Teaching with dramatic flair

Melissa Wood is the Specialist Dramatic Arts teacher at Crawford North Coast College, known for her eccentricity, creativity and remarkable success.

Her students enjoy a love-hate relationship with her as she generally detests them and they adore her.

This is the natural order of things in the universe known as the Drama Studio – a dark place filled with remarkably creative positive energy, at the centre of which exists the enigmatic Ms Wood.

Her journey has been marked with notably dramatic successes as she graduated from the Natal Technikon (now the Durban University of Technology) with a national diploma in Speech and Drama with 16 subject distinctions. She then followed this qualification with a post-graduate honours degree in play production at UKZN.

She has performed widely and was nominated as Best Comedy Actress at the Durban Theatre Awards. She has also written and directed many plays, one of which was nominated as best new SA play at the Durban Theatre Awards. She and her shows have performed to sold-out audiences at both the Grahamstown and Hilton Festivals.

Having taught for 21 years at seven different schools, she found a resident position at Crawford College North Coast 11 years ago where she has inspired her Grade 12 students to achieve a remarkable ‘A’ average for 11 consecutive years.

During this time she has written 10 productions, each tailor-made for the actors who successfully auditioned for the show. Many of her drama students have entered the creative arts via fine arts degrees offered at universities, or Vega and AFDA tertiary courses. For example, Max Nadolny is a music film director in Berlin, Germany; Michael Charles is a presenter and DJ on Ballito Life and Style radio; Kelvin van Wyk is an art director at Woolworths Food head office, Cape Town; Sean Whitehead is AFDA’s technical and production manager; Mervyn Bartholomew is the lead singer/actor in “Rock Me Amadeus”, currently touring SA; Luke Ahrens has recently won the AFDA Best Film award; while Shannon Zorab is a nominee for best director in the feature film category of the Simon Sabela Awards. Her passion and skills have been instrumental in the success of many of her past students, whether it be in the boardroom, the courtroom or their next comedy act.

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