South African adventure
- Theatre
- Education in Art
Jikki Ribberink is in the third year of her Theatre in Education bachelor course at ArtEZ in Zwolle and she is currently doing an internship with the Jungle Theatre Company in Cape Town, South Africa. Take a peek at what she's experiencing.
“I've now been working under the African sun for around a month and a half. When I look at everything I've experienced, it feels more like a year and a half. Touring, working on scripts, filming and photography, teaching, rehearsals; I’ve done it all. I'm lucky enough to be part of a fantastic team with an inspiring mission.”
Jungle Theatre Company
Among other things, Jungle Theatre Company makes educational performances for children. The stories are all based on African folk tales. Restoring these stories, this culture, is an important mission in post-colonial South Africa. Through the Jungle Theatre Company, children come into contact with the indigenous stories of Africa and with theatre.
I'm grateful to be part of that.
Jikki is loving her internship. She enjoys the direct contact with the audience, the reactions from the children in the poor neighbourhoods of Cape Town and beyond and the plays they make themselves, based on the original culture of South Africa. The rehearsal for River of Life, the play they are currently working on, has just finished. It's a performance about the destruction of the environment and how the animal world reacts to that. It is open-air theatre that is immediate and produced using simple resources.
A broad range of duties
Her range of duties is broad: she assists the director with rehearsals and contributes to the script, tours with the company, gives theatre lessons, helps with setting up, takes photographs and does filming. This weekend, the group are playing at the African Folk Festival; there is barely anything left in the decor room. In the background, a colleague waves. A totally different environment than her course in Zwolle. But if she hadn't chosen that course, she wouldn't be here now.
Personal initiative
Jikki has an important quality to make a success of the course: personal initiative. That is also evident from the way in which she landed this internship. When her lecturer Boris recommended that she should try looking outside the Netherlands, she came across the Jungle Theatre Company. Jikki: “When I contacted Vincent Meyburgh, the leader of the group, online, I found myself asking whether they were looking for an intern. ‘Are you keen?’, was his reply; ‘You bet!’ was mine.”
But an internship like that costs money. ArtEZ has a scholarship for internships outside Europe: the Holland Scholarship. It didn't take Jikki long to write her motivation letter. In September 2021, Jikki began her application and six months later she received a positive reply. “An internship like this takes you outside the bounds of the course, and at the same time it represents the very heart of the course. You learn so much, it's so inspiring to work in these neighbourhoods, especially with children. You see the impact you can have when you address them in their native language. You can really reach them. They have an honesty that is often lost in adults. Theatre is about connecting with one another. Where are we headed? Where have we come from? I find it interesting to uncover suppressed stories of ancestors that were airbrushed away by colonialists and by Christianity.” She is staying for a few more months, but after that she will be back at the academy for her fourth year.
The course suits her. Acting was not new to her – she had always been on stage. But she felt that she wanted more, more grip on the creative process, more input. Those around her agreed. The Theatre in Education curriculum challenges you to roll your sleeves up. Nothing classical – within particular boundaries, you design your own process. Doesn't that take a lot of courage? What if you don't have any ideas? Jikki: “The lecturers don't work their way through a set curriculum but rather they adapt to what you want to learn yourself. If you have no ideas of your own, you might end up lacking direction. That is particularly true in years two and three, when you are working on the building blocks. In the first year, you get more intensive supervision. Some students dropped out in my year, some perhaps because of the pandemic, but the lecturers never drop you.”
But the best part of her course has to be her internship with the Jungle Theatre Company. Jikki: You realise how much time you spend on your phone, your social media, how transient it all is. Whereas here you learn to look at all the possibilities that are available and at what we are losing. It’s so fantastic to experience that authenticity. I can let the fact that the left speaker isn't working bother me but nobody here cares about that. Not everything has to be explained, it's about the connection the actors have with each other, with nature, there is a kind of groundedness. It is simply 100%, 360 degrees different than the way we work in the Netherlands. The energy is right, the flow is right, that's all you need.”
Future plans
Jikki hopes to achieve the same thing when she is back in the Netherlands, because that is the culture where her own roots lie. After her fourth year, which begins in September, she will go into professional practice. The teaching qualification they take from the bachelor course is a good fallback option for students. But Jikki is sure she doesn't want to teach at a school five days a week. Because the art sector is also calling her.
Whichever way things turn out, Jikki wants to facilitate a place where people can tell each other stories, lost worlds can come to life, cultures can meet. “At ArtEZ I am acquiring knowledge and experience in a safe environment. I can draw on that when I need it, after which I can spread my wings. It’s a place that really helps facilitate my own wishes and plans for the future. So ArtEZ and I are a good match for each other.” She grins. “I’d recommend it to anyone. Be open and have an adventure.”
