Applied Drama/Theatre as Social Intervention in Conflict and Post-Conflict Contexts [1 ed.] 9781443862363, 9781443853972

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Applied Drama/Theatre as Social Intervention in Conflict and Post-Conflict Contexts

Applied Drama/Theatre as Social Intervention in Conflict and Post-Conflict Contexts

Edited by

Hazel Barnes and Marié-Heleen Coetzee

Applied Drama/Theatre as Social Intervention in Conflict and Post-Conflict Contexts, Edited by Hazel Barnes and Marié-Heleen Coetzee This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Hazel Barnes, Marié-Heleen Coetzee and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5397-6, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5397-2

In memory of Lynn Dalrymple and Yvonne Banning Pioneers of applied drama and theatre in South Africa

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ..................................................................................... ix List of Tables ............................................................................................... x Acknowledgements .................................................................................... xi Foreword .................................................................................................. xiv This is how you heal Malika Ndlovu Introduction .............................................................................................. xvi Why these Stories? – or Singing the Songs of Freedom? James Thompson Part One: Applied Drama/Theatre Interventions Chapter One ................................................................................................. 2 Re-imagining Boal through the Theatre of the Oppressor Kennedy Chinyowa Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 18 Panoptic Spaces, Democratic Places? Unlocking Culture and Sexuality through Popular Performance in Westville Female Correctional Centre, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa Miranda Young-Jahangeer Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 33 Drama as a Tool for the Development of Cultural Competency amongst Secondary School Learners Glynnis Moore Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 48 (Dis)playing Fear, (Dis) placing Fear: A Theatre-based Strategy for Environment-related Conflict Management in Rural Nigeria Ofonime Inyang and Patrick Ebewo

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Part Two: Theatre Interventions Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 72 Singing the Songs of Freedom: FrontLines and the Theatre of Humanity Marié-Heleen Coetzee, Tamar Meskin and Tanya van der Walt Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 103 Theatre as an Artistic Intervention in Post-trauma Situations: Hush – A Verbatim Play about Family Violence Hilary Halba and Stuart Young, including the text of the play Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 155 Trauma and Theatre Making with reference to The Line Gina Shmukler, including the text of the play Part Three: Therapeutic Interventions Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 210 Narrative/Therapy and an Apartheid Story: Audiences, Ethical Witnessing and Power Alexandra Sutherland Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 222 There’s a Hole in my Bucket Paula Kingwell Epilogue................................................................................................... 233 Instruments Malika Ndlovu Notes........................................................................................................ 234 Bibliography ............................................................................................ 239 Contributors ............................................................................................. 253 Index ........................................................................................................ 259

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 2-1 The Game of Love. Photographer: Miranda Young-Jahangeer Fig. 4-1 Ntak Inyang Youth. Photographer: Ofonime Inyang Fig. 4-2 Community Performance. Photographer: Ofonime Inyang Fig.5-1 Students engaged in rehearsal exercises. Photographer: Luke O’Gorman Fig. 5-2 A collaborative discussion session. Photographer: Luke O’Gorman Fig. 5-3 Shifting student-teacher dynamics and role responsibilities through student-driven directing and staging explorations. Photographer: Luke O’Gorman Fig. 5-4 Creating tableaux as a stimulus for generating and staging text. Photographer: Luke O’Gorman Fig. 5-5 A physicalized expression of the Abu Ghraib material. Photographer: Christina Reinecke Fig. 5-6 Reality and performance—a mirror-image. Photographer: Christina Reinecke Fig.6-1 Danny Still as Doug, in Hush, Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre, Auckland, November 2010. Photographer: Martyn Roberts. Fig. 6-2 Simon O’Connor as Psychotherapist, in Hush, Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre, Auckland, November 2010. Photographer: Martyn Roberts. Fig. 6-3 Erica Newlands as Amanda (left) and Nadya Shaw Bennett as Amanda’s daughter Jessie, with an MP3 player visible, in Hush, Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre, Auckland, November 2010. Photographer: Martyn Roberts. Fig. 6-4 Cindy Diver as Rose, in Hush, Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre, Auckland, November 2010. Photographer: Martyn Roberts. Fig. 7-1 Gabi Harris as Nadine Hutton, The Line, Market Theatre, Johannesburg , Photographer: Ruphin Coudyzer Fig. 7-3 Khutjo Green as Nomsa, The Line, Market Theatre, Johannesburg, Photographer: Ruphin Coudyzer Fig. 7-4 Khutjo Green as Alfred, The Line, Market Theatre, Johannesburg, Photographer: Ruphin Coudyzer Fig. 7-5 The Line Baxter Theatre, Cape Town, Photographer: Pat BromilowDowning Fig.7-6 Khutjo Green as Elisa, Gabi Harris as Translator, The Line, Market Theatre, Johannesburg. Photographer: Ruphin Coudyzer

LIST OF TABLES

1-1 Adaptation of Nieto’s Systematic Oppression Table

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank all our contributors who participated in the 5th Drama for Life Africa Research Conference in 2012, hosted by the University of Pretoria’s Drama Department, from which the chapters in this book developed. This conference, with its emphasis on drama/theatre in conflict and post-conflict contexts, found an appropriate home in Pretoria as two prominent national symbols of ‘conflict’ and ‘postconflict’ are situated across from each other just outside the city. These are the Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park. The Voortrekker Monument commemorates the Great Trek where Afrikaner families fled the oppression of British rule and the monument became symbolic of the subsequent rise of Afrikaner nationalism with its associated implications. Freedom Park is a monument/memorial to the values of human dignity, human rights, freedom and reconciliation, established by the postapartheid constitution. It commemorates the diverging and often contrasting influences that brought about democracy in South Africa. Both monuments stand testimony to a conflicted history/histories that shaped South Africa’s political, cultural, social and economic landscape. From the vantage point of our current context, they allow us to re-imagine the relationship between histories, values and symbols, as well as our position in relation to these notions. Today, South Africa is faced with the dangerous escalation of conflict that speaks to the shadow of trauma, a shadow inherited from the past and now reinvented by the exacerbation of poverty, senseless crime, political and economic corruption, and shameful inequalities. Art has the capacity to witness, reveal, speak back to, and transform the way we engage with, reflect upon, and make meaning of conflict. Arts activists, development facilitators, educators and therapists have an even more significant role and responsibility to play in relation to conflict. Drama and theatre encourage changes in understanding and consciousness that broaden perceptions and experiences of ourselves and of the wor(l)ds around us. The chapters, collected here, reflect the ideals of democracy and social transformation made manifest through drama and theatre. They speak to the possibilities of transformation, of responsible social engagement with our wor(l)ds and in doing so, become a celebration of humanity. Drawing on the praxis and writings of delegates from the African continent and across the world these chapters explore innovative

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approaches and interrogate important ethical implications for applied drama/theatre researchers and practitioners in conflict and post-conflict contexts. Through them we hope to enliven, enhance and vision a way forward for the arts to create cultures of dialogue, negotiation, healing and social transformation. Drama for Life (established in 2008) is an academic, research and community engagement centre based at the University of the Witwatersrand. It aims to develop an African centre for the professional training of Applied Drama/Theatre, Drama in Education and Drama Therapy practitioners, educators, therapists and researchers; to generate an African network for artists in applied terrains using the arts for social transformation with specific reference to HIV/AIDS; Human Rights and Social Justice; Conflict Management and Peace Building; and Environmental Awareness. Drama for Life further actively advocates for the professional recognition of facilitators, educators, therapists and researchers in Applied Drama/Theatre, Drama in Education and Drama Therapy across the African continent. A special word of thanks goes to Warren Nebe, the Director and founder of Drama for Life as well as the Africa Research Conferences from which a number of prior publications have stemmed. These conferences actively support the development of praxis and scholarly engagement in the field of Applied Drama/Theatre, drama therapy and related arts. This book is an extension of that project and is aimed at scholars in the academic community. We would like to acknowledge insights from the keynote speakers, namely Dr Mshai Mwangola from Kenya who is a performance scholar, storyteller, oraturist and chairperson of the Governing Council of the Kenya Cultural Centre, as well as James Thompson, Professor of Applied and Social Theatre at the University of Manchester and Director of the Centre for Applied Theatre Research from the UK. Many people were involved in making the conference possible, by providing financial and/or human resources, as well as assistance in kind. Firstly, the Drama for Life and the University of Pretoria Drama Department conference teams who spent much time and energy on planning, organising, implementing and trouble-shooting to ensure the smooth running of the process from the conceptualisation of the conference to its effective operational functioning. We would like to thank the GIZ; the Goethe Institut and its Alumni-DENKFABRIK; the University of the Witwatersrand, Wits School of Arts; Alumiportal

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Deutchland; DAAD, the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust; and the Research Committee of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria for financial contributions to the conference. We would also like to thank our peer reviewers who kindly offered their insight and expertise to review every submission in this book. Lastly, but surely not least, we would like to thank Elsa Shaffner who assisted with the field survey for this book, as well as Carol Koulikourdi of Cambridge Scholars Publishing who made the publication of this book possible —Hazel Barnes and Marié-Heleen Coetzee

FOREWORD

This is how you heal This is how you heal Slowly Honestly You waste no time Asking why you Why this wound exists Instead Courageously Gently You ask its name You listen for resonance With any place Your heart has been before You open wider Give permission To tears, rage, shame Allow their salt To purify the site And in the slightly numb Subsequent calm You ask the real questions: Why did I draw this into my life story? Where are similar roots, patterns in my history? What did I learn or gain back then? What do I need to do, say, try…again? Once more, be still Gentle Listen deeply Now the silence will offer Its ultimate service And with certainty you will know How this very wound Could help you grow

Applied Drama/Theatre as Social Intervention in Conflict and Post-Conflict Contexts

What you are still clinging to Follow that ache and burn Repeat this process Until the lightness in your chest The turbulent ocean of your mind Washes you up to a new shore Now rest. Honour your conquest Your transcendence Of ego-games, of fear Wrap yourself And the changing wound In gratitude Tie a ribbon around the part That belongs in the past Keep your light focussed On where your pain has led you to The soil is fertile by now Observe where new life has begun Stay alert for life’s clues and cues Along your path Stay in the haven of your heart Keep its doors open To avoid suffocation or blame Sway, dance, play To the rhythm of its music There is always a song Composing itself in there Remember To know the myriad faces of love Is the sole, unmistakeable reason You are here. —Malika Ndlovu 19 December 2012

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INTRODUCTION WHY THESE STORIES? – OR SINGING THE SONGS OF FREEDOM? JAMES THOMPSON

I would like to thank the editors of Applied Drama/Theatre As Social Intervention in Conflict And Post-Conflict Contexts for inviting me to write a foreword to the edition. I heard a number of these chapters in paper form at the Drama for Life Africa Research Conference at the Drama Department of the University of Pretoria in November 2012 and it has been a privilege to read them again now. The collection here represents an important example of the debates that preoccupy the writing and practice of that broad field known varyingly as applied theatre, participatory theatre or educational theatre. It offers an insight to many of the concerns of practitioners and the breadth covered—in form of theatre addressed, context of the practice, the different participants or community’s represented and, finally, the range of theoretical approaches used—is impressive. In the pages that follow, different writers account for theatre work connected to Augusto Boal’s “Theatre of the Oppressed”, verbatim theatre based on interview transcripts, forms of documentary, perhaps Epic, theatre and then varieties of popular and participatory performance. The work exists in correctional settings, in secondary schools, primary schools, in rural villages—and of course on campuses and in theatres. The chapters relate work with and by individuals who have suffered from traumatic experiences—whether the xenophobic violence in South Africa, or abuse in New Zealand—with female prisoners debating issues of sexuality; with villagers coping with environmental degradation; with school pupils struggling with notions of difference, or the impact of war on individuals lives; with primary-aged children finding a voice to tell stories and therapists and clients discovering new ways of representing the narratives of their collective encounters. The writing is informed by theories emanating from education, psychology, trauma studies and performance studies. This diversity, one might assume, could produce a

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somewhat over-differentiated reading experience—but I would argue that there are strong cross cutting themes that tie this group of articles together. In her chapter on “retellings” of narrative therapy that took place at Rhodes Drama Department, Alexandra Sutherland asks the crucial question ‘Why these stories?” and in many ways this is the guiding question for the whole book. And it is in the different authors’ interrogations of this question that the links across the work emerge. I want to use this introduction to retell a slightly different story that I hope connects with the ones here, and in a small way is my response to the why these stories question. In 2010 I had the fortune to be invited to work with the UK NGO Children in Crisis with their partners Ebenezer Ministries International in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. I was tasked with conducting some participatory theatre training for community animators who in turn were working within their different villages to create performances about the barriers faced by girls who sought access to education. This was in a region of South Kivu province that had minimal investment in its school system, had suffered appallingly during the Congolese wars and where prioritising female children’s education was not the norm. This work links with the chapters here by Ofonime Inyang and Patrick Ebewo because of the use of a broadly Boalian set of techniques but also to the account of work in Westville Female Correctional Centre by Miranda Young-Jahangeer, which focuses on African popular performance forms. Of course, in presenting scenes of young girls trying to overcome family members’ resistance to their education, this practice also chimes with Kennedy Chinyowa’s provocation that we need to be exploring a theatre of the oppressor if we are not to let certain individuals and groups off the hook. In many ways the sketches and scenes that were developed in this High Plateau region of South Kivu were consistently addressed at the adults who did in fact have the power to permit young girls to attend local schools. It, perhaps, was taking up Chinyowa’s proposal without realising it. The context of this project echoes the work illustrated here by the chapters based on school and university theatre work—by Glynnis Moore, by Marié-Heleen Coetzee, Tamar Meskin and Tanya van der Walt, and then by Paula Kingwill. What I note from these chapters is that the theatre work is shaped by the possibilities and problems of each setting—and could only be meaningful in the sensitivity they showed to their varying contexts. All chapters in this edition demonstrate how the context is not like a touring venue where you present finished work fashioned elsewhere,

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but it is the dynamic determinant of the very shape and feel of the performance work that is done. It is the crucible not the backcloth. In DRC, the costs of schooling, the role of parents and fathers in particular, the distance to schools, the work children must undertake to support the home, were all important factors in determining both who could perform and what could be said. The chapter by Miranda Young-Jahangeer demonstrates strongly how the director or facilitator respectfully negotiates the cultural mores of their context—and how this might trouble one’s prior assumptions. Similarly in DRC, in a strongly Pentecostal environment where all performances took place in church on Sundays (the only place and time of collective assembly), the content and style of the performances required careful negotiation. And this is not simply a tolerance of the context for its “restrictions” but a deep willingness to learn from the possibilities that this created. This edition expertly illustrates how setting and participants—while at times challenging—are what makes this practice dynamic and powerful. While conducting workshops and watching performances about girls’ rights to education, I was lucky to meet a group of widows who were interested in the arts and performance. In a region from which much of the insurrection that led to the eventual overthrow of President Mobutu started, there were a huge number of female-headed households, in a community where female employment was extremely rare. This group of women clearly had suffered in diverse ways—echoing the experiences reported in Hilary Halba and Stuart Young’s chapter on the play “Hush” and the loss experienced by the interviewees who informed the play examined in Gina Shmuker’s chapter on “Trauma and theatre making”. I conducted a short workshop with this group to prepare a piece they were to perform for a huge meeting of a regional widows’ association. How to deal with their experiences, what could or should be said in the theatre, and who determines the parameters of the performance, are questions raised by many of the authors in this book. The difficulties faced by myself as an outside facilitator during this work in DRC relate in a small way to the struggle expertly related by Paula Kingwill in her chapter “There’s a hole in my bucket”—and similarly, I searched for the most appropriate theatrical container, “bucket” in Kingwill’s words, for the work I did with this group. We created a piece that in a simple series of images illustrated the impact of war on a group of women and their children—focusing as Marié-Heleen Coetzee and her colleagues did in their “Theatre of Humanity” on the smaller stories of war’s impact. For me however, on the day of their performance, it was not the short sketch that

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moved me most—but the resort to song at the end of their piece. In South Kivu there is a network of choirs, and this widow’s group were also a choir. While theatre might seek to represent, retell or provide a respectful witness to people’s experiences, often communities sing their songs of freedom. In her account of the performance at Rhodes Alexandra Sutherland notes a question from a colleague who asked “Where is the fool in this?” Perhaps it is not the fool we are searching for, but the space for stories to be transformed—so that the art form itself enables people to be liberated from certain narratives frequently destructive hold on people’s lives. In working on Boal-esque workshops in DRC and seeing the performances that sort to communicate the theme of girls rights or even those narratives of the effects of war on a group of widows—in the end DRC most impressed me for how, using Yael Fisher’s words, quoted by Hilary Halba and Stuart Young here, “hearing and being heard” can be done in stories and narratives, but might also be done in glorious sung harmony. Applied theatre—as illustrated in this edition—welcomes diverse forms of practice and we need to argue for that diversity. Accounts of different contexts and participants ensure we keep the field open to varying possibilities of how performance enables people to learn and live through their experiences—good and bad. This book reminded me of the complexity and range of artistic practice that make up this field—and reminded me how whether Theatre of the Oppressed in rural villages, collaborative devising in schools or witnessing a verbatim performance— or singing beautifully on a plateau in DRC—theatre and the arts are a vital means for community’s to make sense of their lives.

