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arepp: Theatre for life

DIRECTORS

Brigid Schutz spacer

Brigid Schutz is Co-Director of . Her duties include joint company directorship, strategic development and planning, general company management and administration, human resources management, research, and all areas of quality control, production and assurance. Her portfolio focuses on training and production, and she is the resident designer and puppeteer. In the course of her work at , Brigid has travelled extensively, running national and international puppetry and drama training workshops in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania, Glasgow and Geneva, and presenting work at festivals and conferences, in Reunion, Pakistan, Scotland, London, Vancouver and Geneva. Before joining , Brigid graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand, School of Dramatic Art in Johannesburg in 1990, with an honours B.A. in Dramatic Art. She majored in Design, Performance, and Performing Arts Management. She worked with a number of theatre companies, including Out of The Box, The Royal Puppet Company, The People’s Theatre, PACT, and The Alhambra Theatre, in various positions, including Stage Management, Scenic Painter, Performer-Educator, Designer and Puppeteer. It was her deep love of puppets and enduring belief in their power to touch and change people’s lives which brought her to in 1993, where she continues to dedicate her life to social transformation through the dramatic arts.

Gordon Bilbrough spacer

Gordon Bilbrough graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1990, with a Bachelor of Arts in Dramatic Art, honours, majoring in Design, Scriptwriting and Performing Arts Management, and a passion for telling stories. After several years working with various different theatrical organisations, like PACT, Out of the Box and Colin Law Productions, he started working for in 1993, where he is currently a Co-Director, and the resident script writer. His duties at include strategic and organisational development and planning, general administrative and office management, human resources management, financial management including fundraising and donor management, research, training, and all aspects of the development of the work and it’s methodology.

 

 

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Lesego Motsepe is a the Chairperson of ’s Board of Trustees. She is a full-time actress, who began her highly successful television drama career, as a performer-educator for in 1996.

Marian Nell is ’s Assistant Chairperson. She is a partner in an organisational development agency, Nell and Shapiro cc and has been involved in organizational development for the past 30 years, with a special focus on not-for-profit organizations. Marian has an honours degree in Psychology and an MBA from the University of the Witwatersrand. Before 1994 she ran an NGO that worked to strengthen anti-apartheid organizations and make them more effective. Since then, her involvement has been largely in development work. She has particular expertise in human resource issues, strategic planning and monitoring and evaluation for not-for-profit organisations. She works in South Africa, the southern African region and internationally. She did consultancy work for for many years before joining the Board in 2005.

Brennand Smith has served on the board of arepp: Theatre for Life since 2003.  He trained as an educator at UWC (BA: History and Psychology and Higher Dip.Education) and later obtained a B.Ed (Psych) at RAU and a post-degree diploma in HIV & AIDS Workplace Management (Univ.Stell/Medunsa). During his secondary school teaching career he has taught mainly as a Life Skills and Guidance educator and was later appointed as principal. He later joined the Gauteng provincial education department as coordinator for, Career Guidance, HIV & AIDS Life Skills and Life Orientation. He was seconded to the National Department to coordinate the full-scale implementation of the national Life Skills Programme in all schools and was appointed as Dep. Dir: Health Promotion. He has particular expertise in facilitating collaboration amongst government departments and NGOs, learning support material development and evaluation, facilitation skills, curriculum development and support, strategic planning, sexuality education, peer education and HIV & AIDS management. He is active in community health and wellness programmes.

Shireen Hollier completed her National Diploma in Performing Arts (Drama) at the Pretoria Technikon in 1984. Since then, she has been actively involved in the professional theatre, television and music fields. In addition to acting in numerous productions, educational and commercial, in 1994 Shireen started Fun For Africa, a theatre company specialising in shopping centre and corporate entertainment. In her capacity as director of the company, she manages the entertainment packages for numerous shopping centres across Gauteng. She was Children’s Entertainment Co-Ordinator for the 2002 and 2003 Sasolburg WAM! Festivals.

Since 1996, she has been a regular director for . To date, she has directed over 50 productions, educational as well as commercial, and directed and conceptualised various Industrial and Corporate theatre productions. As musician, she has composed original music for 17 educational productions. As recording artist, she has recorded 3 different educational C.D.’s, as well as 5 CD’s with the female a capella group, Cutt Glas, of which she is a founder member. As a presenter and interviewer, Shireen appears regularly on SABC 2, on “Hosannah”, a programme which looks at various religious issues. During 2005, Shireen was employed as part-time lecturer by the Drama Department of the Tshwane University of Technology. Together with her husband, actor/ writer Jürgen Hellberg, she heads up Flying Pigs, a corporate and Industrial Theatre Company.

