‘Instead of
speaking for Others, we maintain a respectful silence, and work to create the
social and political conditions which might enable Others to speak [and to be
heard] on their own terms.’
[Wilkinson,
Kitzinger, Representing the Other, p 10]
In her [and Tim
Prentki’s] book The Applied Theatre
Reader, Shelia Preston describes the various ‘typolog[ies] of participation’. From its inception, the Air Network clearly
fell under her category of ‘Interactive Participation’ in that the work that we
were going to do would be a ‘joint analysis which leads to action plans and the
formation of new local institutions or the strengthening of existing ones. Groups take over local decisions, and so
people have a stake in maintaining structures or practices.’ [Preston, p. 129]
It has been a
real privilege to be involved with the AIR network over the 18 months. I am pleased that I have been able to
introduce a seemingly effective method of communication – that of interactive
theatre – that fits in very well with the ethos of the Network. Working with non-theatre practitioners in a
development setting has been a new experience for me. Up until this point had been working with
theatre for development organisations to deliver social and political change
within the community. But this
experience, of bringing my practice to people who have no background in theatre
was a real privilege and joy. I was
pleased that it really felt as though I was imparting new knowledge of a
practice that was of practical use not only with the members of the community
but also within the northern members of the AIR network.
The knowledge
around air pollution married with the artistic delivery [be that theatre,
painting or music] seems to me a very solid way of communicating complex
messages. But it is the theatrical
framework that I want to examine in this blog entry. During the first trip in January, I was able
to provide team building as well as energising activities for the entire
network who had gathered in Nairobi.
This allowed for a breaking up and variation for the week-long
workshop. It also allowed us to create a
thumbnail sketch of what a piece of forum theatre could look like as part of a
mini-project. I consider the theatre
contribution a success because it provided for the immediate needs [team
building, energizers, etc] of the group but also laid the ground work for a
more in-depth workshop around interactive and participatory theatre. From the mini-project discussions at the end
of the week, it was determined that interactive theatre would be working across
two projects with two very different aims and objectives. The first was to devise, facilitate and train
members of the community in forum theatre and in the facilitation of forum
theatre. The second was to devise,
facilitate and train members of the community in legislative theatre. The main difference between the two forms is
the audience: in forum theatre, the
audience is members of the community who share the oppressions that have been
displayed in the piece of theatre. The goal of forum theatre is to make more
positive choices in our individual behaviour.
In legislative theatre, the audience is not necessarily members of the
community nor might they have experienced similar oppressions to those
displayed on stage. But this audience
has been specifically chosen / targeted because they have the power to make
more positive systemic changes to alleviate the oppressions displayed on the
stage [chiefs, community elders, politicians, council members, industrialists,
etc…]. As an example of both taken from
the pieces developed in the September workshop, the community devised two
pieces of forum theatre. One was on the
topic of cooking with a dirty fuel source [coal, wood, plastic bottles] and the
outcomes in regard to air pollution [short & long term illnesses]. The other piece was on the burning of rubbish
[plastic bottles, dust, and the like] on the streets and the outcome of such
behaviour [again short- & long-term illnesses]. The aim of these two pieces was to get
members of the community to positively change their behaviour once they have
seen the negative effects of the behaviour in the original piece of theatre as
well as the more positive interventions by the audience in the interactive part
of the performance. Solutions posited by
the audiences included moving the cooking stove outside the home so that the
air pollution is not trapped inside.
Another solution was to change fuel sources to a less polluting gas
stove. By publicly examining both
negative and more positive behaviours, the hope is that members of the
community, through experiential learning, make the same positive steps in their
daily lives.
The two pieces
of legislative theatre dealt with poor service provision [lack of proper firefighting
equipment within the community] and with the poor working conditions within the
local industries. As opposed to forum
theatre, legislative theatre makes it very difficult for the individual in the story to make positive
changes. This is because it should be up
to those who have systemic power to make sure that the fire-fighters have
enough water and resources to fight fires when they break out rather than the
individual community member. This
audience also might have the power to curb the poor practices of the local
industries. A piece of legislative theatre plays out where there
is not much – if anything – that an individual can do within the scene
portrayed but it is to be used to advocate for the powerless and place the onus
of change on those who do have the power [chiefs, community elders,
politicians, council members, industrialists, etc…] to make positive changes
within the community.
