Medical Humanities lecture: Theatre, Memory and the Post-trauma City

As part of the 2017 Medical Humanities lecture series, the School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics, and the Institute for Creative Arts (ICA) proudly present Director of the ICA, Jay Pather, and playwright Nadia Davids on Wednesday 6 September 2017.

Pather and Davids will present Theatre, Memory and the Post-trauma City in which they discuss their respective critically-acclaimed works Body of Evidence and What Remains, exploring the interwoven themes of history and memorialisation, forms of violence seen and unseen, and the ways in which the body holds and expresses memory.

Pather choreographed Body of Evidence in 2009 and was commissioned to present the work at the FNB Dance Umbrella, and later at the National Arts Festival. What Remains, Davids’s new play directed by Pather, premiered at the 2017 National Arts Festival and thereafter travelled to Cape Town.

Nadia Davids is an award-winning writer, theatre maker and scholar. Her plays, At Her Feet, Cissie and What Remains have been staged locally and internationally. Her debut novel An Imperfect Blessing was shortlisted for the Pan-African Etisalat Prize for Literature and the UJ Prize. Davids has been a visiting scholar/artist at the University of California Berkley and at New York University. She lectured at Queen Mary University, London between 2009-2016 and is the newly-elected President of PEN South Africa.

Jay Pather is a multi award-winning choreographer and curator, Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town, and Director of the Institute for Creative Arts. A Fulbright Scholar, he read for an MA in Dance Theatre at New York University and since then his work has travelled widely both locally and internationally, extending across discipline, site and culture.

The presentation, followed by an open question and answer session, will take place from 6-7:30pm on Wednesday 6 September 2017 in the Anatomy Lecture Theatre, Old Medical School Building, UCT Hiddingh Campus, 31 – 37 Orange Street, Cape Town. 

Refreshments will be served from 5:30pm. RSVP at ica@uct.ac.za

For more information, contact the ICA office: +27 21 650 7156 or ica@uct.ac.za.

About Medical Humanities

The Medical Humanities lecture series grows out of Medicine and the Arts – a post graduate course jointly offered every second year by Associate Professor of Anthropology (housed in the School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics) Susan Levine and Professor Steve Reid of the Primary Health Care Directorate. The course aims to facilitate exploration and engagement within a peer group that transcends the disciplinary borders that shape knowledge production in the health sciences, the social sciences, and the arts, and to instil in students an appreciation of the international literature pertaining to health and the medical humanities.

About the ICA

The Institute for Creative Arts is an interdisciplinary institute in UCT’s 

Humanities Faculty – formerly the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA). The ICA facilitates research projects in the creative and performing arts that disrupt boundaries, while underscoring creative education and practice across discipline and faculty. Interdisciplinarity, live art and public spheres are key themes of the Institute, and projects are imbued with innovation, collaboration and a dialogue with urbanism and community. The ICA was launched on 5 April 2016 as a result of a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.