In her master’s research, Ms Thembeka Mpanza explored the often-unspoken emotional terrain of Higher Education through her dissertation, ‘University of Nyisists: A Theatrical Investigation of Rural Black Students’ Experiences of Mental Wellness at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (2022/24)’.
Supervised by Miss NCN Madlala and Dr S Sader, the study uses applied theatre as both method and mirror, revealing how rural students experience mental wellness within the university space.
Mpanza describes herself as an applied theatre practitioner and emerging scholar shaped by struggle. Raised in KwaNtabankulu in the Zululand District by her mother, she frames her academic journey as inseparable from lived reality.
Locating her work within broader questions of inequality and exclusion in Higher Education, she reflects: “My academic journey is not separate from struggle, it is born from it.”
She cited a simple but heavy recurring expression from participants: Kuningi – it’s too much. Students described overlapping pressures that extended far beyond academics. Financial strain, family responsibilities and the demands of adapting to urban university life were experienced as interconnected forms of strain that left many emotionally saturated and exhausted.
For Mpanza, the work began in her own experience. In 2019, she sought counselling and was diagnosed with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. Yet she found the clinical space limiting.
“I was expected to articulate my pain in English, rather than in my mother tongue,” Mpanza recalled.
She longed for a space where expression was not confined to words and where one could “sit on the floor, move freely, cry, sing or even remain silent without pressure.”
That desire shaped her turn to theatre as a method to achieve healing and introspection. Inspired by academic participatory approaches, workshops that she conducted positioned students as “spect-actors” – both performers and interpreters of their own realities. Unlike traditional interviews or questionnaires, she found that applied theatre allowed participants to think and feel through the body: crying, moving, singing and storytelling in ways that felt more natural and culturally resonant.
Her production University of Nyisists emerged not as a conventional play but as a participatory workshop-performance. It staged everyday student realities, academic pressure, financial hardship and emotional pain through movement and shared storytelling. Participants were also able to alter scenes, reshaping situations into more desirable possibilities, thereby creating what Mpanza describes as a “collective rehearsal for alternative futures.”
One of the most striking findings lay in how identity shaped mental wellness. Language, culture, and belonging were central. Many students expressed difficulty processing emotional distress in English, while finding greater authenticity in isiZulu and embodied expression. Theatre, she noted, became an affirmation of identity.
Mpanza discovered that resilience was complex. Students described coping mechanisms ranging from withdrawal and overstudying to substance use and emotionally taxing relationships. While these offered temporary relief, she found that they often deepened strain.
She cautioned that one should resist reducing these responses to pathology. Instead, she framed them as survival strategies within an unequal system where students were actively trying to cope within constrained conditions.
As participants embodied their experiences, she found herself overwhelmed.
“’I nearly collapsed while facilitating,” she recalled, noting how the research became emotionally entangled with her own lived experience.
Despite this intensity, she also witnessed unexpected hope. Students, even after sharing painful experiences, spoke with determination about their futures. Their gratitude, she found, was not submission but resistance – a quiet revolution.
The study ultimately calls for universities to rethink support structures for rural students. It argues for mental wellness approaches that are culturally grounded, accessible and holistic – moving beyond clinical models. It also points to broader structural needs: financial aid, food security and curriculum transformation aligned with more decolonial pedagogies.
Applied theatre, she said, should not remain confined to performance spaces. It can become part of student support systems – a participatory, embodied and dialogical tool for healing, reflection and transformation.
Looking back, Mpanza describes the journey as transformative in itself. It reshaped her understanding of mental wellness as collective rather than individual and reaffirmed storytelling as both resistance and care.
She expressed gratitude for her supervisors, family and fellow students. A message that sits at the heart of her study is that support must go beyond systems and structures – it must recognise the full humanity of those who are often unheard.
To students navigating similar struggles, she says: “May you find hope, healing and courage to continue. You are not alone.”