The trip in
September was focused on creating a piece of forum theatre in the first week
and developing a piece of legislative theatre for the second week. The theatre group worked alongside and often
with the story-telling group in that we started each day together and regularly
came together for energisers throughout the day. This allowed for a sharing of the stories
that were being created in in group and a strengthening of the work through
peer feedback from those outside of either groups [drama & storytelling
groups].
One of the
first exercises led by colleague Cindy Gray set the framework for the entire
week’s work. She asked the individuals
to tell a story about how air pollution has affected her / him in this
community. These rich and detailed
stories provided plenty of source material for both groups to develop their
separate projects. From that source
material, the drama group chose two stories that were the most universal and
further developed them. I also
introduced legislative theatre to them at this time so that they can understand
from the beginning the differences and similarities between the two as well as
to start to think about potential stories for the legislative theatre work the
following week. The two most universal
stories that came out were the cooking stove and the burning of rubbish as
fleshed out above. The group was quickly
able to put together the ‘moment of crisis’ scene from both of those stories
and from that moment, they created ‘the moment before’ and the ‘moment after’ to
devise a short sharp scene on the subject matter. From those three moments, they then begin to
develop characters and dialogue. The
dialogue went through several changes throughout the week as the group boiled
down to the most essential what each character wanted. As the energy came and went, Heather Price,
another colleague, Cindy and I made sure to infuse each day with energisers and
team building games to keep the workshop focused but fun.
Each afternoon,
as the last aspect of the day, we held a reflection circle which allowed the
group to comment on the practicalities of the workshop [start time, lunch and
other breaks and the like] as well as the more thematic issues that the
community was facing up to. Several
commented at these reflection circles that they were beginning to see that they
had, in the words of one community participant, ‘normalized the abnormal’ in
their daily lives [although it is not ‘normal’ to live in such a polluted
community, they have accepted that and made it ‘normal’]. They were also commenting on the sense of
empowerment that story-telling and theatre making can imbue. We also began the discussion about who the
community thinks are the power brokers and, therefore, should be invited to the
legislative theatre performance the following week. Throughout the following four days, we
devised and investigated two forum theatre pieces and two legislative theatre
pieces. The groups would work on their
own and then share to get feedback on characterisations and scenarios. On Thursday, the day before the public
performance, the drama group and the story telling group came together to
programme the entire event – locations, times, programme formatting and decided
that the format of story-telling one story, then the two forum theatre pieces
followed by another story, and then closed with a summary / reflection would be
the best format for the public performances.
The pieces were to be performed outside and within the community –
bringing the theatre to the wider community with the hope to ‘kuleta
joto’ [‘bring fire’] to the
discussion around air pollution in Mukuru.
Rehearsal for
the Forum Theatre pieces
Forum Theatre Performances in the
Community
‘Often a person
is very revolutionary when in a public forum he envisages and advocates
revolutionary and heroic acts; on the other hand, he often realizes that things
are not so easy when he himself has to practice what he suggests.’
[Augusto Boal,
p 139 Theatre of the Oppressed]
Forum
Theatre is an interactive and participatory approach that examines current
behaviour and attempts to make positive changes, where it may be necessary,
through enabling a safe space for communication between individuals and
communities. One of the key elements of
Forum Theatre is getting as close as possible to a real situation but in the
safety of ‘play acting’. But even with
‘play acting’, if done well, forum and legislative theatre pushes back against
any proposed changes that ‘spect-actors’ [members of the audience who come up
on stage to try out different strategies to make more positive changes in
behaviour] to the status quo of the presented scene. In this way, experiential learning makes it
much more difficult [and thus realistic because behaviour change is difficult]
to achieve positive change than, as in Boal’s example above someone just saying
this is how they would solve the problem.
In our work in
Mukuru, the first location for the performance of the forum theatre pieces was
at a market place. It was not the
community’s first choice of venues as discussed on Thursday, but it was
suggested as walking though the settlement.