PART ONE: APPLIED DRAMA/THEATRE INTERVENTIONS

CHAPTER ONE RE-IMAGINING BOAL THROUGH THE THEATRE OF THE OPPRESSOR KENNEDY CHINYOWA

1. Introduction Marc Weinblatt and Cheryl Harrison argue that, “all of us are culpable and responsible for uprooting social injustice, not just the oppressed” (2011, 22). The two theatre activists proceed to elaborate on what they call “systematic oppression” where people in positions of privilege may, consciously or unconsciously, become party to oppression through subtle means based on the values of the dominant culture. Through covert or overt display of personal and collective assumptions, biases and prejudices, all people can be both agents (oppressors/perpetrators) and targets (oppressed/victims) of different forms of oppression. Thus while Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed calls for a “rehearsal of the revolution” on behalf of the oppressed, it must also be possible to make a call for a Theatre of the Oppressor that allows both sides to be agents of liberation. Taking Boal’s classic image of the man who has his foot on the chest of another man lying on the ground, rather than have the fallen man remove the other man’s foot from his chest, how much easier could it be if the oppressor removed his foot from the chest of the man lying on the ground? This chapter argues for the need for a Theatre of the Oppressor where agents of oppression (oppressors) can also be turned into allies in the act of liberation. Rather than remain perpetrators (of oppression), such agents can exercise their privilege for the sake of freedom, peace and justice. The chapter rests on the axiom that those who are part of the problem are also part of the solution. It therefore calls for the adaptation of Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed in a manner that attempts to discard the boundaries between the oppressor and the oppressed. Drawing illustrations from forum theatre workshops that were carried out by the Acting Against

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Conflict Project at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, the chapter will show the “reality” of those who cannot see the subtle power of their privilege. The challenge of working on one’s own privilege, of removing one’s foot from someone’s chest and of learning how not to be an agent of oppression will be the subject of the Theatre of the Oppressor.

2. Constraints in Boal’s poetics of the oppressed The Brazilian adult educator, Paulo Freire argued for liberatory pedagogy as the panacea for the humanization of both the oppressor and the oppressed (Freire 1970). To recover their lost humanity, the oppressed need to affirm the virtues of freedom, justice, hope and peace. The oppressor too needs to discard the fear of freedom, the unwillingness to come to terms with the new reality. Augusto Boal later adapted Freirian pedagogy to the theatre space in a bid to revolutionalise “the poetics of the oppressed” by giving them a more practical orientation (Boal 1979). Basing his views on Freire’s idea of dialogue and praxis, Boal believed that if the oppressed can perform an action, rather than the artist in their place, the performance of that action in theatrical fiction will enable them to activate themselves to perform similar actions in real life (Boal 1979). However, while Freire and Boal sought to transform unequal relations of power in favour of the oppressed, the philosophical principles that underpin both the Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the Theatre of the Oppressed tend to ignore the contradictions inherent in the divide between the “oppressor” and “oppressed”. As Bruce Burton points out with reference to the need for what he calls “enhanced forum theatre”, the limitations of forum theatre lie in the over-riding imperative to solve the oppression rather than exploring it in depth (Burton 2006). This structural shortcoming means that even the most complex forms of oppression are treated rather superficially without an exploration of the historical context of the issue at hand. The audience-turned-spect-actors can only intervene as protagonists even though they may not be the best characters capable of solving the oppression. To an extent, Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed tends to perpetuate oppressive power relations and social inequalities by virtue of being a theatre of the oppressed rather than of the oppressor. It appears to construct the “world” as divided between black and white (race), male and female (gender), rich and poor (class), straight and queer (sexuality) and self and

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Chapter One

other (ethnicity). The result is to gloss over more complex relations of power in which these binary categories are fluid rather than fixed. Perhaps Elizabeth Ellsworth poses the most serious challenge to dealing with oppression when she regards terms such as “empowerment”, “participation”, “dialogue” and “consciousness” as repressive myths (Ellsworth 1989). She explains that when participants want to put these terms into practice, they often find themselves perpetuating the same relations of domination they are fighting against. Ellsworth argues that narratives of oppression are partial, incomplete and limited in the sense that they project the interests of one side (the oppressed) over others (the oppressors) (Ellsworth 1989). Participants are made to equate an understanding of the social construction of reality by dominant groups with transformation. For this reason, strategies deployed in the name of giving voice to the marginalized often create the illusion of liberation while they reinforce, or even worsen, the oppressive power structures.

3. The necessity for a poetics of the oppressor Paulo Freire has argued that one needs to go beyond the strict duality between the oppressor and the oppressed in order to fully understand systems of oppression (Freire 1970). He ascribes the reasons for this duality to the complex nature of both the oppressor and the oppressed. Within the category of oppressors can also be found groups of people whose deviation from normative power structures renders them “oppressed”, and the same is true for the oppressed. The oppressed are equally capable of perpetuating oppressive systems of privilege as much as the oppressors. As Michael Dumlao points out, the movement between oppressor and oppressed is too fluid to allow for a strict binary to be drawn between the two complex relationships (Dumlao 2003). For instance, oppressors can be oppressed, liberators can turn into oppressors while the oppressed are often complicit in their own oppression. Perhaps the binary division between the oppressor and the oppressed becomes more complex when one considers Frantz Fanon’s argument on “the pitfalls of nationalist consciousness” (Fanon 1967). In The Wretched of the Earth, arguably one of the leading texts on African nationalism, Fanon, a psychiatrist who originally came from Martinique in the Caribbean, and later joined the Algerian revolution against French colonialism, prescribes violence as a cleansing force for the oppressed. In his own words, “violence frees the native from his inferiority complex and

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from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his dignity and self-respect” (Fanon 1967, 31). But while Fanon embraces violence as a therapy for the oppressed, he also notes that the same internal struggle within the colonized creates a dichotomy in which each oppressed person’s perennial dream is to become the oppressor. If the oppressed can eventually turn into oppressors, the need for a Theatre of the Oppressor becomes even more urgent in order to fill the gaps in the Theatre of the Oppressed. Moreover, Freire’s argument about the “false generosity” of the oppressor, which is manifested through acts of charity, patronage and dependency on the part of the oppressor, would equally apply to the oppressed-turned-oppressor (Freire 1970). Thus, as potential oppressors, the oppressed need to be conscious of being culpable of practising false generosity. Like Freire, Boal also appears to have become aware of the complex relationships between the oppressor and the oppressed when he devised Legislative Theatre and the Rainbow of Desire techniques. In his book, Legislative Theatre (1998), Boal describes one workshop experience where he began to question the existence of genuine dialogue in his arsenal of the Theatre of the Oppressed. In his own words, Boal poses the following rhetorical questions: In reality, does dialogue exist, ever? Or is the contrary the case, that what we think is dialogue never actually goes beyond parallel or overlapping monologues? Monologues between countries, social classes, races, … in the home or in school … (Boal 1998, 4)

The apparent absence of true dialogue between the oppressor and the oppressed led Boal to come up with a new form of democratised Theatre of the Oppressed that focuses on direct participation by those responsible for making laws in parliament, that is Legislative Theatre. The shift towards Legislative Theatre had actually begun with Boal’s discovery of the Rainbow of Desire (Boal 1995) while he was living in exile in Europe and North America. In the Rainbow of Desire, Boal had realized that there were people other than oppressed peasants and workers who, though they belonged to a privileged class, racial or ethnic group, still suffered from internalized oppressions, what he came to call “cops in the head”. It was therefore not enough to continue categorizing such people into binary divisions as suggested by terms such as “oppressor” and “oppressed”. There was therefore need to pay equal attention to either the internal or external liberation of the oppressor.

Chapter One

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What then can be done to liberate not just the oppressed, as Boal has meticulously done through the “poetics of the oppressed”, but also the oppressor? (Boal 1979). Marc Weinblatt offers an example of himself as a straight, able-bodied, middle-class and privileged white male raised in the United States who has opted to be an ally in the anti-oppression struggle by advocating for a “poetics of the oppressor” (Weinblatt 2011). In his own words, he explains: Our work does not point a finger, nor does it attempt to oversimplify human beings into the binary of either oppressed or oppressor. People are inevitably complex in ways that are impossible to define with labels (Weinblatt 2011, 23).

Weinblatt asserts that all people are agents and targets of different forms of oppression if one regards oppression as a social construct that manifests itself through access to power, privilege and resources (Weinblatt 2011). He adapts Leticia Nieto’s systematic oppression theory to show how roles of agents (perpetrators) and targets (victims) of oppression can be identified as follows (Neito 2010): Table 1-1 Adaptation of Nieto’s Systematic Oppression Table Category Age

Agents Adults (21 – 59)

Disability Religion Race Class Gender Sexual orientation

Able bodied Christians Whites Upper or middle class Males Heterosexuals

Ethnicity

Citizens or indigenous

Targets Children, youth, elderly Disabled Non-Christians Non-whites Peasants, Workers Females Gays, lesbians, bisexuals Non-citizens or nonindigenous

In this table, agents represent members of the dominant social group with access to power, privilege and resources and targets are members of marginalized, victimized and disadvantaged groups who lack access to equal privileges and opportunities. Such binaries tend to focus more on the differences rather than the similarities. A pedagogy based on one category of society, for instance the oppressed, can only serve to perpetuate the

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same binary divisions. A poetics of the oppressor will help to bridge the gap between the categories of agents and targets by making them allies in the process of liberation. In Boal’s example of the man who has his foot on the chest of another man lying on the ground, when the oppressed man was asked to create an ideal image of the oppression, he simply removed the oppressor’s foot from his chest but remained lying on the ground. Hence, the selfempowerment of the oppressed cannot be complete without the collaboration of the oppressor who may be inadvertently unconscious of his oppression of the other. According to Arnold Mindell, it must be possible for perpetrators of oppression to re-invent themselves as agents of liberation, to use their privilege for social justice and equality (Mindell 1995). Far from being “magic”, the term used by Boal to describe the act where a spect-actor’s intervention may be challenged by other audience members if they believe that it’s improbable and unrealistic, those who are part of the problem are better placed to be part of the solution. Perhaps in reality, no one would want to be viewed as part of the problem, especially those who are slow to recognize the subtle nature of their power. In effect, the advantage of a poetics of the oppressor lies in working with privilege, making oppressors aware that they may be putting their feet on other people’s chests, “unlearning” historical patterns of dominance and learning to be agents of liberation. As Weinblatt concludes, the theatre of the oppressed can be adapted to serve the needs of a theatre of the oppressor (Weinblatt 2011).

4. Re-imagining Boal in practice In essence, the theatre of the oppressor seeks to adapt Boal’s poetics of the oppressed but operates from a different perspective. Taking forum theatre as a point of reference, the theatre of the oppressor does not necessarily preoccupy itself with replacing the most oppressed character but treats both the oppressed and the oppressor as potential allies in the process of liberation. While it is important for the oppressed to reclaim their power from the oppressor, Theatre of the Oppressed leaves behind a world in which the oppressor remains in perpetual dominance. As Weinblatt further argues, the theatre of the oppressor allows everyone to be protagonists with equal responsibility in dealing with systems of oppression. The idea behind such theatre being that, “We learn more about ourselves by playing the characters we do not want to be, perhaps because, in part, we are those characters” (Weinblatt 2011, 27).

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To illustrate the potential of the theatre of the oppressor, I will examine two applied drama workshops that were carried out by the Acting Against Conflict project with students at the University of the Witwatersrand. Both workshops made use of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed strategies to create aesthetic spaces for students to engage with conflicts relating to racial prejudice. For illustrative purposes, I have selected workshops that were undertaken in March 2011 and August, 2012 as part of an ongoing collaboration between the Division of Social Work located in the School of Human and Community Development and the Acting Against Conflict project. Students taking a course on Psychosocial Approaches to Human Rights taught by Linda Smith and Peace Kiguwa were the participants for both workshops. From my email correspondence with Peace Kiguwa, she explained that the course aims to challenge students to think critically about human rights within the broader context of the political struggle for social justice (Kiguwa 2011). To do this, students are exposed to theorists from the critical pedagogy movement such as Frantz Fanon, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal. The workshop was meant to enable the students to not only bridge the gap between theory and practice, but also to act out the “human rights” themselves. Daniel Banks points out that performance interventions can alter participants’ perception of previously articulated identities (Banks 2006). What emerges can be the substitution of a re-imagined sense of identity for previously inscribed identities. Each workshop began with preliminary warm-up games and exercises to allow participants to break away from familiarity and build belief in the fictional world. The project facilitators proceeded to instruct the student participants to create images based on their experiences or observations of racial conflict in South Africa. The process of making the body expressive through images helps to mediate between the self and the other thereby acting as a means of knowing and searching for meaning (Linds and Goulet, 2008). Both workshops ended up with forum theatre performances that I will use to illustrate the need for a theatre of the oppressor. I will focus on two of the sub-themes that emerged from the workshops to show how Theatre of the Oppressed tends to enhance the dual consciousness of the oppressed at the expense of balancing the shared vulnerability of both the oppressor and the oppressed.

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4.1 The double consciousness of the oppressed In his classic work, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), Freire shows how the oppressed suffer from an “internalized oppressor complex” that inhibits them from moving towards true freedom. Firstly, the oppressor imposes his/her values on the oppressed, “who internalize his shape and become ambiguous beings ‘housing’ another” (Freire, 1970,138). In turn the oppressed, having been deprived of access to power, aspires to become more like the oppressor. Rather than strive for liberation, and because they will have internalized the qualities of the oppressor, the oppressed are gripped by the “fear of freedom” and begin to identify with the consciousness of the oppressor. Miguel Morin asserts that an oppressed person who has been promoted to a position of authority often becomes more oppressive than the original oppressor (Morin 2010). The dilemma of the oppressed therefore, lies in having the double consciousness of being themselves and the oppressor at the same time. Taking examples from the workshop held in March, 2011, students performed a story involving two black children seated on a bench in a chemist shop. The children were queuing for medication when a white woman arrived on the scene. The white woman (Woman 1) orders the children to move to the back of the queue. Two black women enter the shop and one of them asks the two children if they are in the queue. In line with Boal’s anti-model play in forum theatre, the play proceeds to demonstrate how the racial conflict between “whiteness”, represented by Woman 1, and “blackness”, represented by one of the black women (Woman 2), has continued to affect the post-apartheid generation of white and black students in South Africa. The anti-model play dramatizes the politics informing “whiteness” as an ideology of supremacy that advocated for the separation of races during the apartheid period. In contrast, “blackness” was equated with enslavement, exploitation and oppression. As Bernard Magubane has argued, the idea of white superiority and black inferiority has continued to be re-created and actualized in contemporary South Africa (Magubane 2007). Thus the scene illustrates not only the burden of whiteness and blackness but also how the binary opposition of “oppressors” and “oppressed” has been extended into the post-apartheid period. Using Boal’s spect-acting technique, the facilitators invited the student audience to replace Woman 2, the black woman acting as the oppressed character, in order to change the outcome of the forum scene. The forum intervention would create an aesthetic space for changing the racial

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conflict by allowing students to debate and experiment with alternatives. To this end, one black student (Participant 1) came onto the stage to replace the protagonist in a bid to transform the image of “whiteness” displayed by Woman 1 representing the oppressor. The spect-actor’s (Participant 1) intervention was aggressive and violent as follows : (Participant goes onto the stage. The facilitator explains to the actors that they’re going to run the scene again. The participant-turned-actor takes the place of the black woman) Woman 1: I’m sorry to interrupt but I have already told these kids to move back earlier. Ah! Blacks are blacks and they will always be incompetent. Participant 1: What? What do you mean black? Hey, these are kids! Woman 1: Well, in my 27 years of experience in the medical field … Participant 1: You just stop right there (she physically approaches Woman 1). Who the hell do you think you are? (pointing and prodding Woman 1’s chest). You don’t have the right to say that to me or anyone! In fact just get out of my face (she continues to push Woman 1) Woman 1: Excuse me? (getting flustered and pushing backwards) (Extract from video clip) The participant’s intervention clearly exposes the dialogical pretenses of what Ellsworth calls “repressive myths” that appear to be operating within the Theatre of the Oppressed (Ellsworth 1989). The world remains torn between “oppressors” and “oppressed”, “perpetrators” and “victims”, and, in this case, between “whiteness” and “blackness”. The intervention of the black student on behalf of the oppressed could be likened to the resistance of the colonized against Europe’s colonising project. Because colonialism imposed a new order of time through violent conquest, the colonized sought to replace it with violent resistance in order to create their own order of time. As Frantz Fanon argues in The Wretched of the Earth, while violence frees the oppressed from their inferiority complex, the perennial dream of the oppressed is, “to become the persecutor” (Fanon 1967,41). Freire adds that as long as the oppressed live in the duality in which to be is to be like the oppressor, the journey towards authentic freedom remains an illusion (Freire 1970). Likewise, while the black student’s intervention could be likened to an affirmation of his humanity, his aggression reflects an apparent extension of colonial violence. If the ultimate goal of forum theatre is to stimulate a theatrical debate, to turn spectators into protagonists who can change oppression into liberation, the black student’s intervention was a clear negation of dialogue as a process of conscientisation, empowerment and transformation. One wonders how much of such “repressive myths” are

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being perpetuated in Theatre of the Oppressed workshops? Admittedly, Boal himself had cautioned that, “all the forms, structures, techniques, methods and processes” (Boal 1992, 253) of forum theatre are open to question. But he went on to state that the only aspect not open to question is: The intention to transform the spectator into the protagonist of the theatrical action and, by this transformation, to try to change society rather than contending ourselves with merely interpreting it. (Boal, 1992, 253)

Boal’s strategies for dealing with oppression were devised for homogeneous groups whose common interest was to resolve the gap between the oppressor and the oppressed. But, in contexts where the oppressor and oppressed divide has become more complex and blurred, the transposition of Theatre of the Oppressed needs to be reconsidered and recontextualised, hence the need for a more flexible theatre of the oppressor.

Bridging the gap between the oppressor and oppressed Jonathan Jansen argues that all sides of the racial divide in postapartheid South Africa carry the burden of contending histories, memories and experiences (Jansen 2009). In pedagogical terms, therefore, the option is to create space for such rival groups to share their troubled knowledge rather than clash with each other. Theatre of the Opressed needs to make it possible for the divided groups to confront, acknowledge, interrogate and transcend their conflicting attitudes, values and beliefs. To an extent, this was demonstrated by the second black student who intervened as a spectactor (Participant 2) in the same workshop that has been illustrated earlier. The second participant’s intervention proceeded as follows: (The joker calls up the participant to take up the position of the black woman, and the scene is re-played) Woman 1: These kids are so incompetent they can’t understand a simple instruction. Ah! Blacks will just be blacks! Participant 2: What do you mean when you say blacks will just be blacks? Woman 1 : They’re incompetent! Participant 2 : Are you telling me that I’m incompetent? Woman 1 : Are you as highly experienced as I am? Do you have 27 years in the medical field?

