Preguntas frecuentes

The inevitable question in Theatre for Development has to do with participation. It is through participation that both intervention and the consequent reflection and action are supposed to be achieved. But the question is: exactly when does this participation begin? More than this, what is meaningful and significant participation? In Brecht’s

and Boal's forms of theatre, participation is embedded within the structure, which is “processual”, to use O’Toole’s (1992) coinage. In traditional African performances audience participation was also processual – part and parcel of the performance tradition. However, for most Theatre for Development practitioners in Kenya getting the audience to participate is a big problem, because most of them cannot differentiate between meaningful participation that leads to new consciousness and pseudo- participation, where spectators are involved in activities such as singing and dancing. In such cases hardly any development in consciousness can be expected.

An example of pseudo-participation can be well illustrated using the Imara Players Theatre for Development work (see Chapter 4). This is an instance where participation takes place at a very superficial level, as spectators are only involved in the more aesthetic aspects, that is, singing and dancing, but not at the cognitive level, i.e. engaging with the issues raised in the performances. This reveals itself in the way the actor/facilitators only attempted to involve the audience in singing and dancing, a most successful way of breaking the ice, but an activity which would not necessarily lead to levels of critical consciousness.

The deficiency in their participatory approach is evidenced by the kind of performance items they presented to the community. The team came into the community with pre- prepared art forms, self-constituted constructions in terms of content and messages to be delivered. The entire performance fails to provide room for the participants to engage in dialogue and discussion with the performance texts. It appears, apparently, that the facilitators assumed that the theatrical artefacts already had inherent in them

the problems as well as the solutions for this particular community. This kind of approach not only subverts but indeed negates Freire’s and Boal’s ideas on codification, in which theatre is supposed to be a catalyst for critical reflection and consciousness and not an end in itself.

For participation to be effective and meaningful, then, the theatre script as a code must be constructed in such a way that it would open up opportunities and possibilities for participants to actively interrogate it. For instance, the allegorical story that was used by the CLARION Theatre team, the ancient Greek myth of ‘Pandora’s Box’ adapted by PETTAK, and the symbolic narrative used by the Legal Resource Foundation

(LRF) readily offered themselves for discussion. I will briefly use the LRF’s script as

an illustration.

LRF used a farm as a central symbol in their performance to create a forum for

discussion on issues of democracy, governance and constitution-making. This symbolic play entitled “Shamba la Mfukeri” (Mfukeri’s Farm), resonates with George Orwell’s famous political satire Animal Farm. The story begins with a community at peace with itself until the intrusion by the white man. The white man completely disrupts their way of live, stops them from growing subsistence food crops, and instead introduces cash crops. In the process he also introduces new rules to govern the lives of these people, forcing them to pay taxes directly to him, and manipulates the opinion shapers in the community to assist him in his corrupt and oppressive acts. However, in the course of time the community awakens and, in an act reminiscent of the Mau Mau revolution in Kenya, throws him out. But ironically the same people

who had conspired with him in the oppression and exploitation of the community end up as the new leaders of the farm. As such, in the end there is no real change as these new leaders simply continue unchecked with the oppression and exploitation that the white man had begun. These new leaders sell the farmers’ cash produce, but do not pay the farmers their due. This situation leads to disillusionment and the farmers in defiance of the law decide to uproot the cash crops. But the farmers realise that uprooting the cash crops would not readily solve their problem. In a show of solidarity, they invite the leaders for a meeting and after lengthy and stormy discussions they agree to elect an interim team of new leaders representing all interest groups in the society. This new team is also given a mandate to review and revise the rules that govern the farm.

The play is divided into three main episodes. Each central action in each episode is also graphically represented on a cloth backdrop with an accompanying question. The drama is introduced by a narrator, who is also the key facilitator and mediator between the actors and the audience. Each episode begins with the image that is on the cloth backdrop and the audience selects the episode that they want to watch. Before each presentation, the narrator/facilitator ask the spectators/audience their interpretation of the image. The image is then animated into a performance drama, which in a way reveals how the image had been arrived at. The drama, cyclical in structure, ends with the same image. It is at this moment that the narrator involves the audience in discussing the issues raised by the drama. But the discussion is not restricted only to the issues in the fictitious world of the drama, but through questions and answers is

particular and the whole country in general. This symbolic, allegorical and analogical codification allowed for diverse responses from the spectators.

As indicated in the above illustration, it is in fact through the act of participation that the community gains insight into the problems facing it, analyses its problems, and reflects on ways and means to solve such problems. Without meaningful participation on the part of the community in a Theatre for Development enterprise, there would obviously be nothing to differentiate it from (say) a lecture, a conventional proscenium arch theatre presentation or even the rendition of the same material through a mediated medium such as the TV or radio.