It was a wide-open space with many people selling, buying, walking
through and enjoying themselves. We set
up a circle and one member of the group began a call and response song to draw
an audience. With that and the sight of
three white Northerners participating quickly drew an audience for the
storytelling to begin. The location was
difficult because it was wide open and uncontrollable. We experienced some heckling from a couple of
intoxicated audience members, but the group held its focus and powered
through. There was a lot of side
coaching and translating throughout and it was decided that, for security
reasons, the workshop would be shortened.
Within the groups, there was a strong sense of protecting those of us
not from the community and there were concerns about our safety.
Once we wrapped
up the workshop, we left for more quiet grounds where we had a brief debrief as
well as an opportunity to feed forward to tomorrow’s workshops. The performance was truly a learning the hard
way for their first outing. The group
not only had to focus on their performances but also to crowd management and
expectations as well as security. But
they had come through it, had learned a lot and have gotten stronger because of
it. They were pleased with the feedback
and interventions from the audience and thought that they had been successful
in transmitting the learning around air pollution.
Forum Theatre
performance at local school
The second
performance was completely different than the first. This one was in a school hall on a Saturday
afternoon as part of a larger information campaign for young people around
sexual health. As a part of that
programme, we were slotted in to perform the stories and the forum theatre
pieces for the audience. This was a very
controlled and respectful audience whose interventions, again, were strong and
pointed. After, the group felt that the
messages of the pieces had been received and that the interventions were strong
and showcased learning around air pollution.
Forum theatre
performance at local football pitch
From the
school, we walked altogether to a dusty football pitch where our next
performance would be slotted in between two football matches. Again, at the last minute the venue was
changed by members of the group. It was
hoped that, because there would already be a crowd at the football match, we
could piggyback onto it to showcase our pieces to the largest audience.
I think that to
have been a mistake: members of the group didn’t have the confidence that we
could generate an audience through song & dance but instead wanted to rely
upon an already formed group. But the
problem with an already formed group is that they were there to watch football
and not stories on air pollution. I
believe to have been a momentary lack of confidence that took us to the football
pitch. We had proven that we could
generate an audience with enough song, dance and pink flesh that it would not
have been a problem. I believe it comes
down to experience and trust in the decisions that had already been made. But it made for an enjoyable afternoon of
watching football and then in between matches squeezing in the workshop. Unfortunately, the ref started the match
during the last performance and, as mentioned, the audience quickly switched allegiances
back to the football. Because of that,
we didn’t have time for audience reflection and recapping which was a
shame. And, as it was out last
performance, it ended with a bit of a whimper.
Which, again, was too bad.
Three
performances in two days – in vastly different settings with vastly difference
audiences. All excellent and confidence
building experiences for the group. We
walked from the pitch to the community library where we were able to debrief
and reflect not only on the two days of performances but also, as it was the end
of the workshop, the entire process or creating and performing our original
works. Once again, the feedback on the
devising and performances were generally positive with the only negative of not
sticking to the original planned locations. I was disappointed not to hear
anyone speak of any sort of continuing of the training and performances but
perhaps that is too big of an ask without any secured funding. After spending the week specifically
targeting three members of the community to facilitate forum and legislative
theatre, I was hoping that they would take it and carry on, but for now it
doesn’t seem as though that might be possible. But who knows how the training
will support them in their future endeavours.
Legislative Theatre performances
‘All the truly revolutionary theatrical groups
should transfer to the people the means of production in the theatre so that
the people themselves may utilize them.
The theatre is a weapon and it is the people who should wield it.’
[Boal, 1979 Theatre
of the Oppressed, p 12]
Legislative Theatre is an extension of Forum Theatre that
explores collective and systemic behaviours. Legislative Theatre opens the
possibility for change to be catalysed and creates a platform for the advocacy
of rights. Working beyond issue
awareness and community building of Forum Theatre, Legislative Theatre allows
the participants to address the obstacles or oppressions they face to key
policy-makers in the audience [be they legislators, governors, community
leaders, etc] who then interact with the play with the hope that these
policy-makers can legislate systemic change in the community. Legislative
Theatre uses these participatory and interactive theatre techniques to examine
communication break down and power imbalance.
As mentioned, the crucial difference is the audience: in Legislative
Theatre, the audience is made up of people who hold the power that can help
change the system. Legislative Theatre
asks ‘To whom could someone go to for help in this situation?’ and ‘Who has the power to help change this
situation?’