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Chapter One Participant 2 : What I do is irrelevant. What you are saying now is unconstitutional. You don’t have to like it but we have to learn to live together. I accept you. I don’t have to like you but I accept you. (Extract from video clip)

Jansen strongly argues for the disruption of the received knowledge that black and white students bring into post-conflict institutional learning spaces (Jansen 2009). For white students in particular, apartheid memories of white superiority may affect their “racial psyches” rendering them, “masters the one moment, equal citizens the next, and minority subjects in the new social order” (Jansen 2009, 153). The burden of guilt inherited from the apartheid legacy makes them feel isolated, defensive and fearful of the new political dispensation. In a way, they too are victims of apartheid, and therefore in need of liberation from the “repressive myths” of whiteness. Thus when the second participant says, “we have to learn to live together” and “I don’t have to like you but I accept you”, she not only demonstrates the desire to break with the received knowledge of the traumatic past but also affirms the mutual vulnerability that binds both “perpetrators” and “victims” in post-conflict situations. According to C. V. Kwenda, mutual vulnerability occurs when opposing parties begin to share the effects of past conflicts within a neutral rather than divided space (Kwenda 2003). It is a humanizing process where the contending parties recognize that they are all affected by feelings of anxiety, resentment and prejudice as reflected in the previous theme of whiteness versus blackness. But through the recognition of their mutual destiny, parties in conflict are made to open up and render themselves vulnerable by confronting their fears in order to explore ways of transcending them. As Andre Keet, et al have argued, the advantages accruing from a balanced pedagogical transaction far outweigh the risks as differences are exposed and made accessible to critical questioning, analysis and reflection (Keet et al 2009) To a considerable extent, the second workshop that was carried out by the Acting Against Conflict project team in August, 2012 attempts to show how the theatre of the oppressor can create a balance between the shared vulnerabilities of both “oppressors” and “oppressed”, who Weinblatt prefers to call “agents” and “targets” (Weinblatt 2011). Two facilitators performed the anti-model play while the third took up the role of joker. The play was based on a fable involving two birds, Miss Hawk and Mr Nightingale as “oppressor” and “oppressed” respectively. The bone of contention between the two characters revolved around Mr Nightingale

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“going on the rampage discrediting the favours that other creatures were being given by bigger birds like Miss Hawk”. For purposes of illustration, I will focus on one part of the intervention process that had more relevance to the theatre of the oppressor: (The play is shown for the second time with the instruction that student participants could stop the action where they felt the need to intervene. The first stop was when Miss Hawk told Mr Nightingale that he was foolish to think that he could challenge those who are stronger than him …) Miss Hawk: You wretched creature! What are you prattling about? (moves angrily towards him to hold him by the neck) Mr Nightingale: (stands up and moves away from the vulnerable perch) Listen here Hawk, there’s something I want to let you know. Because you have rough talons and a hard beak, you think you are the most beautiful bird in the whole sky. Miss Hawk: (still angry and flexing her muscles) What did you say? Look at you, weak feathers, weak talons, foolish mind. What can you do? Mr Nightingale: Do you know that I could be stronger than you? Miss Hawk: (with a stronger and more threatening voice) Never, never, never! You will die if you don’t admit that you are inferior! Mr Nightingale: (standing upright with confidence) I think I am beautiful and not inferior. Miss Hawk: Ha ha ha, I don’t like people who think. I want people who know. Come on, don’t waste my time! Mr Nightingale: (challenging Miss Hawk to prove herself) If you are the king of the sky, then fly high and reach heaven Miss Hawk: (feeling rather uneasy) Oh, I can do that. Even the god of the sky knows that I am as big as him (Extract from video clip) The fantasy theorist, Rosemary Jackson, contends that fantastic narratives like fables, romances and other mythical stories serve to break, question and subvert the status of what is “real”, and replace it with objects of desire (Jackson 1993). Reality is no longer limited to the familiar and commonplace but consists of a latent and as yet unspoken world of make-believe. This other world resides within the liminal space between the “image of reality” and “reality of the image” (Boal 1995). Thus fantasy is simply a distancing mechanism that plays upon the ambiguities of social reality to reveal that which a people can be by transcending the limits of their existing frames of reference. By suspending ordinary reality, fantasy creates alternative frames of reality that enable participants to not accept the world as it is. Thus the Hawk and Nightingale story serves to subvert dominant ideologies like race, gender,

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class and ethnicity by drawing attention to their relative nature and demonstrate how such binary categories can be dismantled. If viewed from the perspective of the theatre of the oppressor, the Hawk and Nightingale workshop reveals how both the agents and targets of oppression should take equal responsibility in dealing with oppression and in sharing their vulnerabilities. As target victim, Nightingale refuses to internalize the consciousness of the oppressor and takes responsibility to claim equal “racial” status with the Hawk. Nightingale discards the “fear of freedom” by resisting the manipulative tactics of the oppressor and challenging the Hawk to a point of making her feel uneasy. Through both simultaneous dramaturgy and spect-acting techniques, the student participants were able to expose the domesticating tactics of the Hawk. Although she did not take agency in breaking or discarding her oppressive tendencies, the Hawk ended up feeling as vulnerable as her target. As Dumlao aptly points out, it is just as important for oppressors to be allowed to transform themselves within their system of privilege (Dumlao 2003). If it is the oppressor who creates and maintains the system that dehumanizes the oppressed, then who better to change the parameters of that system than its very authors? The theatre of the oppressor is best suited to make the oppressor become agents for change within the regime of their own design.

5. Implications for the Theatre of the Oppressed A close examination of Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed reveals a number of “repressive myths” that may not be conducive to best pedagogical practice. Several critics (Burton 2006; Au 2009; Rosa 2009; Davis and O’Sullivan 2001; Snyder-Young 2011) have identified gaps in Boal’s arsenal of techniques that need to be addressed to avoid perpetuating the same inequalities, injustices and oppressions that Theatre of the Oppressed aims to address. For instance, Boal’s poetics of the oppressed have been viewed as more experimental and transitory than practical and liberating (Burton 2006). The jokers are often regarded as overly controlling towards both the target audience and spect-actors (Davis and O’Sullivan 2001). The poetics also tend to be restricted to a “pedagogy of the oppressed” at the expense of a “pedagogy of the oppressor” thereby tending to gloss over the hidden complexities inscribed in situations of “power and authority”, “submission and subordination”, “inequality and injustice” and other similar polarities. Boal treats the “oppressor” as a dominant system stripped of human qualities, therefore

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he/she cannot be replaced in forum theatre (Boal 1992). What if the dominant system has been removed as in post-conflict societies like South Africa? In a way, Theatre of the Oppressed seems to falter when it comes to dealing with the inherent complexities that are hidden in real situations of oppression such as when blacks collaborated with whites during apartheid and vice versa, or when blacks continue to indulge in reverse racism in the post-apartheid period. Perhaps practitioners of the Theatre of the Oppressed need to consider shifting towards a more inclusive Theatre of the Oppressor which does not gloss over the contradictions, complexities and differences that still exist in post-conflict institutional spaces. While this chapter acknowledges the validity of Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, it argues for the adoption of a more balanced pedagogy that recognizes the fluid nature of oppression. As Jansen points out, what actually obtains in the aftermath of cataclysmic conflicts like apartheid are not so much oppressive systems but real human beings carrying rival memories, histories and experiences on both sides of the racial divide (Jansen 2009). The challenge for theatre practitioners is to find ways of working with the hidden oppressions and privileges. The theatre of the oppressor enables one to realize that although you may be a member of a marginalized target group, you may also be carrying the privilege of being witness to oppression without asking yourself, “What should I do with what I have witnessed?” (Madison 2010, 10). True advocacy demands that a person who bears witness to an injustice needs to take responsibility for that awareness by not blocking off possibilities for action by others.

References Au, Wane. “Fighting with the text: Contextualizing and recontextualizing Freire’s critical pedagogy.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education, edited by Luis A. Gandin, Michael W. and Wane Au New York: Routledge, 2009. Banks, Daniel. “Unperforming ‘race’: Strategies for reimagining identity.” In Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory, Edited by Butler Judith. Theatre Journal 40:4 (2006), 519-531. Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed. London: Pluto Press, 1979. —. Games for Actors and Non-Actors. London: Routledge, 1992. —. Rainbow of Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy. London: Routledge, 1995.

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—. Legislative Theatre: Using Performance to Make Politics. London: Routledge, 1998. Burton, Bruce. “Enhanced Forum Theatre.” Drama NSW JEDA Journal 13:1 (2006), 1–7. Davis, David and Carmel O’Sullivan. “Boal and the Shifting Sands: An Un-Political Master Swimmer,” New Theatre Quarterly 63. 3. (2001), 288–297. Dumlao, Michael. Understanding the Oppressor. In TCD Literature Review 1 (2003), Accessed September 15, 2011. http://www.michaeldumlao.com/PDFs/Understanding%20the%20Oppr essor.pdf. Ellsworth, Elizabeth. “Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy.” Harvard Educational Review 59 (1989), 297–324. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1967. Freire, Pualo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1970. Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London: Metheun, 1993. Jansen, Jonathan. Knowledge in the blood: Confronting race and the apartheid past. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2009. Keet, Andre, Denise Zinn and Kimberley Porteus. “Mutual vulnerability: A key principle in a humanizing pedagogy in post-conflict societies.” Perspectives in Education 27. 2. (2009), 109–119. Kiguwa, Peace. “Evaluative report on guest input by the Drama Department, School of Human and Community Development.” University of the Witwatersrand, 2010. Kwenda, Chirevo V. “Cultural justice: The pathway to reconciliation and social cohesion.” In What holds us together: Social cohesion in South Africa, edited by David Chidester, Dexter Philip, and Wilmot James, 67-80. Cape Town: HSRC Publishers, 2003. Linds, Warren and Linda Goulet. “Performing Praxis: Exploring antiracism through drama.” In Power, Pedagogy and Praxis: Social Justice in the Globalized Classroom, edited by Shannon A. Moore and Richard. C. Mitchell, 199-218. Rotterdams: Sense Publishers, 2008. Madison, D. Soyini. Acts of Activism: Human Rights as Radical Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Magubane, Bernard. Race and the Construction of the Dispensable Other. Pretoria: UNISA Press, 2007.

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Mindell, Arnold. Sitting in the fire: Large group transformation using conflict and diversity. Portland (OR): Lau Tse Press, 1995. Morin, Miguel. “Examining the Internalized Oppressor Complex.” 2010. Accessed July 10, 2011, Available : http://4strugglemag.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/morin.jpg. Nieto, Leticia, et al. Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment: A Developmental Strategy to Liberate Everyone. Olympia, WA: Cuetzpalin, 2010. Rosa, Ricardo D. “What Type of revolution are we rehearsing for? Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education, edited by Apple, W. Michael, Wayne Au and Luis A. Gandin, 240-253. New York: Routledge, 2009. Snyder-Young, Dani. “Rehearsals for revolution? Theatre of the oppressed, dominant discourses and democratic tensions.” In Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 16.1. (2011), 29–45. Weinblatt, Mark and Cheryl Harrison. “Theatre of the Oppressor: Working with Privilege towards Social Justice.” In Come Closer: Critical Perspectives on Theatre of the Oppressed, edited by Emert Toby and Ellie Friedland. New York: Peter Lang, 2011.

CHAPTER TWO PANOPTIC SPACES, DEMOCRATIC PLACES? UNLOCKING CULTURE AND SEXUALITY THROUGH POPULAR PERFORMANCE IN WESTVILLE FEMALE CORRECTIONAL CENTRE, DURBAN, KWAZULU-NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA MIRANDA YOUNG-JAHANGEER

Doubts are optimism. There is nothing more pessimistic than a puritan. The moment you have doubts, everything is possible. (Jean Rouche 1978)

Introduction This paper will engage, through telling a story about the telling of stories, how African popular culture (Barber 1997) has been used in a South African Female Prison to renegotiate, debate and dictate the sexuality and sexual orientation of female offenders by female offenders. African popular culture is described by Karin Barber as “the large class of new unofficial art forms which are syncretic, concerned with social change, and associated with the masses” (1997, 23). In so doing, it will examine the role of popular participatory theatre (PPT) (one of the forms used1) in spaces of repression where the institutional, cultural and political hegemonies work against the dialogic and democratic ambition—and possibilities—of this work. The findings of this corrective example while particular are, I believe not limited to the penal environment but may be extrapolated to include many of the places where Participatory Popular Theatre and Applied Theatre generally, is in operation. This is precisely because it is typically the function of Applied Theatre to create spaces where imbalances of power and the consequences of these imbalances can be addressed.

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How popular culture (and Participatory Popular Theatre specifically) is appropriated however I will argue needs to be understood within the more complex operations of power and culture of the participants (in terms of what is possible and what is needed) and not the “best intentions” of the (outsider) facilitator (in the case of Participatory Popular Theatre) whose personal or organisational politics may jeopardise a use for the theatre that can assist the community in the way that they2 choose it to be useful.

Claiming the space Let me set the scene: It was August 2003 and Westville Female Correctional Centre was celebrating Women’s Day3. Westville Female Correctional Centre is a prison currently housing 380 women and part of a larger (over populated) Prison Complex of 4 prisons and approximately 9 500 offenders, one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. It is located just outside the East coast city of Durban, KwaZulu-Natal South Africa. Women’s Day at the Female Prison is always a big occasion. A minimum of 80% of incarcerated women in South Africa have been victims of abuse at the hands of men (physical, emotional, financial)4 and female crime has been strongly linked to that abuse/patriarchal violence (Hafferjee et al 2005). Women’s Day has become opportunity for the women to reassert their personal pride and self-esteem—to begin to heal. Participatory Popular Theatre has also been used by offenders as a political opportunity to raise concerns about the gender bias of the courts in sentencing. Many women in Westville Female Correctional Centre that I worked with were incarcerated for murdering abusive husbands. As their crimes were seen as premeditated and did not factor in past-abuse they typically received life sentences (Manyaapelo 2005). In 2001 the women at Westville who were imprisoned for retaliating violently against their abusers made a play for Government representatives, lobby groups and media in which they depicted their plight (Young-Jahangeer 2004). African popular culture has always been the means through which both grievances and cultural and personal celebration is expressed in a South African context (Magwaza 2001) since popular culture in Africa, as Johannes Fabian (1978, 316) asserts, is not simply a response to questions and conditions but “asks questions and creates conditions” [my italics].

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The event, took place in the central core of the prison. It is surrounded by a barred spiral ramp going up three floors. “Audience” line the ramp to watch the performances from above. It is a largely female, largely Zulu affair with the prison Zulu gospel choir, ingoma (traditional) dancers and popular theatre all on the day’s programme. Events like these also help to solidify the cultural and ideological transformation of the prison. During apartheid, the prisons were run by the army and were shrouded by a lack of transparency. Ideologically punitive, the States of Emergency gave the prisons carte blanche to exact punishment however they saw fit. As a Nationalist government department, prisons were an “Afrikaans” space. Even in regions like thenNatal5 which were predominantly English speaking, Afrikaans was the lingua franca of the prison. The overnight transformation of the prison from Punitive to Rehabilitative, Army to Civilian, Afrikaans to Zulu enabled programmes like the Participatory Popular Theatre programme to be introduced and recreational activities were introduced into the prisons for the first time in 1996. Our programmes began in 20006. I arrived early to the event and Ntombi and Karen7 (both involved members of the Participatory Popular Theatre Group) were hard at work putting up the final touches. They had made bill-boards to adorn the bars which read as follows: x x x x x x x x

With a positive attitude and willpower we can achieve anything our heart desires. Because we are women behind bars we don’t stop being daughters, wives mothers or human beings. If you have a confused or mixed sexual identity in prison, what are you going to say to your children? Isikhondayi8 [lesbian sex] is one of the major means of spreading the HIV virus—wake-up sisters! We don’t have grandfathers, dads, husbands or boyfriends here. If you think and believe you are one, then shame on you, you’re a fake! As a woman don’t ever believe abuse is what you deserve. There’s no men behind bars in Female Prison, so if you are lost—go to the male prison. Be proud to be a woman. Don’t compromise yourself by thinking you’d be better by being a man! (19 August 2003)

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These slogans “written on the body” of the prison, while at first bewildering, represented the “identity politics of [this] place and the spatialised politics of identity” (Keith and Pile 1993, 2). In their invocation of gender identity specifically (although this cannot be separated from race/ethnicity), they were a mixture of inspirational messages to evoke female self-worth and conforming heteronormative messages that were morally threatening. I will analyse some of these messages in greater detail later in the paper. The event gets underway: It has taken a while with offenders slowly filling up the ramps not wanting a day different, to be gone too fast. Members9 too begin to arrive with key personnel sitting at the trestle table that has been set up in the core. It is adorned with a tablecloth and a bouquet of plastic flowers to honour the seniority (superiority?) of the members. The energy begins to build. Virginia,10 the powerful motherfigure and lead facilitator of the Participatory Popular Theatre programme, enters the space: “Sanibonani noke!” She warmly greets all present. “Yebo!” Is the resounding reply. After a brief introduction the event is underway. An isigubhu (cowhide drum) begins to beat. It is not far off and getting closer. Its echoes begin to fill the halls of the once “whites only” Correctional Centre—a new heart beat—a summoning of the ancestors to this cold place where they were once denied entry. The ingoma dancers appear in procession and enter the space. They are dressed in full traditional regalia: isidwaba (beaded skirt), imifece (ankle bracelets) and ubuhlala (beaded belt). Their bare feet stamp the ground in unison, the beat of the drum and the rustle of the imifece reverberating through the central core of the Correctional Centre. Hundreds of hands clap in time. As is the custom, members of the “audience”, for there is no real distinction (Kamlongera 1987), are “free” to dance if and when they feel the spirit take them. However most are behind the bars of the central core preventing participation. Nevertheless correctional staff (dressed in full uniform some in brown heeled shoes), and those inmates closer to the action, take turns to enter the space. When a member enters, the crowd goes wild, ululating as she dances. This is not a space for dissent but for consent. Each performance that follows is a celebration of Zulu culture in the core of the Correctional Centre: an official claiming of the space by both

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offenders and members alike as a “new” “Zulu” space: the dominant postcolonial culture of KwaZulu-Natal. The billboard messages adorning the walls provide the silent script for this cultural transition in their effort to create a new condition (Fabian 1978, 316). For this call to identity, to culture, is not a mere adoption of the old ways into the mainstream. Not entirely. There is a call for a new order. But what “new order”? How are these women choosing to identify themselves and why? What is this identity politics (Keith and Pile 1993, 2)?

