University of Botswana Visual & Performing Arts Students, Faculty Will Highlight 2012 Daemen College Academic Festival

March 29, 2012

Media

Contact: Mike Andrei

             Director-College Relations

             (716) 839-8472

             mandrei@daemen.edu

Event

Information: Daemen Conferences &

                Events Office

                (716) 839-8253

           Students and faculty from the University of Botswana Department of Visual Arts and Performing Arts will present a dramatic stage production as part of the 2012 Daemen College Academic Festival. The performance, entitled “Gifts From Daddy,” will include a series of vignettes focusing on the AIDS crisis in Africa, an epidemic that has killed millions of people on the continent. The University of Botswana production will take place 7 p.m., April 17, in Wick Center on the Daemen campus, 4380 Main Street in Amherst. It is free and open to the public.  

           The Daemen College Academic Festival centers on student presentations to the community and campus guests, providing a showcase for academic achievement and excellence through student and faculty presentations, exhibitions, and performances. These presentations may reflect work done in a single discipline or be interdisciplinary in nature, and range in form from posters, papers, panel discussions, exhibits, or videos, to artistic, musical, or theatrical performances.     

           The 2012 Academic Festival has received over 160 proposals, an increase over the 2011 Festival.

           Students and faculty from the University of Botswana will participate in all activities and opportunities on the day of the Festival, April 18. On April 19, there will be a special workshop for theater practitioners presented by Dr. David Kerr, of the University of Botswana Department of Visual Arts and Performing Arts, on “The Social Space of Indigenous African Performance and its Transformation for Applied Theater.”   

           During their week at Daemen, the students and faculty from the University of Botswana will also present dramatic performances to students and teachers in the City of Buffalo Public School System. 

           A recent seminar organized by the University of Botswana Center for the Study of HIV and AIDS noted the devastating consequences of the epidemic on countries on the African continent and worldwide. The noted effects included erasing decades of progress made in extending life expectancy; loss of income for households, where caring for sick relatives reduces the capacity to earn money; extreme strain on the health sector; and negative impact on Africa's economic development, in turn, affecting Africa's overall ability to cope with the epidemic.