Legislative
Theatre is used to generate strategic action for the community. James Thompson, in his chapter in The Applied
Theatre Reader, says, ‘Applied theatre projects might instil in participants
rich and complex means of coping and subtly resisting the worst of a context,
but rarely are they able to equip people to transcend it.’ [Thompson, ATR 122]. It is my belief that Legislative Theatre
attempts to transcend just this context through the involvement of those who
can make positive systemic changes for the community.
On the Monday
following the Friday & Saturday Forum Theatre performances, the drama group
came together once again to rehearse the two Legislative Theatre
performances. As they had been sketched
out throughout the previous week, this day was focused on solidifying the
characters & scenarios for the performance on Tuesday morning. The focus for the facilitators also shifted
as we discussed the subtle but important tactics the facilitator can use when
facilitating power brokers rather than community members. We ran the pieces several times with me
facilitating to, hopefully, highlight the differences between both facilitation
roles as well as to give the facilitators an opportunity to ‘spect-act’ and try
out any interventions they think might positively change the scene. A founding notion of Legislative Theatre is
that no individual can change the outcome of the scene; changes to the systems
that currently exist are the only way the scene could end more positively.
Audience at the
Ruben Centre for the Legislative Theatre performance
On that Tuesday
morning before the workshop began, there was the typical nervousness around whether
we would have an audience and whether we would start close to the correct
time. We eventually were very successful
in gathering a large audience, but less successful in starting on time. The room at the Ruben Centre had art work
that had been created by school children with members of the AIR network for the
audience to engage with, but I am not sure if any took the opportunity. There
was also a new song created by another member of the AIR network that was
played on loop as the group gathered.
There was also plenty of coffee and strong tea and a light breakfast
which was wholeheartedly devoured. Once
we had achieved critical mass, our facilitators welcomed the group and set out
what the aims of the workshop was.
After the
welcome, the audience was invited by the facilitator to watch the piece of
theatre and to see if they would make different choices than the main character
in the play. Once the play was
performed, the facilitator asked the audience if the play ended well or badly
[one of the main jobs of the facilitator is to not take sides but to always ask
open ended questions or to follow up with ‘Why?’]. The audience determined unanimously that the
play ended badly for the main character. The facilitator then asked if anyone
in the audience could think of any other tactics that the main character could
use for the play to not end badly. After
some discussion within the audience, individuals began to offer up potential
solutions. But, as Boal says above, it
is easy to sit in one’s chair and pontificate on the variety of better choices
‘I would have made’ but it is different when asked to come up on stage and
experience the reactions to those proposed changes.
The first
‘spect-actor’ intervention
We were fortunate
that the first ‘spect-actor’ to come up on stage was a village elder. From what I was told, this then allowed for
the others in the audience to participate as well in future interventions. The elder came onto the stage as the worker
and began to argue with the supervisor that his conditions were unhealthy and
he demanded better conditions. The
manager quickly fired the worker for insubordination and quickly hired another
waiting at the gate for a day’s work.
When the ‘spect-actor’ protested, the manager called security and had
him escorted out of the plant.
With this first
intervention by a powerful member of the audience, Legislative Theatre quickly
proved its point. Very little, if
anything, could be done to improve the outcomes of these particular
scenes. The same held true for the
second piece of Legislative Theatre when audience members replaced the main
character whose house had caught fire.
The ‘spect-actor’ saved some items from the house than in the original
scene, but the house still burned down.
They may have won a small ‘battle’ but they certainly still lost the
‘war’.
After several
attempts at intervening and not greatly improving the situation, the
facilitators asked the audience to begin to think on a more systemic and strategic
level on how these such situations can be avoided. It was quickly determined that none of our individual
interventions would be positive [the firefighters ran out of water and the
homes burned down no matter what the individual did in that moment; the worker
still either got sick working in the factory or was jobless no matter what sort
of intervention was made], we then began
to discuss systemic changes that could be done to positively intervene in the
stories. We also began to think about
who will be in the audience and how their positions might be able to create
this systemic change. The goal is for
each member of the audience to take responsibility and to see who or what could
be done within their office or remit to the community.