Offending sexuality Juliette Mitchell argues, “sexuality has traditionally been the most tabooed dimension of a woman’s situation” (1971, 110). The manner in which sexuality is handled in the Female Correctional Centre would certainly indicate that this still is so. Although it is common knowledge that sex occurs between offenders in male Correctional Centres, as part of largely gang related behaviour (Gear & Ngubeni 2002), there is very little discussion about sex in Female Correctional Centres. It seems the issue of women and their desire for intimacy and sexual activity is a far more awkward issue to broach. The Female prison population—like the population beyond the prison walls are heterosexual and homosexual; Rocky, a member of the group from 2000—2003 was a self-proclaimed lesbian, with a girlfriend on the outside—she was white11. The other inmates accepted her with silent curiosity. However, the confines of the Correctional Centre environment also create the “homosexual heterosexual”. Women in prison who have children and a history of heterosexual activity but who choose, for the sake of companionship and affection to enter into such a relationship with another woman who constructs herself as a man. A year later in September 2004 it came as some surprise that the Participatory Popular Theatre group wished to engage the issue of Lesbianism for the next intervention. For the first 3 years “sexuality” was not up for discussion although I had realised—with the billboards—that it was a growing issue. Nevertheless I was surprised that the women wanted to open up democratic debate around it. I soon realised that this was because they did not. The women were all well versed in the workings of Participatory Popular Theatre: form and intention. For most, this was to be their eighth

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intervention12. Groups of approximately ten inmates, facilitated by an offender and myself (who moves between the groups), debate an issue and devise a narrative. The theatre must pose a problem (Freire 1970) which, in performance must then be discussed in discussion circles which is then reported back to all participants. Previous interventions had successfully renegotiated for example, how terminally ill HIV+ offenders were handled by the prison (Young-Jahangeer 2005). As a result of this intervention which was performed for 200 offenders and prison staff, there was a shift in policy that supported the right to human dignity13. Participatory Popular Theatre with its emphasis on dialogue and its ability to cut-across or deconstruct panoptic operations of power (Foucault 1977), had proven a very effective way for the offenders in this space defined by nondemocratic ideals to speak openly and freely to authorities, the broader community—and each other (Young-Jahangeer 2004). The “Lesbianism” programme began. The first dialogic interaction (Freire 1972) facilitated with the group prior to workshopping the play, soon degenerated from impassioned debate to hate speech. In one particularly offensive insult Lesbians were called “less than dogs…because at least dogs knew who to fuck!” They refused to believe that Lesbians have “real” sex. This was all expressed in the presence of at least five Lesbian women. I brought the discussion back to the issue of human rights. Homosexuality is considered a “right” in the South African constitution. Gay marriage is legal. South Africa’s past of prejudice based on identity was brought in to broaden the debate. Individuals were allowed opinions but should not use these to oppress others. “The theatre should pose the question”—I emphasised. “In a free society we should reserve judgement”; but this was not a “free society”, this was prison. Subsequently the older women, who had been the main instigators of this homophobic rhetoric, and lead by Virginia, seemed to relax their militant approach. One woman suggested the use of simultaneous dramaturgy (Boal 2002) to involve the audience and the play evolved into more of a dilemma that potentially opened up a space for debate. The play followed Winnie, a young girl who meets another young girl and falls in love. She tells her family and they cast her out. She goes to the social worker who tries to reconcile the family but unsuccessfully. The play ends with Winnie in the middle of a semi-circle of women who

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represent “the thoughts in her head”: the priest, her mother, her lover, friends, the social worker and other members of society. They step forward and vocalise these thoughts in turn. At points in the play the audience must instruct actors to behave differently and the audience must debate Winnie’s dilemma. The implication of this scene is that Winnie has a “choice’. She can either continue to practice as a lesbian and risk losing her family or she can relinquish the behaviour and lose her lover. The possibility that she can change the attitudes of her elders towards her is not entertained. I am hopeful that this will come out in the post-performance discussions. The idea that homosexuality is a choice was not contested by any of the women. Even Rose, an offender who had voiced her concerns about the treatment of lesbian women in the Correctional Centre complained, “she had to go straight just to allow her self-esteem to come back to normal” (personal communication 22 September 2004). Rose is also a mother and has had serious relationships with men; yet for most of the period of this research proclaimed herself a lesbian or bisexual. The elements contained in Rose’s statement with regards to first the constructedness of identity including sexual orientation and the no holds barred battle against Lesbianism by both the Correctional Centre and Virginia’s women are echoed in a number of the billboard statements cited in the beginning of the paper: If you have a confused or mixed sexual identity in prison, what are you going to say to your children? We don’t have grandfathers, dads, husbands or boyfriends here. If you think and believe you are one, then shame on you, you’re a fake! There’s no men behind bars in Female Prison, so if you are lost—go to the male prison. Be proud to be a woman. Don’t compromise yourself by thinking you’d be better by being a man! (Billboards, 19 August 2003)

The first statement suggests a clear split in identity “before” and “during” incarceration. Emphasising again the constructedness of identity (and the influence of space and circumstance) yet appealing for women to go back to their “true” selves. It is socially threatening and draws on maternal expectation and possibly guilt. The second statement alludes to a Correctional Centre lesbian culture with a patriarchal familial structure.

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Again it suggests, as with the third statement that anyone who has constructed herself in terms of this formation is “a fake” and is clearly “lost”. The last statement interestingly appeals to a “woman-power” conception. Interestingly lesbian identity is seen as a betrayal of “the female”, which has specific designated traits of motherhood, femininity and heterosexuality. This is also because the dominant gay women, as mentioned, (re)construct themselves as “men” who court “women” or “girls”. This reconstruction is then a rejection of “the female” and an affront to women. The fostering of pride of self (as woman) stems from the unity around abuse. In a continuation of the argument, I will now recount the day of the performance of the “Lesbianism” play, I quote from my notes: The entire performance was delayed because a few key women who were mainly in the “lesbianism” play had to take communion. They arrived looking very pious—holier than thou—to be honest. I was then cornered by Virginia and others and asked what my religion is? The question was not open but with an agenda. She was holding a bible. She was performing the moral. The actual performance was co-opted by the agenda of Virginia and the older ladies. The preacher (played by Zanele) belted the whole bible thing in the final scene … they used [the play] as an opportunity to judge her in real life—she had to sit and take it. To her credit she was defiant and had a really cheeky grin on her face throughout. It was like they were speaking to her. (22 September 2004)

In the actual performance the simultaneous dramaturgy was brushed over as was the post-performance discussion. The final words were given to the elders, in a powerful display of maternal authority the mothers, through the invocation of the mother/child binary, were demanding that they be obeyed: The hegemonically dominant “male” binary was “kicked out” and the “children” (the young courted women) were being brought into line. Clearly the offenders understood the power of the theatre—and popular culture generally—to not only stimulate democratic debate and raise awareness but also to propagandise and disseminate (dominant) ideology. Participatory Popular Theatre as a form inspired by Freirean praxis has the intention of creating critical awareness about the operations of power through directed facilitation. However often, with less interrogated projects of which there were examples in the Westville plays, what poses as Participatory Popular Theatre in fact has an agenda (beyond simply

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opening debate) and is facilitated towards a specific (often “positive”) understanding: get tested for HIV/AIDS; leave your abusive husband; don’t do drugs and don’t join gangs being some examples. In the plays that the offenders were exposed to and created themselves there was a mixture of this form of Participatory Popular Theatre and the more open-ended debates to concrete problems, of which there were also many examples. Further the plays by this stage14 were strongly offenderfacilitator lead. Yet the facilitators, having a vested interest in the outcome, were not impartial and often brought what appeared to be their personal agenda’s forward as in this example. This was also in many respects the model for Participatory Popular Theatre that I had demonstrated through “directive facilitation” (McLaren 2000; Torres 1998)—although I like to think I was less judgemental. These factors then I believe, coupled with an innate understanding of the operations of traditional and popular culture provided the offenders with a model: don’t practice lesbianism being the message.

The game of love

Fig. 2-1 The Game of Love. Photographer: Miranda Young-Jahangeer

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I have previously suggested that the rationale behind this message was a religious/cultural belief that lesbianism is a moral wrong; however as with all analysis simple answers are never simple. What I propose, with the concluding detailed analysis, is to alert practitioners/ facilitators to an oversimplification and often naïve understanding of the status quo at the site of intervention. This inevitably demands a (re)consideration of what Applied Theatre’s role should or could be and questions Applied Theatre’s ability to affect change within it. Lesbian activity in the Correctional Centre is known as isikhondayi. Lesbian offenders (those who openly declare their orientation) and nonlesbians describe it as “a game” (pre-performance dialogue 22 September 2004). The concern arises as those women who dominate this “game” are reported to entice young feminine women into it with affection and gifts and then isolate them through aggression and jealousy. This is regarded as abusive (pre-performance dialogue 22 September 2004). Other women will report that while this behaviour seems similar to that conducted in the Male Correctional Centre the difference lies in the fact that in the Female Correctional Centre there is a formal proposal that the woman may reject without fear. It is her right as a woman (personal communication Janice Govender 26 June 2003; personal communication Rose 19 June 2003; group discussion 22 September 2004). In the male Correctional Centre “wyfies” [wives] are picked and “coerced into an initial sex act” (Gear & Ngubeni 2002, 15). There is no right of refusal. Further, in Male facilities “to be a wife is associated with inferiority, stigma and a loss of status” (Gear and Ngubeni 2002, 15). Not so in the Female Centre. Nevertheless the institutional pressure and the pressure coming from the “moral front” by offenders and guards are significant. As Rose stated, her lesbian activity was affecting her self-esteem due to the way she was being treated (22 September 2004). Any lesbian activity is noted on your transcript and you are excluded from activities for a mandated period. The older women, and the Correctional Centre authority, do not distinguish between mutually consensual sexual activity and isikhondayi. Or rather they choose not to acknowledge lesbian activity that is not a behaviour limited to the Correctional Centre environment. In this way the behaviour, although a “moral wrong” and abhorrent becomes a consequence of the unnatural context and not an innate orientation thus supporting the ultra-conservative belief that “real” lesbians don’t exist and certainly not in Zulu culture15.

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The reality however is that isikhondayi is disruptive. One offender stated that she always finds lesbians to be “stressed” (Zanele preperformance dialogue 22 September 2004) which I took to mean aggressive and volatile. Indeed my observations confirmed that. According to both offenders and Correctional staff (pre-performance dialogue 22 September 2004; personal conversation Veli Khumalo October 2009) it is the major cause of conflict and violence amongst female offenders. With security being the primary objective of the Correctional Centre isikhondayi is considered anti-social behaviour and therefore outlawed. Thus although isikhondayi appears to be a counter-hegemonic dissident practice that would imply some resistance of the status quo, in operation it in fact merely reproduces the patriarchal and hetero-normative practices of society outside. They do not go beyond, but merely reproduce the hierarchical binaries of male/female and as the billboard so eloquently states “there are no males at Female Prison”. Therefore although those offenders opposing isikhondayi do so from a conservative moral high ground that is homophobic and intolerant, they also object on the grounds that it is not affirming to women. First, as it is potentially abusive to the “woman” in the relationship and to the whole Correctional Centre community whose lives become more difficult and stressful when isikhondayi is rife. In September 2002 a “man” in the group, Ernest, almost brought the whole post-graduate project to a halt through an internal conflict she was having with another “man”. And second, that wanting to be a “man” (as many inmates understand lesbianism to be) implies not wanting to be a “woman”. Virginia’s mandate, although confused and contradictory at times, was definitely focused on the upliftment of women in terms of how they felt about themselves. My research revealed that “feeling good” was consistently the single most important benefit of the Participatory Popular Theatre programmes (Young-Jahangeer 2005). Therefore, isikhondayi as a practice threatened her notion of a Zulu woman, her authority as a mother and her ambition of transforming the lives around her. My observations over twelve years have shown that women who, for the time being, play the role of the hegemonic Zulu woman or girl “feel better” because they are treated better (by staff and most other offenders). Further they have more chance of parole as they are seen as making an effort to change (conversations with Veli Khumalo 2010), which makes them hopeful and motivated. Femininity fosters compliance which works in the offenders favour. If the inmate can believe that she is acquiescing

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because she is a woman and not because she is an offender she can maintain her self-esteem. Further the “feel good” aspects of African femininity like doing each other’s hair facilitate female bonding which builds social capital and counters feelings of isolation. Thus for the time being (while doing time) buying in to hegemonic femininity can be a survival strategy and perhaps that is more appropriate than resistance. In our understanding of how culture operates in “the postcolony” (read Third World spaces) Achile Mbembe (2001) warns against “dangerously impoverishing reality” (2001, 20) by reducing African popular cultural expression, which he describes as “meaningful acts” (2001, 6) as being simply about resistance: This is not to say that such assertions [around the complex consciousness of “the oppressed” and their ability to contest their oppression] are necessarily false but to suggest that a project to build a cumulative body of knowledge about Africa cannot rest on such thin hypotheses without dangerously impoverishing reality. Reducing everything to “resistance” or to quantifiable calculations is to ignore the qualitative variety of the ends of human action in Africa. (Mbembe 2001, 20)

This, as I have suggested, has implications with regards to the role of Participatory Popular Theatre and Applied Theatre generally. This is due to two seemingly opposed elements: The objective of Participatory Popular Theatre being conscientisation—reflection, action, transformation (Freire 1970)—often through the promotion of democratic values; and the fact that work occurs in spaces/places where the operations and materiality of power directly affects the way in which (popular) culture can/ is able to operate and to what ends. A prison is an extreme and literal example, as its core functioning involves the control of the individual through denying basic freedoms; however the (Third World) spaces inhabited by socially excluded people (those “targeted” by Applied Theatre) are their own prisons. In the vacuum of law and order, these marginalised spaces create their own hierarchies of governance often invisible to the outsider. Institutions too such as schools have their own cultures and established power structures which could be problematic to the demands of Participatory Popular Theatre/ Applied Theatre practice.

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In trying to explain “the African subject” outside of political reductionism, Mbembe states: The African subject is like any other human being: he or she engages in meaningful acts. (It is self-evident that these meaningful human expressions do not necessarily make sense for everyone in the same way). The second observation is that the African subject does not exist apart from the acts that produce social reality, or apart from the process by which those practices are, so to speak, imbued with meaning” (2001, 6).

Does this mean there is no part to play for Participatory Popular Theatre in Third World spaces? No, not at all. Further, Participatory Popular Theatre can and has been used effectively in some instances for resistance. However, what I am arguing is that this example demonstrates that we as practitioners must not oversimplify or “impoverish” the reality of the lives of “the oppressed” or take-away their “right”, for example, to use a tool in the way they see fit. Too often Applied Theatre practitioners see the world with an activist’s clarity and a modernist’s belief in utopias. Democratic agenda’s (direct or indirect) abound, without consideration of whether they are meaningful, possible or appropriate. In fact it could be argued that this approach could contribute inadvertently to the perpetuation of the binaries oppressed/ oppressor; beneficiary/ benefactor; subject/ object rather than challenge them. I propose that theatre for debate practitioners should be more open to how Applied Theatre can be and often is appropriated by the people it is intended for. Using my own experience as an example, it was only after sustained length of time of truly “being there” on the inside that I was able to unpack some of the agendas and dynamics that the work was influencing in the inmate community and the prison as a whole. This often had little to do with the myriad of issues we had debated. This is not to suggest that we should try to control the process more, or to submit to individuals desire to co-opt initiatives for personal gain, if that is indeed what they are doing. It is rather to propose that we should be more mindful of the “qualitative variety of the ends of human action in Africa” (Mbembe 2001, 20). This, I believe will make us become more human to each other—break these crippling binaries—and be the beginning of a truly liberatory practice: A practice that takes community action and initiative as a starting point and works to facilitate that process towards workable solutions.

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References Barber, Karen, ed. Readings in African popular culture. Oxford: James Curry, 1997. Barber, Karen. “Views of the Field.” In Readings in African popular culture, edited by Karen Barber, 1-12. Oxford: James Curry, 1997. Boal, Augusto. Games for actors and non-actors: Second edition. London/ New York: Routledge, 2002. Department of Arts, Science And Technology. Draft White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage. Deparment of Arts, Science And Technology, 1995. Fabian, Johannes. “Popular Culture in Africa: Findings and Conjectures.” Africa 48 (1978), 315-334. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. London: Penguin, 1977. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin, 1972 Gear, Sacha. And K Ngubeni. Daai ding: Sex, sexual violence and coercion in men’s prisons. Braamfontien: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 2002. Hafferjee, S. Vetten, L. and M Greyling. “Exploring violence in the lives of women and girls incarcerated at three prisons in Gauteng Province, South Africa.” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 66:1 (2005), 40–47. Kamlongera, Christopher. Theatre for development in Africa with case studies from Malawi and Zambia. Bonn and Zomba: German foundation for International Development and Fine and Performing Arts Department, 1988. Keith, Michael and Steven Pile. Place and the politics of identity. London: Routledge, 1993. Kidd, Ross and Martin Byram. “Popular theatre and non-formal education in Botswana: A critique of pseudo-participatory popular education.” Revised Working Paper No. 5 (Revised). Toronto, Canada: Participatory Action Research Group 1982. Kerr, David. African popular theatre. Cape Town: David Phillip, 1995. Magwaza, Thenjiwe. “Private transgressions: the visual voice of Zulu Women.” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 16. 49. (2001), 25-33. Manyaapelo, Nompumelelo. “Born to suffer.” Agenda: Empowering women for gender equity 19. 66. (2005), 110–116. Mbembe, Achile. On the postcolony. California: University of California press, 2001.

