Drama for Life Announces the 17th Conference and Festival

Drama for Life Announces the 17th Conference and Festival

6 October 2025 - Wits University

HUMAN CHANGE! from global ideals to justice(us)?

The 17^th conference and festival will run simultaneously in the Wits University Chris Seabrooke Music Hall and surround venues, in the Braamfontein main campus, from 8 to 10 October, Johannesburg.

Quoting theatre visionary Augusto Boal: "To dream of a better world is not utopia - it is the first act of resistance." The conference asks: What does it mean to be human now? How do we inspire change, and how must we change in relation to global ideals and local realities?

At a time of profound political instability, social dislocation, climate emergency, and escalating authoritarianism across the globe, what does it mean to be human now, and how must we change? In response to these upheavals, we turn toward the applied arts and arts therapies not just for solace, but for radical reimagination.

Each selected conference and festival presentation and or performance explores how Applied Drama and Theatre, Expressive Arts Therapies, Movement, Dance, and other embodied and arts-based practices can act as powerful tools for shaping systems, healing trauma, challenging injustice, and envisioning change.

The 17^th Drama for Life Conference and Festival is curated to be a space to reflect, resist, remember, and reimagine. To centre Justice(Us). To reclaim our collective capacity for human change and justice. Applied Drama practitioners, academics, students, researchers, artists, educators, social scientists, community leaders, policymakers, active citizens and curious minds are at the centre.

Conference Highlights:

• Key Themes: Human Change, Justice, Global Ideals, Justice(Us)
• Format: A unique conference-festival experience combining academic dialogue, performances, workshops, and embodied practices.

Key Focus Areas:

• Arts-based responses to trauma, repression, and authoritarianism
• Decolonial, indigenous, and community-rooted approaches to change
• Human futures in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (including AI)
• Applied arts in education, migration, displacement, and mental health
• Collaborative praxis and performance for social transformation

Festival: Multiformat performances to choose from

Drama For Life, partners, speakers and performers invite you to join this year's insightful conference and breath-taking festival. Come and join us in movement, in dialogue, in resistance, in hope.

Click here to register for the DFL Conference and Festival 2025: HUMAN CHANGE! from global ideals to justice(us)?