From this group
discussion, we then broke into smaller groups with the aim of answering three
questions: What can be done differently?
Who is responsible? In your position,
what can you do to change this situation?
Based on the themes that were brought up in the two pieces of
Legislative Theatre, each group examined four topics and were asked to report
back to the larger group. These topics
were Labour Laws, Job Creation, Fire Risk & Infrastructural Planning. During these discussions, I was disappointed
[but hardly surprised] with the audience’s reaction to victim blame [‘Why are
they stealing electricity which caused the fire?’] rather than take
responsibility [as there is little if any legal electrical infrastructure, how
else can members of the community access electricity?]. The facilitators and I worked hard to counter
the audience’s attempts to victim-blaming or blaming those above them in the
hierarchy. I repeatedly pushed the
facilitators to find out from the audience who has the power to change this situation
or to help this situation. Besides
blaming those ‘lower’ than them [the community], the audience also pushed ‘upwards’
as well [‘Someone from the Department of Health should take responsibility’]
again rather than examining what they could, in their capacity as a chief,
elder, politician, council member, etc…. do about it in their role. I believe that the facilitators found it
difficult to push the members of the audience to examine their roles in these
situations because of their rank, position or standing in the community. I found it frustrating not to be able to
intervene to press home the point of individual and collective responsibility
but because of the language barrier and the lack of stomaching a white man from
the ‘North’ pointing fingers at the Africans from the ‘South’, I stood by and
side-coached as best as possible.
At the end of
the workshop, we had compiled three pledges from three members of the audience
who have the power to systemically change the situations presented on the stage. The community members of our Mini Project will
need to follow up on these pledges if they want to see any systemic
changes. They now have the names and
contact details as well as their pledges to enact change. Let’s hope that can get the ball rolling.
So, was it worth it?
And, so to the
question, what, if any, will be the long-term outcomes of this project? Will
there be any sustainable solutions enacted?
At the least, we
raised awareness and brought to light some of the terrible effects of air
pollution and we also trained members in the community in interactive theatre
[as well as some of them in the more specialized skills of facilitators]. As mentioned, it is my hope that they
continue to use these skills in circumstances that require community-led
intervention and advocacy.
But, as I set
out in my Forum Theatre & Legislative Theatre proposal to the AIR Network
all those months ago, has behaviour changed?
The community audiences
of the performances in the community were the least affected as their interaction
with the project only lasted as long as the various workshops. This differed from 20 minutes to 45 minutes
depending on the location. But the
members of the community who participated with the AIR Network and the various
applied theatre methods since January, had a much longer-term interaction so
the hope would be that we have enacted some behaviour change around an
individual’s interaction with air pollution.
I had heard mentioned within the group that several were thinking of
changing from the more polluting stoves to those that use the less polluting
gas as a fuel. But, are these long-term
changes? I can imagine a questionnaire
in 6 months and a year’s time to see if any had changed stove types – the gas
stoves are more expensive and, if they do have extra money to set aside, there
are always other more pressing needs. Or
if they still burn rubbish to clean up the rubbish from off the ground. I also wonder if legislative theatre
‘works’. Will any of our audience act on
what they saw and experienced on that Tuesday morning in September? Or was it just a good breakfast and lunch
opportunity? I hope that the community
members of the AIR Network continue to engage with those who attended and to press
those who made pledges of change.
But of course,
the same could be asked of me – what have I done to reduce my air pollution
impact: Nope, still want to regularly
return to Nairobi. So, my air miles are
not reducing. And let me make clear that I believe those miles to be much worse
globally to contribute to air pollution than any number of plastic bottles
burned. But I justify this by claiming
that I hope that I have reduced the local air pollution through behaviour
change [its easy for me to advocate for others to change, less easy for me to
give up the flying]. I hope that I have
contributed in some small way to getting those, as Robert Chambers calls them,
on the ‘top’ in power to examine their relationship with those at the ‘bottom’
who don’t want to give up where they live and have created a community but just
want the river that runs through Mukuru to run clear rather than ash grey.
Boal, A Theatre of the Oppressed.
Chambers, R Whose Reality Counts? Putting the first last
Prentki, T;
Preston, S The Applied Theatre Reader [2oo9]
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