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Mda, Zakes. When people play people: Development communication through theatre. Witwatersrand Press: Johannesburg, 1993. Steinberg, John. The Number: One man’s search for identity in the Cape underworld and prison gangs. Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2004. Yaxir, D. F. “Interview with Jean Rouche Cine-trance: The vision of Jean Rouche.” Quarterly journal of film and video 1978. Young-Jahangeer, Miranda. “Working from the inside out: Drama as activism in Westville Female Prison.” In Pan-African issues in crime and justice, edited by A. Kalunta-Crumpton and B. Agozino, 122–36. Aldershot, Great Britain: Ashgate, 2004. —. “Bringing into play: Investigating the appropriation of Prison Theatre in Westville Female Prison, KwaZulu-Natal (2000–2004).” South African Theatre Journal (SATJ) 19 (2004), 143–156. —. “Working from the inside out: Drama as activism in Westville Female Prison.” In Pan-African issues in crime and justice, edited by Anita Kalunta-Crumpton and Biko Agozino, 122–136. Aldershot, Great Britain: Ashgate, 2004.

CHAPTER THREE DRAMA AS A TOOL FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURAL COMPETENCY AMONGST SECONDARY SCHOOL LEARNERS GLYNNIS MOORE

1. Introduction Learners and teachers in South Africa are urgently required to develop cultural competency, that is, complex understandings of identity, which include understandings of difference, to ensure that school environments are free of racism and other forms of discrimination and the resulting racial conflict. Cultural competency is an approach to multicultural education which needs to adopt and promote the ethos and underlying values of multiculturalism. This article reports on an Arts-based inquiry which explores the use of dramatic tools and ethnodrama to develop cultural competency among secondary school learners in three selected multicultural schools. The focus of this article is primarily concerned with the tools which form part of this concept of applied drama. Schools should assist all learners to develop cultural competency necessary to function in a culturally diverse society. Cultural competency forms a component of multicultural education which deals with much broader categories of diversity. Cultural competency necessitates an appreciation of intercultural values and practices, as well as an acknowledgement of cultural differences without the feeling of a threat to an individual’s cultural identity. This, in turn, involves the amelioration of stereotype, prejudice and racism as well as a reduction in the sense of a perceived threat. Various models for the development of cultural competency exist wherein the recurrent theme is the provision of opportunities by individuals to self-reflect in order to enhance self-awareness as a cultural being.

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Drama can be used as an effective instructional tool to facilitate a greater degree of cultural competency amongst learners and educators by specifically exploring and sharing awareness and sensitivity of individuals’ and their peers’ identity. Certain dramatic tools were used namely: improvisation, role-play, forum theatre, performative enquiry and ethnodrama. All these dramatic forms encourage empathy (thinking from the point of view of the ‘other’), discovering the emotional reality of situations through experiencing them, and individual and group reflection. Three schools were selected for the study. All three schools are racially diverse yet geographically close to one another. Several languages were spoken by the learners in all three schools. However, English was the Language of Learning and Teaching (LOLT) in each case. The school wherein the main body of research was conducted was St Winifred’s (pseudonym). St Winifred’s is an independent secondary girls’ school. The second school that was selected was St Thomas’s IndependentSchool (pseudonym). St Thomas’s IndependentSchool is an independent secondary boys’ school and is the brother school of St Winifred’s. The third school was LarkminsterHigh School (pseudonym) which is a state secondary school which is multicultural and co-educational. Three groups of culturally diverse Grade 10 Learners, between the ages of 15 and 17 years, were selected from each school respectively using judgement sampling. Participation was informed and voluntary and pseudonyms were used throughout the study. The participants acted as coresearchers in the process. My position as researcher was as a participant, interpreter and facilitator to a collaborative method of data collection, analyses and performance. The strategies for data collection were manifold and the collection of data took part in phases. The first phase comprised focus group interviews. A broad question was posed as a point of departure to the group and the discussion followed from there. Throughout the discussions, learners’ responses were recorded and the recordings were later transcribed into notes. The second phase involved improvisational role-play based on pertinent concepts and themes which arose from phase one. Six such improvisational role-plays took place. Thereafter, reflection took place through discussion. Subsequently, several of the improvised performances which had been reworked slightly were identified for use in the Forum Theatre performances (phases three and four – henceforth referred to as the Forum Theatre performance). Forum Theatre was chosen as a method

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of qualitative data gathering. The Forum Theatre performance lasted approximately one-and-a-half hours and two separate groups of secondary school learners from St Thomas’s and Larkminster High respectively each with eight Grade 10 learners (aged approximately sixteen years) participated in the workshop. Phase five involved journaling. Participants from St Winifred’s kept a journal detailing their experiences to be used to reflect upon what they discovered about themselves and others during the focus group interviews, improvisational role-plays and Forum Theatre performances. The journals were analysed by myself and I identified themes, relating to self-discovery and understanding gleaned through the focus group interviews, improvisational role plays and Forum Theatre performance. Phases Six and Seven involved the creation of an ethnodrama and postperformance discussion. The ethnodrama grew out of reflections which arose from the previous phases and themes were extrapolated. The data was written up in the form of a play. The actors (participants from St Winifred’s in this case) were given the opportunity to comment on the script and effect changes where they believe the findings had been misrepresented or that something has been omitted. The audience responses (via post-performance discussion) served to validate data and provide an additional source of data.

2. A limited discussion of the findings The following serves as an extremely limited discussion of one of the overriding themes. The intention is to provide an example of how the tools were incorporated into practice.

2.1 Cultural pluracy and status hierarchy in adolescent school culture The climate of a school is described by Garner et al as a collective notion that concerns the ambience or “feeling-tone” of a school and is based on: its culture or cultures; the way in which status structures or dominance is configured and the adult authorities’ policies. School climates that foster cultural competency need to be pluralistic. The paths therein to adulthood should be different, yet equally valued and respected by learners and educators (Garner et al 2005, 1027). Youth, as they struggle to determine their identities and relate to a high degree with their

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peer groups, are rendered vulnerable to the pressure of peer groups. As adolescents struggle to find groups to which they belong, this potentially may compound the process of stereotyping which in turn leads to prejudice and racism. Schools represent powerful elements of socialisation in which the individual (in his quest to establish his identity) learns “obedience, conformity, rebellion, resistance, isolation, and/or cooperation” (Garner et al 2005, 1024). The development of cultural competency could be considered to form a component of identity formation and socialisation processes. Series of studies have been conducted on youth culture and what was established is that a status hierarchy which is founded on norms and values of adolescent culture exists within most schools but that the exact principle of what constitutes the popular crowd varies among schools (Garner et al 2005, 1024). Comas and Milner (1998 cited in Garner et al 2005, 1025) indicated that schools which were evenly attended by white and black learners do not have a singular dominant crowd in a characteristically pyramid formation. This could form part of the reason why St Winifred’s and St Thomas’s had little racial conflict as both schools had fairly even mixes of racial groups. Comas and Milner (1998 cited in Garner et al 2005, 1035) state that “status pluralism emerges in this context, both along lifestyle and racial lines. There are multiple groups with distinct identities, different uses of space and other resources, and a relatively low level of conflict and competition.” Other researchers (Milner 2004 and Schneider and Stevenson 1999) have also reported that the status hierarchies at schools decline as schools diversify. At such schools importance is attached to “expensive, sophisticated and trendy taste” which serves as an interpretation of what Garner et al (2005, 1028) classify as “prep culture”. For example, Nobi described her style of dress in the following manner: Nobi: O -Le le and I – I dress to impress as if we are about to “hit the runway” – not too trashy but stylish.

“Prep culture” represents and emulates the larger, Westernised, middle-class, adult mainstream culture. Larkminster High, however, had previously been an all-white school but after desegregation, it became a monocultural school consisting of 90% black learners. There was a high degree of racial conflict at Larkminster High which had resulted in violent activities such as stabbings often attributed to coloured learners. Social identity is made up of those characteristics that are established through group membership. Such group

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membership boosts positive self-images and thus stimulates a negative perception of outgroups. Racial conflict, whilst occurring subtly at St Winifred’s and St Thomas’s, was more visible at Larkminster High. The learners at Larkminster High had mentioned that there was never conflict between white and black learners but that there was a “war” between blacks and coloureds. The white learners were included with the black learners in the mainstream or prep culture. Interestingly, the coloured participant identified herself with the mainstream culture. The coloured learners (as an oppositional culture) fought for status hierarchy within the school, possibly because they felt threatened by the mainstream or prep culture or because they were identifying with adult groups that were marginalised from adult mainstream culture within South African society. It was stated that the coloured learners at Larkminster High had a slogan: “inja one, inja all” (injure one, injure all) which meant that they saw themselves as one group. Stephan (1999, 31) states that a particularly important cause of prejudice can be ascribed to feelings of fear and threat, which could be a possible reason for the racial conflict at Larkminster. According to Lebaron and Pillay (2006), there is a significant relationship between culture and conflict as culture shapes and reshapes conflict. Furthermore, the intensity of the types of threats on intergroup contacts can be related to factors such as: the degree of previous conflict between the groups, the extent and nature of the contact between the groups and the relative statuses of the groups as well as understanding of the other group (Stephan 1999, 32). The girl who was speaking was coloured but did not appear to include herself as one of the coloureds yet she seemed to be a selfappointed participant with regard to the actions of the coloureds. Such a person has an understanding of the group and could prove to be a valuable “go-between” for the conflicting groups The school climate was shaped by hostility between oppositional groups, mainly the coloured and black learners. The small percentage of white learners consisted largely of foreign-born learners or those who had foreign-born parents. I asked the Larkminster High participants whether they felt there was much prejudice in their school: Shelley: (white girl ) Ayanda: (black girl) Lemapo: (black boy)

I think we are. I think we are more prejudiced than people think. We’re prejudiced against Goths.

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They are scared of them (she is referring to black learners). Tessie: (From St Winifred’s) Are they in your school? (Quite incredulous). Shelley: (white girl) There is a group of Goth people and ok not these guys but the black people are scared of them. Tessie: I am scared of them. Oh my Gosh! They’ll come with a samurai sword (reference to a recent widely-publicised act of school violence).

The girls from St Winifred’s were quite incredulous that a group of Goths (A group of people or subculture commonly identified by their predominantly black clothing and dark eye make-up; some believe that they are associated with witchcraft and evil) existed at Larkminster High. No such group existed at either St Thomas’s or St Winifred’s. Garner et al (2005, 2007) refer to such groups as “oppositional cultures”within which groups such as Goths would fall. This would include previous references in discussion to “Solja boys”1 and “Gangstas”. Oppositional cultures challenge prep cultures. Part of the formation of identity revolved around socioeconomic status which further stratifies groups. Post-apartheid South Africa has witnessed the emergence of a new middle class of black and coloured people. This has meant that new affiliations in terms of identity have been formed. “Prep” cultures in this study would be in reference to this middle class and would include “cheesegirls”, “cheeseboys”2 and “coconuts3”. Oppositional cultures are more varied than “prep” culture which is more uniform (Garner et al 2005, 1027). “Gangsta” culture “expresses lower-class African- American culture” (Garner et al 2005, 1027) and through the influence of the media has been adopted in black and coloured communities in South Africa. The girls associated coloureds as “Gangstas”, possibly because of the high prevalence of gangsterism within the coloured communities. Garner et al (2005, 1027) state that “all oppositional cultures define themselves in a hostile and rejecting relationship to both prep culture and the larger, white, middle-class adult mainstream culture.” It would appear that within the South African context, the mainstream culture includes the ever-increasing group of middle class blacks and (relatively smaller group of) coloureds. Interestingly, certain values are shared by “prep” and “oppositional cultures.” These include: “social skills, poise and coolness, physical attractiveness, and ownership of consumer goods that serve as cultural markers” (Garner et al 2005, 1027). Furthermore, researchers indicate that these oppositional sources merge from two sources: as an ideological resistance to “prep”culture and the role of adult authority figures, and as an extension and support of values and cultures of adult communities that

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are marginalised by the mainstream culture (Miller 1990; Cohen 1955). The scope of this study was not able to establish the source of the Goth culture at Larkminster High. It would appear, however, that as the black learners were so scared of the Goth group, that their identity formation as an oppositional culture could have been in reaction to the mainstream culture (which was black). What is of significance is that there were more oppositional cultures at Larkminster High, possibly owing to the prevalence of a monocultural group as well as owing to competition for resources and status. Various school cultures were distinguished at St Thomas’s and St Winifred’s through the use of labelling. “Whiteys” or “Darkeys” was an affectionate name for groups of whites or blacks, respectively. Afrikaners were called “Boers”4 or “Boeremeisies”5, but this was usually not done in an affectionate manner. Whilst these school cultures were determined along racial lines, they were not oppositional cultures and for the most part cultural conflict was limited or subtly expressed. However, Larkminster High was characterised by excessive levels of prejudice which had led to intense negative emotions. There appeared to be a disturbing nonchalance regarding the violent nature of the confrontations. The Larkminster participants appeared more concerned about the fact that everyone knew when a stabbing happened rather than the actual event itself. They expressed a kind of excitement regarding such incidents: Ayanda: (black) Shelley: (White) Ayanda:

Also, if there is gonna be a fight at break you know, you can feel it! You can feel it! Everybody starts looking around.

The girls at St Winifred’s realised that they were schooled in a sheltered environment and one even appeared envious: Fentse:

I wish we had that. Some girls have been at St Winifred’s since Grade 0. I went to B Primary and there (she makes punching sounds). Ja, it’s like stimulating!

The violent nature of South African society, coupled with the effect of the media could possibly have desensitised some participants towards such acts. However, clearly the St Winifred’s girls were sheltered from the levels of violence to which the Larkminster High participants were

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exposed. Masko (2005, 191) states that it is vital for children’s learning and “connectedness with schools” that an environment is created in which every student feels both safe and respected. This was noted by one of the St Winifred’s girls in the bus on the way home: Cara:

I suppose it is kinda hard to focus on your academics when you are worried about being stabbed!

The journal reflections indicated the difference in experiences of the participants: Kate:

I was shocked by the one girl’s statement about the stabbings. It’s as if they are used to a completely different way of life. We have all grown up in a very safe environment and it’s scary to think that other people are so used to crime and violence.

2.2 The social positioning of foreign (non-South African) learners All three of the schools studied contained learners who were non-South Africans (foreigners) but were without the prevalence of one single group. St Winifred’s has several learners from Botswana. However, the study took place during a series of xenophobic attacks in South Africa on immigrants from other African countries. The issue of “what it is to be foreign” in South Africa was raised as this formed a significant component of these learners’ identities. Nene stated that if she were overseas she would deny being from South Africa: Nene:

Africans are not proud of their culture—let’s say you say “I am from Zim” then everybody says, “Oh my goodness, Robert Mugabe!” After that you are not going to say you are from Zimbabwe when people are blaspheming your country and even from South Africa, let’s say I go overseas and Zuma becomes president, you know and people ask me where I am from I will say: “ from here” (overseas).

Thus, political instabilities within certain African countries (South Africa included) affected the identities of the participants who then became reluctant to admit their origins. I asked what impact the xenophobic attacks had on the non-South African participants. Tessie, a Zimbabwean, responded as follows:

Drama as a Tool for the Development of Cultural Competency Tessie:

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It hits hard. You watch like Third Degree on TV and see the camps with foreigners and lots of Zimbabweans and that and you think “it could be my family!” and it hurts hard and people talk and say they should go away and pack but they don’t understand that those people are refugees. I want to say “I’m not affecting your life I am from a wealthy family!”

Thus, identification with socioeconomic groups (wealthy middle-class) took precedence over identification with her nationality as a Zimbabwean citizen. It was revealing to the girls to hear Tessie say these things which she had not articulated before. Fentse said that she never realised that the joking about Zimbabweans hurt Tessie’s feelings so much: Fentse:

We never really did it to be spiteful. It is just that it is all over the news so of course we are gonna talk about it.

However, the girls were prejudiced against other nationalities too; Zimbabweans and Nigerians appeared to suffer the most ridicule. Winnie:

Me and my mom were laughing the other night—you can spot a Zimbabwean like anywhere. Someone from Botswana and you might not know but put a Zimbabwean and a dark South African next to each other and you can tell! Nigerians, obviously, they dress strange. Ghaneans you can tell because of their heads! Ghaneans have like flat heads and we laugh at their heads, it’s hilarious!

Ambiguity in thinking was demonstrated here. Participants were aware that they should not be prejudiced against people of different races within South Africa; yet there was no restraint when it came to being critical of people from other countries. This has the potential to isolate foreign learners and lead to shame in their personal identities. The development of cultural competency is crucial among South African youths if a repeat of the atrocities of the recent xenophobic attacks is to be avoided.

2.3 Overview Through the study the learners discovered what it means to stereotype others and they experienced the indignity and discrepancies inherent in stereotyping through the improvisational role-plays and Forum Theatre performances. The learners from St Winifred’s said that they felt that the boys from St Thomas’s were very similar to themselves but that the

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backgrounds and experiences of those from Larkminster High were vastly different from what they had expected. Stereotyping of various groups within South African society leads to prejudice and racial conflict. The racial conflict and in particular the learners’ attitude towards it at Larkminster High is cause for concern. Such unsafe environments are not conducive to good education practice and do not augur well for positive socio-political relations in the future. Work needs to be done to reduce racial prejudice and conflict in such schools. Through the use of drama the participants were able to explore their own prejudices and hopefully overcome some of them. The learners were able to recognise prejudice but did not fully appreciate the implications of prejudice against foreigners even although there were foreigners within the study. The attitudes towards foreigners appear concerning. However, the activities using drama did result in increased acceptance of those who are “other” which served as a positive outcome of the study. Racial conflict often emerges when there is competition for resources or status. Part of adolescent identity formation should be the development of cultural competency. Schools represent powerful agents of socialisation in which the adolescent forms an identity. Evidence suggests that schools which are culturally plural in nature do not have a singular dominant crowd and this usually results in more positive relations. Fewer oppositional cultures exist in such schools too. The aim of this study was to investigate the use of drama as an instructional tool for the development of cultural competency amongst secondary school learners. Through the use of drama as an instructional tool, certain pertinent issues regarding the nature of cultural identity among South African adolescents in multicultural education emerged. It is hoped, that the insight gained from these findings, and the means by which they were obtained, could be of assistance in the development of greater cultural competency among learners within South African schools.