Janice Honeyman’s work as a director has ranged from critically lauded popular productions to the great classics, and plays created on subjects reflecting deep concern with social issues; from bawdy comedies to the best of contemporary hits from Broadway and the West End.

Her work has taken her abroad where, at the invitation of the Royal Shakespeare Company she directed Athol Fugard’s Hello and Goodbye with Sir Antony Sher and Estelle Kohler, and Julius Hay’s Have in London. She has recently returned from Oslo and Nuremberg where her production of the musical Showboat was a resounding success and earlier in the year her award-winning production with John Kani, Nothing But the Truth, played at the Lincoln Centre, New York, Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard.

Outside of her mainstream theatre work she has always had an avid interest in and commitment to youth drama and development work. She has done outreach workshops in Soweto, Cape Town, the Eastern Cape and London on literature setworks, History, Geography, Self-expression and Life Skills, Theatre-in-Education workshops for teachers, and numerous Children’s plays and touring Theatre-in-Education projects with young actors and pupils, both in South Africa and abroad. She has led drama groups for inner-city children in North London, been Director of Dogge’s Troupe in Kentish Town, UK, run Community projects on London Council estates, run the youth theatre arm of the Market Theatre, The Young Market, worked closely with Robin Malan as assistant Artistic Director of PACT Playwork, and done therapeutic work through drama with educationally sub-normal pupils, adults and under-5 children.

Brian Heydenrych, born 1969 and schooled in Johannesburg, came to Cape Town to study an Economics degree at the University of Cape Town. Shortly after graduating, he started his acting career in the ex-CAPAB musicals department. Boy meets Boy saw him establish a close relationship with esteemed director Marthinus Basson whom he worked with for many years as actor, assistant director and producer. Working in Cape Town at The Baxter, Theatre on the Bay and Artscape, other theatre credits include Cabaret, Strangers on a Train, Blue Room and Wit. He has also established himself as a commercials and film actor, and his credits include Paljas, Silent Room, Bush Decision, Red Phone, Othello, Charlie and Dissonance and the SABC 3 series This Life.

Although first an actor, he has developed a keen interest as a producer and has worked as the executive producer of Shakespeare at the Maynardville Open-Air Theatre over the past ten years, and Freelance Company Manager for Cape Town Opera’s international tours of Showboat. He is the current chairman of the Performing Arts Network of South Africa, Western Cape region.

In the music world Brian’s current interests include singing jazz a capella harmony with the vocal ensemble Track 5 and Big Band Swing with the Jonny Cooper Orchestra.
Outside of the industry, he is an avid rock-climber and spends the rest of his time clinging by the fingertips from cliff faces around Table Mountain.

Shaheda Omar: B.A. S.W. Hons (UNISA), Forensic Assessment and Child Abuse(RAU), M.A. Mental Health (UNISA). Married and mother of 4 children Shaheda has worked with families and children for over 18 years. She is both proud and privileged to serve as a team member of the Teddy Bear Clinic , where she has been since 2000. Although the medical component has been in existence since 1986, the therapeutic component became established when she joined the clinic. Shaheda introduced and implemented forensic assessments and she has since trained all the social workers to conduct forensic assessments. This service has flourished since its inception and has proven to be very valuable to both the child and the justice system.

Shaheda was also instrumental in formalising the recruiting screening and training of intake counsellors (volunteers) for the clinic. In response to a need by primary caregivers and parents, the therapeutic process was extended to the home context, where parents had lots of questions but no one to answer them. A caregiver’s booklet was compiled as a response to most frequently asked questions.
In 2001, Shaheda facilitated the development of a young sexual offenders programme better known as SPARC (SUPPORT PROGRAMME FOR ABUSE REACTIVE CHILDREN), which is a group work intervention programme. They have thus far had only two reported incidents of repeat offenders and they have worked with 400 young offenders. A manual on this programme has been complied by Shaheda, and training has been provided to mental health professionals in the West Rand, East Rand, Soweto, Vaal Triangle and Thohoyandou.

Shaheda is currently compiling a physical abuse and anger management manual and doing post graduate research on the young sexual offender. She has presented at national conferences and continues to train educators, doctors and other professionals in the field of child abuse.

Nicholas Smokey Culayo: Smokey is a freelance performer, director and community theatre projects initiator. He has an approximately 11 year association with as a puppeteer, performer-educator and workshop assistant for ’s Check Your Mate and No Monkey Business programmes and external training workshops. He joined ’s Board of Trustees in 2005.
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