Joanna Glanville - Shein South Africa 2020 Grantee South African Program Master’s in Theatre and Performance from University of Cape Town Bachelor’s in Theatre and Film from University of Witwatersrand
Thesis: “Scenography as a methodology for creative facilitation”
Jo Glanville - Shein is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and lecturer exploring applications of creativity, design and scenography to various problems. This includes collaboratively designing and building a park for children at the Johannesburg Autism School, designing an organic waste management system as part of a research initiative for the South African government, and starting a production company to facilitate womxn students participating in the theatre industry. She is currently a Visual Studies lecturer at Red & Yellow Creative School of Business in Cape Town.
She received support from MMEG for a Master’s degree in Theatre and Performance at UCT in South Africa. Her area of research is scenography as methodology for devising and facilitation in theatre-making.
Her research explores the importance of recovering, exploring and healing from trauma through theatre, but acknowledges the potential re-traumatising of a person by using the body as the primary site of theatre-making. This is particularly pertinent for bodies inscribed with the traumas of sexual, emotional, psychological and physical abuse - all of which disproportionally affect womxn.
Her final work, the things that were passed down, created during COVID, explored a legacy of abuse in her family using scenographic interventions to create a film that was described by the examiner as, "deeply embodied, sensitively wrought, restrained and accessed in a way that appears to be “safe”.
Her Master’s research established and refined alternative practises for devising - ones that focused on a practise of care and acknowledging the traumatised self. This year, the ongoing project looks to find application in facilitation with the aim of constructing safe spaces in theatre practise, particularly for women, using the methodology developed.