3. Pertinent findings 3.1 Racial attitudes within racially integrated schools Despite the abolition of legal forms of discrimination, negative racial attitudes nevertheless prevail within South African society and this should be documented with a view to establishing a more tolerant society. Stereotypes exist as a means of making sense of the world and racism

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arises, often in response to a perceived threat. Incidences of violent racial conflict existed between black and coloured learners at the state school in the study. In addition, negative attitudes and racism existed towards foreigners, both African and Asian. In the light of the recent xenophobic attacks in South Africa, this is disturbing. In addition to this, the type of multicultural education experienced within the schools could be considered to be a reconstructed form of racism in the sense that that which is non-Western is deemed inherently inferior and a patronising approach towards traditional cultural practices exists on the behalf of some educators and administrators. In addition, black learners make ‘racist’ comments towards other blacks if they are deemed too traditional or adhere to a ‘township’ culture. Such commentary is deemed acceptable because they themselves are black. These learners need to be made aware of the possible negative consequences of their actions.

3.2 The efficacy of the dramatic tools used in the study for the development of cultural competency What the study hoped to demonstrate, is the depth of cultural knowledge and understanding which it is possible to glean (for the participants as well as the researcher) via the use of drama as an instructional tool. The focus group interviews provided much information in terms of providing the context, role and frame for the improvisational role-plays. The improvisational role-plays allowed the learners to explore “as if” situations and assisted in the development of empathy as the learners played the roles of others. They were also, within a safe environment, able to explore contentious issues whilst playing a character and this minimised the risk of causing offence. For this reason, much information was gleaned from the improvisational role-plays which the learners had not been able to verbalise in the focus group interviews. For example, when the learners played the role of their parents or the sangoma, they spoke with distinctive accents. However, when they played themselves, they spoke in their usual tones. Also, whilst professing not to know much about traditional African religion, when their improvisational role-plays of a visit to a traditional healer were analysed and compared to existing literature, they demonstrated an accurate knowledge of existing practices. Thus, either they did not want to admit to having visited a traditional healer, or the practices were known to them via anecdotal interactions with their parents and extended families.

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The Forum Theatre performances gave the participants the opportunity to interact with people whose school culture as well as, in many cases, home culture and socio-economic background differed from their own. The participants, as young people, encountered nodes of shared experience and discovered new things about each other. They were touched by similar experiences which they did not know they shared (e.g., they were all stereotyped as rich and snobbish, including the learners from the state school). They rehearsed different modes of conflict resolution and realised the varying degrees of racial conflict within schools. The learners from St Winifred’s realised that they were privileged as their school environment was safe and orderly Forum Theatre requires a high degree of interaction from the audience (Spect-actors) and the actors. Thus, the interactions via the Forum Theatre performances were most positive as the participants relaxed in each other’s company, enjoyed acting together and left sharing Mxit and Facebook (cell phone and internet chat rooms) details so that they could interact in future. The St Winifred’s girls said that they had not expected to enjoy the Forum Theatre workshop at Larkminster High as much as they had because of their differing backgrounds. The ethnodrama provided the opportunity to share the findings with a wider audience and to take note of their input. For example, in the postperformance discussion the school Chaplain felt that more cultures could have been represented and the Sepedi educator felt that I had not represented enough of the African traditional cultures. I was able to explain to them that that was not my intention, yet became aware that I had not made that clear enough to the audience. The ethnodrama gave the opportunity for the data to speak for itself and for the audience to draw conclusions based on their own experiences. The ethnodrama could have been reformulated and performed again. However, owing to timeconstraints (the participants had already spent many hours involved in the study and even more rehearsing the ethnodrama and performing it) I chose to write a written report. In writing the written report I felt that the ethnodrama had clarified many issues for me and I referred to the script often whilst formulating the written report. The written report was not able to communicate the subtle nuances, verbal exchanges, gestures and the depth of interaction between the characters. It is for this reason that I included the DVD in the original study. Thus, the ethnodrama, as a method of Arts-based inquiry, could utilise the responses of the audience to interact with those of the players and create a body of information that could be of benefit to those involved in the educational arena.

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The journal responses served as a means of triangulation and also as a measure of the extent to which the participants had found the dramatic activities to be transformative and insightful. The responses were frank and positive. The various dramatic tools that were used were most useful for the development of cultural competency; however, the possibilities— for future implementation in other areas—are manifold.

4. Recommendations for educational practice that have arisen from the study The findings of this study indicate certain benefits of using drama as a means of developing cultural competency. In addition, information regarding cultural identity and cultural competency became evident through the use of drama. In the light of this, several recommendations follow for the improvement of educational practice which will advance the development of cultural competency within South African schools. Further ethnodramas could be researched, written and performed to provide educators with information and training regarding cultural competency. It is possible, with the use of drama and the use of theatre for social change to resolve issues of cultural conflict within schools. In addition, interactions between schools using Forum Theatre performances could assist with the reduction of racism and stereotyping and teach learners (and educators) to view matters from the perspectives of others, thus creating empathy, an important component of cultural competency. Cultural exchanges could be encouraged so that learners from differing backgrounds could go to eachothers’ homes and learn about each other’s ways and thus further develop cultural competency. Role-play beforehand could prepare the learners for such interactions. In addition, exchanges with foreign students (especially African) could be done to reduce the sense of “they-ness” and “‘we-ness” in an effort to reduce racism and prejudice towards foreigners. Such exchanges could take the initial form of dramatic activities and then relations could continue using cellular telephone chat rooms Learners of all cultural and ethnic groups need to be encouraged to learn African languages so as to become more culturally competent and for the black learnersto maintain links especially with their grandparents and extended family. The learning of an African language would assist with the reduction in cultural alienation for black learners and thus create

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more positive cultural identity formation. The learning of an African language for white, coloured or Indian learners would assist with the development of cultural competency and the integration of South African society. It would not be advisable to remove learning about apartheid from the syllabus as this would result in a form of unhealthy ‘historical amnesia’. However, ways need to be devised for learners to learn about the past in a form that is more suitable to their needs and for it to be presented to them in a more culturally competent manner. Cognisance needs to be taken of the issue that adolescents do not want to be made to feel responsible for or that they have been personally victimised by the events of apartheid.

5. Conclusion Whilst South African society remains a society in the process of dramatic socio-political change, the development of cultural competency, especially amongst adolescents, remains an important responsibility of educators. This study has investigated the use of tools within the realm of education that have vast potential for both the development of skills in cultural competency as well as for future research. In addition, the ethnodrama as a means of research has vast potential for the dissemination of information to educators and learners alike. The complex and diverse nature of adolescent identity formation needs to be understood in a manner which incorporates notions of difference. This notion of difference should transcend race and ethnicity and include those with a different worldview (traditional or western). In this sense, the cultural ethos of the traditional (particularly within the sphere of education) should not be viewed as inferior to that of a Western cultural ethos. To encourage or to be complacent about the presence of such a perception is to deny a large percentage of the population their cultural heritage and places them in an ambiguous position where they are culturally alienated from their families. There are limited numbers of teaching models in existence that could be used in order to improve cultural competency in learners which is essential in order to improve their ability to occupy a diverse society. Drama can be used as an effective instructional tool to improve understanding of diversity and facilitate a greater degree of cultural competency amongst learners and educators by specifically exploring and sharing awareness and sensitivity of individuals’ and their peers’ identity. Drama is an effective instructional tool for the facilitation of a more apt

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understanding and acceptance of individual identities within differing cultures. Performances such as the ethnodrama provide learners with the ability to share their experiences and cultural viewpoints through performance, in which they gain an intuitive self-knowledge as well as knowledge of others. Thus, the ethnodrama contains transformative elements. It was not the intention of the study to create an homogenous group, but rather to find ways in which individuals were able to become more sensitive by recognising and accepting differences within each other so as to improve learning and inter-group relations. It is believed that drama is a useful instrument in achieving this aim. Furthermore, the development of cultural competency would progress towards the establishment of a more harmonious South African society.

References Cohen, Albert. Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gangs. New York: Free Press 1955. Comas, Jordi and Murray Milner. Jr. “From hierarchy to pluralism in American high schools: changing patterns in status distinctions and racial segregation.” American Sociological Association, 1990. Available from: www2.asnet.org/soe/newsletters/sum98.htm. Garner, Robert, Judith Bootcheck, Michael Lorr, Kathryn Rauch. “The adolescent society revisited: cultures,crowds, climates, and structures in seven secondary schools.” Journal of youth and adolescence 35. 6. (2006), 1023-1035. Lebaron, Michelle and Venashri Pillay. Conflict across cultures: a unique experience of bridging differences. Boston: Intercultural Press, 2006. Masko, Amy L. “Urban children’s experiences and teacher pedagogical practices: when it is about race, do adults care?” Curriculum and teaching dialogue 7 (2005), 75-194. Miller, Alice. Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth. New York: Meridian, Penguin Books, 1990. Moore, Glynnis. “Drama as an instructional tool to develop cultural competency among learners in multicultural secondary schools in South Africa.” PhD thesis, University of South Africa, 2009. Stephan, Walter. Reducing prejudice and stereotyping in schools. New York: Teachers College Press, 1999

CHAPTER FOUR (DIS)PLAYING FEAR, (DIS)PLACING FEAR: A THEATRE-BASED STRATEGY FOR ENVIRONMENT-RELATED CONFLICT MANAGEMENT IN RURAL NIGERIA OFONIME INYANG AND PATRICK EBEWO

Introduction In Africa and many other parts of the developing world, rural areas constitute agricultural and wealth-creating zones and indigenous technology incubators. The teeming population of urban dwellers look up to the “villages” for food and other natural resources (Mills 2010). Notwithstanding the existing context of community structures that support communality and kindredship, serious conflict situations often arise and threaten the peace and wellbeing of the community. The most common source of such conflict is often linked to the acquisition and use of environmental and natural resources especially land, minerals and water (Akpabio 2011, 6; Brocke-Utne 2009, 1). The regularity of conflicts arising from environmental resource control in Africa is beginning to challenge the various formal and long standing approaches to resolutions. Legal redress and use of conventional media such as radio and television, that are often mainstreamed into managing these conflicts produce minimal or no result (Warritay 1988; Nda 2010,15). The cost in time and financial resources of following the legal route to conflict resolution negatively affects local economies. Thus, the need for the employment of an alternative mediation strategy—theatre (see Abah 1990; Mda 1993; Nda 2010; Eade 2002; Dugga 2000 and Takem 2005). In addition to the recent impact of theatre in development practice, researchers have also come to the realisation that local problems require

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locally-derived solutions, based on knowledge systems that are linked to indigenous endowments and resources in development programmes (Millar 1996; Maila and Loubser 2003; M’Raiji 2011). The applied, multidisciplinary structure of interventionist theatre is increasingly becoming recognised as a potent vehicle of participatory-led development practice especially in developing societies in Asia, South America, Australia and in Africa (Epskamp 1989; O’Toole and Donelan 1996; Mda 1993; Kerr 1993). Theatre for Development (TfD) is an interdisciplinary and hybrid methodology of practice-led research and development engagement that draws from different branches of philosophy and social sciences, notably cultural studies, cultural geography, education, psychology, sociology, anthropology, performance studies and mass media to mobilise marginalised communities and indigenous peoples to confront their situation and create new opportunities for themselves (Nicholson 2005). Theatre in this context seeks to be a more “practical [theatre] relevant to immediate reality of hunger, poverty, disease, lack, and slow technological development” (Dugga 2000, 37). It draws generously on the principles of informal education and Theatre of the Oppressed advanced in the early 1970s by the Brazilian theatre practitioner and adult educator, Augusto Boal, and operates from a people-friendly and community-led perspective (Schutzman and Cohen-Cruz 1994). The emphasis is on getting people to be responsible for their livelihood sustenance and sustainable development without looking up to “foreign” sources for assistance. The mechanism of theatre for development thrives best on the pedestal of cultural exploration for development communication based on the understanding that culture is at the root of development and constitutes the basis of philosophy and worldview (see Airhihenbuwa and DeWitt Webster 2004). According to Mda, the appropriation of cultural materials or local idioms in development communication by researchers and development practitioners is a plausible avenue of mobilising people to be part of development management instead of waiting for outside intervention (Mda 1993). Development management in this context also extends to conflict management because without peace and stability there is no sustainable development in the society. Theatre for Development is most effective in such a scenario and has been applied in the past for conflict management in different parts of the world including Africa (Dugga 2000, 137; Bell-Gam 2003, 136). This chapter aims to examine how Ntak Inyang community in SouthSouth Nigeria was mobilised through theatre intervention to be active participants in the process of integrated development and conflict

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resolution as a result of the inappropriate use of environmental resources by the youth. The paper attempts to illustrate how a Theatre for Development intervention brought together the conflicting parties in Ntak Inyang—the youth and the elders—to come to terms with their differences. In Ntak Inyang, a forest conservation community in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria rural dwellers find themselves at the cross roads of the challenging scenario of elders who favour the continued preservation of natural forests for conservation and sustainability purposes while the youth of the community see the forests as a natural gateway to economic empowerment in view of the increased demand for wood by construction companies engaged in the rapid urbanisation of the capital city of the state, Uyo. This chapter reports on the theatre methodology and the strategy employed; the challenges encountered and the outcomes in executing the intervention.

The Environment and Conflict in Rural Communities of Nigeria The environment is a key resource in Africa and constitutes the primary source of livelihood for rural dwellers. To a great extent, rural populations in Nigeria owe their existence to the benevolence of nature. In the absence of modern amenities and systems of livelihood support, rural dwellers resort to a well articulated philosophy of being earth-dependent for their daily survival. The environment is not only seen as a supplier of materials for livelihood but as a friend of humankind. An Ibibio (one of the ethnic communities in Nigeria) anecdote supports this thinking in the light of its postulation that “ke isong ado eyen eka owo”—meaning that the earth or the environment is a sibling of a person. The environment is therefore treated with utmost respect and even veneration. Principles that support environmental conservation or preservation are dutifully mainstreamed into traditional education and philosophical upbringing of young persons in the society (Udo 1983). Practices that disdain the sanctity of the environment are prohibited and severely punished where there is infringement. The community holds its forest reserve, communal water sources like river, stream, lake and falls; farmlands, wetlands, hill formations and tree plantation in sacred preservation. Local regulatory practices, taboos, sacred seasons are applied to the use of natural resources in the rural areas of Nigeria but are sometimes not observed by rural people. The natural environment supplies food, fuel, medicine; materials for constructing

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shelter, and serves as the economic hub of the people because resources that are used to generate financial income also come from the environment. The acquisition of land and other natural resources are considered sources of wealth in rural Nigeria. To a great extent, a person’s wealth is measured by the size of his/her farms, number of livestock in the household, the size of the tuber barn and the extent of the capacity to acquire more, even at the expense of the others. Though there exist communal regulations and principles of land acquisition and natural resource exploitation, rural communities in Nigeria still experience conflicts that dislocate the people and disrupt agricultural and economic productivity because such regulatory frameworks are often not adhered to. According to a study by Abdul-Jalil (2005), communal conflicts that border on environmental resource issues top the list of conflicts’ instigators in Africa (cited in Bronkhorst 2012, 121). Some parts of contemporary Africa are noted to be grappling with many conflicts that in turn detract from efforts to develop the continent (Mutisi 2012, 9). Nigeria is not without its fair share of such environment-related conflict. Reckless exploitation of the forest reserve by certain individuals of the country for commercial gains has resulted in deforestation. Some of these forests have existed for many years and constituted the livelihood base of the local communities that occupy areas where they are located (FRIN 2008; Ajake and Enang 2012). Apart from supplying resources for food and medicine, these “sacred locations” as forests are considered, are also the cosmological conservatory for spiritual knowledge and natural archival location for antiquities and religious objects of inestimable value to the cosmo-vision of the communities where they exist (Omenigbo 2012). The imposing stature of forests and the value they hold in the agricultural, cultural, religious and environmental life of the rural communities in Nigeria is now seriously threatened by forest loss or deforestation (Ajake and Enang 2012, 175). Trees and other constituents of the environmental flora and fauna are now devastated through bush burning, firewood exploitation, road construction activities, subsistence agriculture and illegal wood logging for domestic and industrial uses. The Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation observes that: Nigeria has the world’s worst deforestation rate of primary forests, according to revised deforestation figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Between 2000 and 2005 the country lost 55.7 percent of its primary forests—defined as forests with no visible signs of past or present human activities. Logging, subsistence agriculture, and the collection of fuel wood are cited as leading causes of

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Much of what is depicted in the report cited above represents the situation in South-South Nigeria, which has the highest concentration of the forest belt in the country and is also currently experiencing serious depletion of this natural resource. Alamu and Agbeja present a recent picture of the state of deforestation by observing that over the years, the “land areas identified as forest lands have been decreasing steadily due to industrial and social development that competes for the same pieces of land upon which the forests stand.” (Alamu and Agbeja 2011, 291) This is to say that a combination of ignorance, poverty and deliberate industrial ambitions have pushed local communities into mismanaging natural forests and forest resources, providing strong indication of environmental disaster in the rural communities (Akpabio 2006, 227). Local environmental resource management like acquisition of farming plots during planting seasons by different families sometimes precipitate communal conflict, threatening the economic and social life in the community. Researchers in the field of conflict management have in recent times also increasingly orchestrated the need to factor in traditional and alternative methods of dispute resolution and conflict management especially in Africa (Mutisi and Sansculotte-Greenidge 2012). Mutisi and Sansculotte-Greenidge’s study centre-stages the role of traditional institutions in conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction in Africa in a contemporary sense. Their case studies are drawn from eastern and central Africa in places such as Ethiopia, Darfur, South Sudan and Uganda. The core argument of this research underpins the critical need to locate modern conflict resolution on principles and praxis that emerge from local knowledge as “these traditional institutions, also known as endogenous conflict resolution systems, continue to demonstrate their relevance in post-conflict states” (Mutisi and Sansculotte-Greenidge 2012, 9).

