@ukzn.ac.za
• Research & Creative Work

• Noxolo Matete
• 0312609111
• malimba@ukzn.ac.za
• Research & Creative Work

• Miranda Young-Jahangeer
• 0312601144
• youngm1@ukzn.ac.za
• Research & Creative Work

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LINKS

The Theatre Studies stream has generated links in a number of performance related areas:

• Drama and Performance Studies (Howard College) has been working in the field of inter-institutional collaboration since 2009, working on a variety of projects with the Durban University of Technology and the University of Pretoria.
• The department also has strong links with local schools where many of our graduates teach, and whose learners are regularly invited to participate in the activities of the programme. 
• Guest directors are invited regularly to work in the department on performance projects as well as to give seminars and master classes.  Past guests have included Bheki Mkhwane, Themi Venturas, Neil Coppen, Jerry Pooe, and Roel Twijnstra.
• Local and international arts practitioners are regularly invited to participate in the teaching and extra-curricular programmes of the department; past teaching guests have included critically acclaimed writer/director Rajesh Gopie, renowned performing and storytelling artist Gcina Mhlophe, noted local slam poet iain EWOK robinson, Durban filmmaker and actress Karen Logan, and Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and one of the cast members in the original Broadway production of ntozake shange’s seminal text, for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow isn’t enuff.
• The department maintains links with local Durban theatre companies and theatre spaces, including KickstArt Theatre Company and the Catalina Theatre.

The Applied Theatre stream, teaching and research, has generated links with the following International organisations and tertiary institutions in the past 10 years:

• Queen Mary College London
• Manchester University and Theatre in Prisons and Probation (TiPP)
• Geese Theatre Company, United Kingdom
• Clean Break Theatre, United Kingdom
• Unit for Arts and Offenders, United Kingdom
• Peoples Palace Projects, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Prof. Rustom Bharucha (ex-Harvard)
• St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, United Kingdom
• INDRA (Youth theatre for peace around the world) affiliated to University of Plymouth
• Prison creative arts project, University of Michigan
• The TWIST project

The Dance Studies stream has set up numerous partnerships with both national and international dancers, choreographers and dance educators that feed into both the practical training of students and also into the academic seminars and teaching. This includes (more recently):

• Kevin Iega Jeff (DEEPLY ROOTED DANCE THEATRE; Chicago – USA)
• Adedayo Liadi (IJODEE DANCE COMPANY; Lagos – Nigeria)
• The Centre for Creative Arts’ International JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Festival