PROGRAMME manager of Twist Theatre Development Projects, Dr Emma Durden is the recipient of the Chicago-based Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) 2016 Award for Leadership in Community Based Theatre and Civic Engagement.
This prestigious international award is given to individuals or theatre organisations that help facilitate communities in creating theatre that reflects their constituents and to those who develop lasting relationships with those communities.
Emma was nominated for this award for her outstanding work with Twist Projects, and her history, spanning over 20 years, of working with theatre, health and education.
On hearing news of the award, Emma said: “It is amazing to receive an international award for the work that we do in KZN. It is a province rich with story-tellers, and I have enormous respect for the dedication and talent of the community theatre groups that I work with, as well as the professional theatre makers, the activists and others who make this work both meaningful and possible. As much as my name is on the award, it would not be possible without all of those with whom I work, and so I thank them as well as the ATHE for this recognition.”
Emma will travel to Chicago in the US to receive the award later this year. This will be shortly after completing a series of new projects, including a documentary film on nurses who are trained to prescribe anti-retroviral drugs, a participatory youth theatre project for the 2016 International AIDS Conference in Durban, and “Living”, a non-verbal street theatre performance created under the auspices of Twist Projects about men and AIDS.
Emma is consultant to a number of universities, NGOs and government bodies, working with theatre, health and development. She has run the annual PANSA Musho! Theatre Festival of one and two person theatre for 11 years, has published extensively on issues related to community, theatre and health communication, and is a director of Twist Theatre Development Projects. Twist Theatre Development Projects is funded by the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