Ntak Inyang Community Ntak Inyang is a small coastal community located on the hilly slope of West Itam in Itu local government area of Akwa Ibom State in SouthSouth Nigeria. It is one of the villages that make up the Itam clan in Itu local government area (Udo 1983). Itam people trace their origin to the larger Ibibio ancestry (Udo 1983; Umoh-faithman 1999). Like most Ibibio

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groups, Ntak Inyang is also rich in cultural and natural resources which constitute the source of livelihood for the local people. Its name Ntak Inyang derives from its organic structure as a final repository estuary of the Calabar-Itu River in its eastward flow from Cross River State down to Akwa Akpa Uruan, and finally emptying itself into the Itam coastal basin. The daily scenario in the community is that of massive clearing of locations where forest reserves once existed for the purpose of making money from the construction industry. Young trees are cut down, logs rolled out of them and fire wood fuel is made from the left over. Some people purposefully cut down trees, pour chemicals on them for decay to take place fast and then the trees are burnt by fire to produce charcoal for export to foreign countries. The researchers witnessed this practice first hand while going round the forest reserves. This environmental destruction goes on with impunity and attempts made by the Village Council consisting of family heads and very elderly members of the community to dissuade the youth from engaging in this practice often leads to strong resistance and accusation of the leaders as standing in the way of the progress of the young people of the community. On the contrary, the elders believe that “The youth no longer value education, preferring rather to cut and sell timber” to commercial agents who export the timber to processing factories in Western Nigeria and the West African sub-region. The extent of the various dimensions of environmental abuses is further validated by the serious damage to the village roads including the one leading to the village head’s compound caused by heavy-duty sand carrying and timber haulage vehicles used by multinational companies doing business in the community.

Theatre for Conflict Resolution in Ntak Inyang Community Methodology The adopted methodology for executing this research is qualitative. Qualitative research is a methodology in social research that admits flexible investigative tools and relies on raw, field-derived data for arriving at research positions (Taylor-Powell and Renner, 2003). It builds from discourse analysis, cultural change research, ethnography and other qualitative resources in scientific inquiry in various fields including communication and liberal arts. Participatory Action Research and Theatre

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for Development is an aspect of qualitative research that was employed in this project. This is a kind of field experiment/workshop which re-enforces the “use of theatre both as a form of qualitative research . . . and as a tool for implementing the intervention strategy” (Kerr 2009, 102). BradburyHaung (2001) observes that Participatory Action Research draws on the paradigms of critical theory and constructivism and uses a range of qualitative and quantitative methods. Population and Sampling This intervention drew its sample from the adult community members of Ntak Inyang (20 years and above). The reason for choosing from this group is that they are directly affected by the issue addressed in the project. Non-probability sampling was used to select the adult community members. They were randomly selected from across the community, however, their participation was based on individual willingness and desire to take part in the workshop. Data Collection Method: Information Gathering The data collection method used in this intervention included unstructured interactive interviews, discussion, observation, catalystinspired activities and focus group methods based on the five-step approach proposed by Mda (1993). The five-step approach includes information gathering, information analysis, story improvisation, rehearsal and community performance. Under information gathering, Mda (1993) identifies five methods of information gathering which includes flooding method, interview method, hierarchical method, official eyes method and homestead method. Our adopted method for information gathering was the flooding and interview methods. In the community, we interviewed the selected population for the study and recorded the outcome using electronic gadgets—video camera, still camera and tape recorders. The community’s view about the problem being investigated was documented as primary data of the research. Focus group discussion sessions also became a source of data gathering. The focus group discussion was based on findings in the various interviews that emerged out of the intervention workshops. Williams and Katz maintain that the major purpose of focus group research is to check out the respondents’ “attitudes, feelings, experiences, beliefs and reactions which one may not get from the nonqualitative approaches.” (Williams and Katz 2008, 9). Information gleaned from interviews and focus group discussions were critical for the creation

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of an intervention performance that was used in addressing the problems under investigation. Within the context of theatre for development praxis, focus groups members in this study acted as both data sources as well as participants in the artistic actualisation. Participant observation was also undertaken by the researchers for journaling purposes. Consultation and Meetings A letter was written to the village head of Ntak Inyang, Chief Fidelis Odung on May 1, 2011 to declare our intention to conduct research on the mitigation of environmental problems with specific emphasis on deforestation using a Theatre for Development intervention. The project idea was well received by the chief, village council, and the people of the community. This response served as the pedestal on which to begin the process of the intervention. The project team visited Ntak Inyang and met with the Village Council on November 30, 2011 at the compound of the village head, Chief Fidelis Odung. It was a warm meeting replete with strong commitment from the community. Modalities for the intervention and agreed terms of engagement were reached. The second meeting took place on 5 December, 2011 and the purpose of the meeting was to meet with the different heads and members of the various groups in the village including the youth and women groups. At the meeting they were informed about the project and the focus of the intervention in the community and the role they were expected to play during the project. They received the project’s vision and promised to give the information to their respective members as well as encourage them to be part of the project as it would bring development to the community. The head of the youth group avowed the commitment of the youth of the community to the project. The women’s leader lauded the initiative and also voiced the commitment of the women to be part of the project. A schedule was drawn up for the conduct of interviews and facilitation of focus group activities. The third meeting took place on December 10, 2011 in the company of other catalysts to conduct interviews and focus group activities. Seventy (70) members of Ntak Inyang community between the age range of 20 years and above were interviewed. The interviews generated insight into the environmental problems in the community. From the responses of the respondents, it was noted that:

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1) Ntak Inyang community is a forest conservation community replete with tree plantations and farmlands which constitute the primary source of local livelihood. 2) This community is also a constant site of sand and gravel excavation from the local river by unemployed youth who sell the sand to building contractors engaged in construction activities in the rapidly expanding Uyo urban centre, the capital city of Akwa Ibom State. 3) Because the community is rich in forests and rubber plantations, it has substantially attracted increased commercial attention for wood supply which has precipitated deforestation and other dimensions of environmental destabilisations. 4) The environmental degradation in Ntak Inyang has assumed a very disturbing dimension as deforestation is already threatening the environment and sustainable livelihood in very severe proportions. 5) Deforestation is putting the people through lots of environmental health risks with greater prospects of problems resulting from climate change such as loss of soil fertility, biodiversity decimation, trees destruction and loss of local water sources. Focus Group Activity Focus group activities were held with the three core groups in the village including the Village Council, women and youth groups. Focus Group with the Village Council The first group that we interacted with was the village council members. We started from the position of appreciating the environmental conservation activities instituted for generations as evident in the remaining plantations and forest belt in the community. We inquired about the significance of the practice and its implication on the enhancement of sustainable livelihood in the community. The village council members reacted to our observation by expressing the substance of environmental sustainability as cardinal to local livelihood sustenance and its function in maintaining cleanliness, orderliness and safety in the community. They also pointed out that knowledge of the environment guided the way crops were harvested, farms were prepared for cultivation, leaves and roots were harvested for medical purposes, and above all, how communal water sources like the streams and rivers were treated with reverence and

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completely bereft of any form of abuse and how that has changed in modern times, the effort they have made to recapture the essence of the past and the challenges faced in the process. The focus group interaction with the village council clearly streamlined the environmental challenges in this community to three core issues: x x x

Deforestation resulting from indiscriminate exploitation of indigenous forests and forest resources. Sand excavation for commercial gains leading to destruction of local water bodies and water pollution. The identification of the youth as promoters and activators of these environmental problems.

There was a consensus of opinion among the Village Council members that the environment is no longer treated with respect especially by the new generation and specifically the youth in this case. It was obvious at this point that all the elders were on the same side on this issue prompting the need to probe more into the issues to locate the root cause of the problem. Focus Group Activity with Women The focus group interaction with members of the women’s group was a consolidation of the position of the Village Council as every opinion tended towards the same direction. In the overall exposition on the matter of the state of the community’s environment and the possible factors that aggravate environmental problems, it was deduced that: x x x

The youth engage in environmental destruction activities especially the random exploitation of the forest for commercial purposes. Climatic conditions indicated a sharp disconnect with known norms raising fear of negative impact on the agricultural life of the community. The topicality of poverty and unemployment as drivers of environmental degradation.

The women’s reasoning on the link between poverty and environmental degradation was further echoed in an observation by an elderly woman of about the age of sixty who observed that while natural resource

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conservation is something that rural people are already very aware of, “the biting economic realities in the community act as activators of people’s resort to environment-destructing activity not out of love but as a means to survival”. While this cannot be accepted as a cheap explanation of the complex problem, the need to engage the people and get them to come to a place of self-examination over this issue became pertinent. The challenge therefore was to create a meeting point between the position of the elders and the women and the opinion of the youth as this practice gradually draws Ntak Inyang towards a state of serious environmental crisis with dire consequences for the future. Focus Group Activity with the Youth The youth responded to the accusation against them by placing the problem on the elders especially members of the Village Council. This was to yield opposite directions in the project focus as the youth in their own defence justified their activities on grounds of economic survival. x x

They blamed the elders for leaving them with very little or no options to sustain their lives causing them to fend for themselves by tapping from the God-given natural resource in the village. They did not see anything wrong in excavating sand and gravel from the Village River and cutting down trees in the forest to earn a living in the face of biting unemployment.

This development acted as the most needed data which guided the constitution of the project team and development of the intervention instrument. For the youth, the environment is a natural resource “given by God” for the alleviation of the existing poverty in the society. In our interaction with one of the youth leaders, this position was affirmed when he declared: What do you want us to do? Will you come and provide for us? Does anybody think about us? We have to use what is available to us to take care of our needs. It is a gift from God and does not belong to a single person.

The various shades of opinion obtained from the interviews and the focus group activities became the resource material for the improvisation of the intervention performance.

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Information Analysis and Development of Scenarios The information sourced from the various interview sessions and the focused group activities was subjected to a group brainstorming session between the facilitators and the participants drawn from the community. The aim was to use this as material for the development of the scenarios for the community performance. The development of dramatic scenarios for a Theatre for Development performance requires tact and carefulness especially in factoring in all the issues to be addressed without entering into conflict with the people or aggravating the existing conflict situation. However, we did not lose sight of the centrality of fear as a factor in conflict situations as conflict almost always arise out of fear of something especially of one’s interest being threatened. Confronting conflict means fear has to be engaged, displayed, played and displaced in order to arrive at an amicable solution. This is the methodology that guided our improvisational operation in the intervention. Being well aware of the contentious and sensitive nature of deforestation and its origination from an economic survival point of view, it was necessary to handle matters with great caution.

Fig. 4-1 Ntak Inyang Youth. Photographer: Ofinime Inyang

To display some elements of objectivity, there was also careful avoidance of partiality involving the contending groups. As catalysts, we engaged the villagers in discussions on the various ways the youth could gainfully employ themselves and become self-reliant. Volunteers from the community were asked to identify the various self-help initiatives that would gainfully employ the youth and they named many of them including farming, welding, carpentry, driving, horticulture and ornamental plant

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gardening, tailoring, and building technology amongst other vocations. The vocations mentioned were analysed to sift out their relevance to the economic life of the community. One young man mentioned that since agriculture is the mainstay of the community and there is already an entrenched culture of farming which has sustained lives in the community for ages, the possibility of the youth being encouraged to get into farming looks bright. He suggested that the government should be brought on board to assist in the areas of training, provision of modern farming implements and subsidy for purchase of fertilisers. This was to generate the touch stone for building a story that will mainstream a return to agriculture and vocational training as a way out of the prevailing unemployment in the community. The lingering misunderstanding between the youth and the Village Council was approached from the perspective of a conflict resolution paradigm using theatre. Suggestions by discussants created the need to mainstream a meeting of the Village Council and the youth in an atmosphere where the issues will be engaged and resolution arrived at. This prompted the shaping of a play (improvisation) to highlight the problem at hand and possible resolution. After structuring the framework for the dramatisation, characters were identified for the performance. Five key characters including the village head known locally as Ete Idung, his wife (Eka Idung), the head of the youth league (Obong Mkparawa), a senior village council member (Ete Ukpong), and an outspoken youth of the community (Bassey) were singled out. The roles of the village youth and the community members were filled in with the catalyst team members and the spectators. Dramatic actions were confined to the village head’s compound to cater for effective communal dialogue on the issue of deforestation as a means of generating ample participatory responses from the spectators.

Story Improvisation The scenario was a simple story about a protestation by the youth of an imaginary community who were prevented by the leadership of the community from cutting the trees in the forest of the community for sale to logging companies. The youth felt the community leadership was insensitive to their plight as unemployed youth who depended on the natural resources of the community to support their survival. They were more seriously upset by the fact that the village head who had ordered a

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local vigilante group to stop them had just ascended the throne through the massive support of the youth. They therefore accused him of abandoning them after ascending the throne and further drew his attention to the fact that logging was an age-old practice in the community and that his father used money from sales of wood to educate him (the village head) in school. Faced with this rampaging youth, the village head and members of his council had to devise means to calm them down and engage the youth in a dialogue which eventually exposed the fact that cutting down trees in the forest of the community amounts to deforestation thus, exposing lives in the community to environmental hazards such as ozone depletion. In the play, the riotous situation soon transformed into a communal dialogue session where the entire community took on the issues of development and environmental sustainability and reasoned about what could be done to enhance a better livelihood. The discussions generated ideas on ways and means of tackling unemployment without recourse to deforestation through cutting the trees of the community’s forest for sales to contractors. The youth realised the possibility of exploring other routes to employment including skill acquisition training and agriculture which the community is willing to support in addition to new opportunities created by the government for youth in the rural areas to acquire education. The play ended by the youth and all members of the community drawing up a memorandum of understanding on the use of forest and other natural resources in the community.

Rehearsals The facilitators guided the rehearsal process which took eight days. The rehearsal sessions were light-hearted interactive meetings with emphasis on the consistency of thought process and building corresponding dialogue to communicate the message of deforestation in a very effective way. Dialogue was taken seriously since it was the primary vehicle of communication. The existing context of language usage in a community like this required consistency of speech and the capacity to lace words with wise sayings that correlate with the matter under discussion. The community members who volunteered to participate in improvising the intervention play had no problems at all in the realm of language. But for the student catalysts, there were challenges as they increasingly discovered that even though they were native speakers of the Ibibio language, the context of modern communication and the demand of

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educational instruction in the English language have interfered with their mastery of their mother tongue. This problem needed to be sorted out in order not to constitute an alienating factor in the interaction between the team and the community members who are often put off by educated people who do not speak the indigenous language well. The community volunteers were engaged to act as “language editors” or “speech specialists” to facilitate and take the students (drawn from the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Uyo, Nigeria to act as catalysts in the intervention) through the accepted local speech mannerism. This worked out well as the students became more attuned to the mechanics of speech and also familiarised themselves with local expectations such as the appropriate behaviour when one speaks before elders or the Village Council as the created scenario dictated.

Community Performance

Fig. 4-2 Community Performance. Photographer: Ofinime Inyang

The performance took place on Saturday, January 21, 2012 at the village head’s compound. The intervention team arrived at the compound and began drumming, singing and dancing to attract attention as well as alert people about the intervention in the community. The musical session continued until the different groups of players assembled and the Village Council members were seated. A brief remark was made by the researchers to introduce the subject to the spectators and this was immediately followed by more profound drumming and singing that registered protestation by the youth and the intensification of the actions. The youth stormed in, singing a song of defiance:

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Nnyin iyimmeke-o, nnyin iyimmeke Yak isio ntan nnyin, nnyin iyimmeke Nnyin iyimmeke-o, nnyin iyimmeke Yak ikpike eto nnyin, nnyin iyimmeke. Yak itop unam nnyin Nnyin iyimeke Yak iwupe odung nnyin. Translation: We do not agree, we will not accept Allow us to excavate our sand, we will not accept We do not agree, we will not accept Allow us to cut down our trees, we will not accept. Let us hunt our animals We do not agree Let us dig out our roots We will not agree.

The young community members joined in, singing along and gyrating to the tempo and rhythm of this communal theatre of protestation. With this background, an exhilarating atmosphere was creatively stirred for the performance, creating an open sesame of expectation about what would happen next. The elderly members of the audience watched with bated breath not quite able to decipher what the next line of action would be as the singing, chanting and protestation carried an insignia of reality and generated ample tension in the environment. The ensuing spectacle became that of action and song mixed with the enhanced energy of youthful exuberance and fun. This was sustained for up to ten minutes after which the dialogue ensued at the palace of the village head between the leader of protesting youth and the village head of the imaginary village. Scenario One Scene opens with a riotous protestation by the youth of an imaginary community. They are upset by the village council’s decision to stop them from harvesting trees from the community’s forest for sale to wood merchants and extraction of sand and gravel in the local river for commercial construction activities. They chant war songs, brandishing branches of trees and other dangerous instruments as they march to the

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compound of the village head. The scene opens in the frontage of the Ete Idung, the village head. Scenario Two The town crier is seen beating his gong and making announcement in the village streets. Later, the entire village assembles for an emergency meeting. The chiefs and the family heads are all present. Townspeople come in groups exchanging pleasantries and light banter. The youth sit on one side in the arena showing clear indication of unhappiness. There is mild tension mixed with the seriousness of the moment. Chief Ukpong, a member of the village council arrives first and greets the youth as well as encourages them to be patient and wait to hear from the village head.

