DUT Drama Student Wins Standard Bank Ovation Award

Thando Mbulelo Mbanjwa


The sky is definitely not the limit for third year Drama & Productions Studies student, Thando Mbulelo Mbanjwa who was announced as one of the winners of the 2018 Standard Bank Ovation Awards at this year’s National Arts Festival Fringe.  

The awards are a celebration of artistic innovation, excellence, the exploration of new performance styles and the courage to open new conversation through the arts.
The budding actress and choreographer won the award for her edutainment dance theatre performance titled I’m HIV and Living. Mbanjwa’s piece was aimed at tackling the stigma around the Human Immune Virus (HIV) and change people’s perspective on how they look at this virus. 
The outstanding performance illustrated the endless possibilities of living with this disease and aimed at encouraging young people to test for HIV and to stop living in the fear of what the outcome of testing will be.

“What inspired my piece is that there are so many people living with HIV and being HIV doesn’t mean you will die soon, it just means take care of yourself, so being HIV and Living is the key,” said Mbanjwa.

Mbanjwa credited her grandmother for her support saying she is her pillar of strength and has always encouraged her to do better. 

 “My grandmother, has been my backbone, she has never missed any of my performances, she even came to watch all my shows at the National Arts Festival Makhanda,” she said.
Mbanjwa also stated that she aims to build an international name for herself and to choreograph pieces that not only entertain but also have a message to deliver to her audience.

With more than 100 productions performed on the Fringe at the 2018 National Arts Festival Makhanda, Mbanjwa being one of them, this year’s winners of the Standard Bank Ovation Awards have emerged as being among the best of the best.


-NASIPHI GIGABA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fashion’s Khaya Mchunu receives award from DUT Council

Department of Fashion and Textile lecturer, Khaya Mchunu was awarded the Council Award in the engagement category at the Durban University of Technology’s Staff Awards held at Steve Biko Campus. Mchunu facilitates a community engagement project where second-year students collaborate with a sewing circle from the Durban CBD called sewing for Africa. The sewing group comes to Brickfield campus and partner with students for design development. The previous projects were done Mchunu himself whilst he was mentored. “The DUT version was a paradigm shift where I switched roles to being the mentor, he said.” The learning objective that he had for the project was to enable his students to see themselves beyond design students but most importantly as active citizens and agents in social change (which is a graduate attribute of the institution) said Mchunu. “A method to exercise such an objective, I imagined, is by breaking the notion of the university structure as an ivory tower...
Read more

Graphic Design Third Year and BTech students showcase their work

Image
Btech student, Karl Ludick. Graphic Design programme recently displayed their 3rd year and Bachelor of Technology (BTech) students’ final exhibition held at City Campus. The third year final exhibition consisted of 13 projects. Namely, DUT Art Gallery rebranding and awareness campaign, gender based 30 second advert, OXX T-shirt design, courier packaging, animated gif and online campaign, Baron Samedi Spiced rum campaign, Poetry Africa poster, editorial spread, IJusi Afrika Typographika, history publication, Durban map, Goldpack packaging, Instagram diary, self-branding and Behance online portfolio . Third year student, Samela Hlophe said, “The approaches on each project differed depending on what the brief required. But I maintained my style throughout, which is use of balanced colour themes and layout.” Hlophe said he learned a lot from DUT and is ready for the field. “I learned about strategy, concept is key, be authentic, hard work beats talent, never compare yours...
Read more

Interior Design holds year-end exhibition and student awards

Image
 Interior Design third year student, Thabiswa Nkonyeni who was named Top Student for 2018. NASIPHI GIGABA  Durban University of Technology’s (DUT) Interior Design students’ year culminated in style as their hard work was rewarded during the programme’s year-end portfolio exhibition which coincided with recognition awards where excelling students were awarded for their hard work. The exhibition which was held at City Campus yesterday, featured works by third year and BTech students who were beaming with joy as attendees marvelled at their offering. Interior Design’s Programme Coordinator and Lecturer, Susan Barrett said the programme is pleased with the end results of the students work, considering the challenges they faced throughout the year. “We are glad the year is over and that it was a fairly successful one despite the interruptions due to protests at the beginning of the year. Overall though, we were very pleased with the end result,” she said. Barre...
Read more