Post-performance Evaluation and Discussion Session The discussion, using a forum theatre method took place immediately after the performance and was moderated by the facilitators. There was a willingness on the part of community members to air their views about the performance. The village members that constituted the audience of this performance appeared more enlightened and eager to engage in development discourse. Their understanding of prevailing scientific concepts about environment was not in doubt. One of them made reference to climate change and “ozone depletion” to the surprise and amazement of the members of the project team. Discussions touched many areas of thematic highlight in the play and advanced to touch other development challenges in the area. The women’s leader felt very happy to see young men coming to engage their community and encouraged the youth of the village to take education seriously as well as take the message of the play seriously. A son of the community who is a teacher in another community expressed happiness over the project, pointing out its topicality in addressing some of the development challenges of his community and asked the team to consider coming back to the community for another project. The village head Chief Fidelis Odung, in his comment admitted that when the youth stormed in (in the context of the performance), he felt an actual sense of civil unease: “Let me see what these young people are out to do? May be they will come in and truly beat us up with this defiant shout of ‘nnyin inyimmeke’ (we do not accept)”. The power and the immediacy of the performance provoked that level of reaction in the mind

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of the chief, registering the force of communication fostered by participatory theatre using local media. He thanked the team once again for choosing his village, stating further that the issues highlighted in the performance truly represent the situation in the village. He was happy at the method of resolution, saying that it represents a positive avenue of conflict resolution where the youth and the entire village sit together to iron out issues amicably. Speaker after speaker, cutting across different ages and sexes, spoke strongly about the topicality of the play as it touches the environmental problems in the community and particularly the issue of deforestation. One woman, Mrs Philomena Usua said that she almost would have thought that it was the village head who had commissioned the research as the issues illustrated in the performance were the issues the community is very familiar with. This went a long way to inform the community’s “naming of their problem” through reflection processes which actually emanated from the community members themselves. The community entered into a series of debates on the outcome of the problems and issues named. Core debate was around the realisation by community members, especially the youth, that felling of trees for commercial benefits is inimical to sustainable forest conservation in the community. The various core groups including the village council, youth and the women had separate meetings to deliberate on the issues and to see how they will respond to the new position of the community which was to emerge from the larger community assembly. These reflective processes became the activator of the sustainable practices that the community created for themselves as a response to the communication offered by the performance. The sustainable practices that the community agreed upon included the creation of a forest resource management committee which included the youth, a bottom-up development that was taking place in the community for the first time as opposed to top-down decisions by the elders and the village council members. The newly formed forest resource management committee sat together and developed a memorandum of understanding that clearly stated that: 1) No member of the community is permitted to cut a tree from the forest without the common agreement of the entire community and for a purpose that is considered necessary. 2) Felling of trees for commercial purposes should be stopped by all concerned. 3) The planting of trees will be given serious attention in the community to the extent that every tree that is felled must be replaced by new plantings. 4) The illegal felling of trees

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without permission will be punishable and the culprit subjected to a penalty and reported to the local law enforcement authorities. 5) The youth should be given a portion of the village cooperative farm to start various agricultural projects in the areas of snail-rearing, bee-keeping, cassavaplanting, and rubber- planting to enhance their economic self-sufficiency.

Conclusion This chapter explored the possibilities of using theatre-based methodology in environment-related conflict resolution in a rural agricultural community in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria and arrives at the position that theatre is effective in getting people to confront their fears and displace disagreement. The position of the chapter draws from an experiment conducted in Ntak Inyang community in 2011. The overriding capacity of conflict mediation using a dramatisation that exposes the root of the conflict and engages people to be witnesses and participants in a peace building process is very much in consonance with dispute resolution methods that emanate from the African indigenous knowledge system. Africa is at a point when it needs to look inwards for development and desist from looking outside for assistance. The employment of the cultural resources of Africa in creating a development communication structure that addresses communal conflict is a step in that direction and is strongly encouraged. Conflict is common to every society and the apparatus of resolution must emerge from that immediate society for effectiveness. The practice of reliance on foreign dispute resolution principles should be jettisoned as researchers, experts and practitioners in conflict resolution are encouraged to tap from alternative sources in their practices (Ekong, 2001; Uwazie, 2011). This chapter also advocates for engaging applied theatre practice in designing conflict resolution programmes in Africa as theatre has the potential to ease the task of mediation through its entertainment capacity and its communal approach. This call especially arises because of the negligible or minimal exchange of ideas and engagement between the social sciences and the humanities in the area of conflict resolution (Agarwal and Owasanoye, 2001; Uwazie, 2011). The need to broaden the space of scholarly and practical interaction within the disciplines of the human sciences is at the heart of the current emphasis on interdisciplinarity and cross-disciplinary research. This is what Africa needs if it is to attain much sought after sustainable development.

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References Agarwal, Vind. K and Bolaji Owasanoye. 2001. Alternative disputes resolution methods, 14. Accessed April 10, 2013. Available at: http://www.unitar.org/dfm/resource_center.pdf. Airhihenbuwa, Collins. O and J. DeWitt Webster. “Culture and African context of HIV/AIDS prevention, care and support.” Journal of Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS Research 1. 1. (2004), 4-13. Ajake, Anim. O and E. E. Enang. “Demographic and socio-economic attributes affecting forest ecosystem exploitation and management in the rural communities of Cross River State, Nigeria.” American International Journal of Contemporary Research 2. 1. (2012),174-184. Akpabio, Emmanuel M. “Notions of environment and environmental management in Akwa Ibom State, South-eastern Nigeria.” The Environmentalist 26. 4. (2006), 227-236. —. “Water and people: perception and management practices in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria.” Society and Natural Resources Journal 24. 6. (2011), 1-13. Alamu, Lateef O. and O. Agbeja Busuyi. “Deforestation and endangered indigenous tree species in South West Nigeria.” International Journal of Biodiversity and Conservation 3. 7. (2011), 291-297. Association of Tropical Biology Conservation Publication. Deforestation challenges and sustainable development in Africa south of the sahara. Canada: Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation Publication, 2005. Bell-Gam, Henry L. “Theatre and environmental rights: options for the Niger Delta.” Abalabala: A Journal of the Bayelsa State Council for Arts and Culture 2 (2003), 131-139. Bradbury-Haung, Hilary. A handbook of action research. London: Sage Books, 2001. Brock-Utne, Birgit. Indigenous conflict resolution in Africa, 2009. Available at: http://www.africarvenir.org/uploads/media/Brocke-utne.pdf. Dugga, Victor. S. “Theatre for development in conflict management: Nigerian popular theatre alliance (NPTA) and village crisis in Otobi, Benue State, Nigeria.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 2 (2000), 137-146. Eade, Deborah. Development advocacy. Oxford: OXFAM, 2002. Ekong, Ekong E. Sociology of the Ibibio: a study of social organisation and change. Uyo: Modern Business Press, 2001. Epskamp, Kees. Theatre in search of social change. The Netherlands: CESO, 1989.

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Forestry Research In Nigeria. Nigerian forests assessment report. Ibadan: Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria, 2008. Kerr, David. African popular theatre. Oxford: James Currey Ltd, 1993. Maila, M. W. And C. P. Loubser. “Emancipatory indigenous knowledge systems: implications for environmental education in South Africa.” South African Journal of Education 23. 4. (2003), 276-280. Millar, David. “Footprints in the mud: re-constructing the diversities in rural people’s learning process.” COMPAS Journal 30. 2. (1996), 6682. Mills, Greg. Why Africa is poor and what Africans can do about it. Johannesburg: Penguin Books, 2010. Mutisi, Martha and Kwesi Sansculotte-Greenidge. eds. Integrating traditional and modern conflict resolution: experiences from selected cases in Eastern and the Horn of Africa. Africa Dialogue Monograph Series, No.2. Durban: Accord, 2012. M'Raiji, John Kirimi. “The use of folklore and indigenous knowledge (IK) and indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) in environmental conservation among the Mijikenda of Kenya.” Southern African Journal of Folklore Studies 21. 2. (2011), 26-35. Nda, Ubong. The theatre and environmental conservation. London: Lap Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010. Nicholson, Helen. Applied drama: the gift of theatre. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Omenigbo, Nze. I. The ecotheology of ahobinagu: an igbo deity of wildlife and forestry, 2012. Accessed April 4, 2012. Available at: www.odinanilawsofnature.wordpress.com. O’Toole, John. and Kate Donelan. Drama, culture and empowerment: the IDEA dialogues. Brisbane: IDEA Publications, 1996. Schutzman, Mady and Jan Cohen-Cruz. Introduction to Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Activism. London/ New York: Routledge, 1994. Takem, J. T. Theatre and environmental education in Cameroon. University of Bayreuth, Germany: African Studies Series, 2005. Taylor-Powell, Ellen and Marcus Renner. “Analyzing qualitative data.” Journal of Research Practice 5. 4. (2003), 1-7. Udo, Edet. Who are the Ibibio? Onitsha: Africana-Feb Publishers, 1983. Umoh-Faithman, Mandu Nabi. Ibibio Jews of Nigeria. Obo Etok: Menorah Publishing, 1991. Uwazie, Ernest E. Alternative dispute resolution in Africa: preventing conflict and enhancing stability, 2011. Accessed April 11, 2013. Available at: http://www.africacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ Africabrieffinal_16.pdf.

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Warritay, Batilloi. “Communication development and theatre use in Africa.” African Media Review 2. 3. (1988), 110-122 Williams, Amanda and Larry Katz. “The use of focus group methodology in education: some theoretical and practical considerations.” International journal for Leadership Learning 12 (2008), 1-14.

PART TWO: THEATRE INTERVENTIONS

CHAPTER FIVE SINGING THE SONGS OF FREEDOM: FRONTLINES AND THE THEATRE OF HUMANITY MARIÉ-HELEEN COETZEE, TAMAR MESKIN AND TANYA VAN DER WALT

1. Contextualisation The American theatre director Anne Bogart, in discussing her view on art, suggests the following: Art can expand the definitions of what it means to be human. . . . Art demands action from the midst of living and makes a space where growth can happen. . . . To me, the world often feels unjust, vicious, and even unbearable. . . . I see pain, destructive behaviour, entropy, and suffering. I dislike the damaging behaviour and blindness of the political sphere. I watch wars declared, social injustices that inhabit the streets of my hometown, and a planet in danger of pollution and genocide. I have to do something. My chosen field of action is the theatre. (Bogart 2007, 4-5)

Bogart’s statement offers a useful introduction to this paper and to our process of performance-making pedagogy, as exemplified in the FrontLines project. In particular, the notion of “doing” something about the injustices we see every day around us, drives our theatrical endeavours. Such a theatre takes as its starting point the need for transformation of our world, and a determination to confront “what it means to be human” in a troubled—and troubling—world. These twin goals have led us to a pedagogy of performance-making that draws on the unique tools that theatre offers as a form of engagement. This chapter interrogates the ways in which our theoretical understandings surrounding these unique tools have influenced the making of, what we term, a Theatre

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of Humanity. Using the FrontLines project as an example of a theatremaking project, we will unpack how these theoretical frames operate as a generative process. As a “field of action” (Bogart 2007, 5), theatre can be a training ground for the imagination offering “a dynamic place to pose essential questions about the human condition enabling us to imagine a future . . . free from social injustice” (Bond in Nicholson 2009, 8, 10-11). It is the potentiality that emerges in the imaginative space that creates the parameters within which our theatre operates, by allowing us to (re)imagine and (re)configure what is known and how we can engage with what we know. This occurs because theatre, as a signifying system, is complex, multifaceted and, at least potentially, multivocal and thus, offers a space for challenging and questioning dominant meanings and structures. The process of performance-making thus necessitates an engagement with multiple signifying systems simultaneously, and a recognition of the power of multiple voices, all of which contributes to an understanding of the world as a complex environment in which our understandings and positions must always be challenged against those of others, in a space of dialogue. Such a complexity reflects the nature of the conflict and postconflict contexts that we inhabit in South Africa and the world today. This is our “field of action” (Bogart 2007, 5) and it shapes our need to make theatre, to teach about it, to teach through it, and to reflect on our practice of it. Such an engagement promotes what we term a “Theatre of Humanity”. Therefore, this paper proposes a method of using theatre to engage with issues around social justice, agency, political and social awareness, history and memory, which interweaves theory and practice in the process of constructing a performance product. We will do this through the examination of the purpose and creation of FrontLines. FrontLines is an ongoing collaborative performance project, started in 2009, that has included students and staff from the drama departments at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban), the Durban University of Technology, and the University of Pretoria.1 At the centre of the project is the notion of global conflict and, in particular, its effect on a wide range of people. Using the conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries as a structural frame, the production seeks to create an imagistic narrative, employing text, dance, music, and visuals to engender an evocative and critically engaging work of theatre. At its core, FrontLines posits the need to confront the histories—spoken and unspoken—of conflicts, in order to

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make the theatre an ally in imagining the possibility of a just and humane world. This article refers to the latest version of this production, which took place from August-September 2011, working with students from the universities of KwaZulu-Natal, Pretoria and the Durban University of Technology, and the authors as co-directors/co-creators of the work. Specifically, the article examines the creative process in/of FrontLines in order to expose the methodological and pedagogical principles that shaped it. We are interested in both the methodologies that lead to the collaboratively created work and the learning that was engendered by that process, as well as the finished performance product in terms of its structure and content as a “weapon” for an engagement with humanity. We will use a four-tier frame around which to organise our discussion of our proposed pedagogy of performance-making and the project itself. In doing so, we offer pedagogical guidelines for creating future projects in the mode of a Theatre of Humanity. These four frames are: 1. 2. 3. 4.

selected pedagogical principles of Paulo Freire; principles of applied drama/theatre; processes of creative collaboration; the notion of embodied learning.

All of these frames are connected to the educational imperative that underpins our work in theatre generally and the FrontLines project in particular. This imperative is directly related to our understanding of the role of art in societal transformation, as Bogart expresses above. We will expand upon this later in the article. First, however, in order to provide a theoretical basis for our argument, we provide an exposition of our fourtier frame.

The four-tier frame Freire’s Pedagogy The first frame is derived from the work of Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire2 who posited that education can act overtly as a critical and transformational social praxis. Freire (1985, xiii) views education as “a struggle for meaning”. For Freire, education should be a space where ideas of power and politics are manifested and where meaning, language, desire, and values interact “to dream, to name and struggle for a particular

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way of life” (Giroux cited in Freire 1985, xiii) and to humanize both education and society. Education is therefore seen, at least in part, as a way for people to “deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world” (Shaul in Freire 2000, 34). Studies of Freire’s ideas on education as “transformative and emancipatory” (Merriam 2009, 35) generally focus on his ideas of dialogue and critical consciousness, education as problem-posing, praxis, and the co-construction of knowledge and meaning in educational processes through dialogical interaction between teachers and students. Although Freire’s pedagogy is more wide-ranging, we will only address the principles that are specifically relevant to our practice: dialogical education, conscientisation, and praxis. Freire’s pedagogy, similar to our concept of a Theatre of Humanity, postulates a dialogic process at its centre. The traditional relationship between teacher and student is given meaning within a system of binary opposition that privileges the knowledge and perspective of the teacher, traditionally disregarding students’ prior knowledge and experience. Similarly, in theatre the director is often seen as possessing the dominant authorial voice, while the performers are there to transmit the directorial vision to the audience. By contrast, Freire argues that people/communities have cultural agency; such cultural agency, if accessed in the educational endeavour, fosters a deeper and more meaningful learning. For Freire, through acknowledging cultural agency, students’ own ideas, and consciousnesses are recognized (Freire 1993) and education thus becomes a more democratic process in which teachers and students share and cocreate knowledge/meaning. As Biggs (1999, 61) points out, “students can work collaboratively and in dialogue with others, both peers and teachers. Good dialogue elicits those activities that shape, elaborate, and deepen understanding” (also see the section on collaborative creation). The shift towards collaborative theatre-making echoes this process. This resonates with our directorial approach in FrontLines, which involved the student participants in a relationship of co-creation, drawing on their cultural agency as emergent theatre-makers and performers. It also underpins our own dialogic process as co-creators of the work in negotiating the journey of performance-making. Another key Freirean principle is that of conscientisation, which refers to developing a critical awareness (consciousness) and understanding of one’s own place in the world in order to be “both in the world and with the world, and able to transform reality” (Freire 2000, 21). It refers to a critical

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awareness of the factors that influence people’s lives and that shape their realities or perspectives, and to the fact that people have agency in the construction of knowledge, reality, and meaning. In FrontLines the particular reality in which we are interested is the experience of conflict and its consequences; the consciousness of the suffering of others, we believe, is critical to building a shared sense of humanity. Freire’s principle of praxis refers to putting theoretical knowledge into practice through a cyclical process of experiential learning. It also describes a “reflexive relationship” between theory and action that emphasizes the conceptualization of meanings that can be learned from experience in order to reframe social, strategic and operational models of action (http://www.webanswers.com/arts-humanities/what-does-praxis-meande854f). Action-reflection begets transformation. FrontLines, in its conception and development, offers a space for “practising praxis” through the dynamic interplay between theory and action that is evident in the work.

Applied drama/theatre Much of Freire’s work directly informs the scholarship and practices associated with our second frame, namely the broad applied drama/theatre paradigm (Maxon 2010, 1). Despite terminological discrepancies and the wide range of practices, process and methodologies associated with applied drama/theatre, it has at its core the belief that theatre has the power to “address something beyond the form itself” (Ackroyd 2000, n.p.), to effect a change in perspective/understanding and to foster social/personal development (O'Toole, Stinson & Moore 2009, 71). These ideas connect strongly with Bogart’s views outlined above in terms of using methodologies of theatre to effect real change in our lived reality/ies. Further, central to the various iterations of applied drama/theatre and its relation to education, is the notion that drama/theatre offers a unique potential for exploring perspectives, action, and the consequences thereof, creatively through imaginative role-play and embodied narratives, within a controlled, safe space. This allows participants to see themselves “in the act of seeing, in the act of acting, in the act of feeling, the act of thinking” (Boal 1992, 13)—simultaneously belonging to two realities (Boal 1995, 43). Jackson (2007, 141) proposes that in theatre, the “real” world is being represented on stage in such a way that the performers can recognise the representation as real (the world exists), but at the same time they are

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distanced from that “reality”, enabling them to be critical of what they are seeing. This creates an interplay between identification and detachment – between the “real” and the “symbolic”. Boal terms this process “metaxis” (in Bolton 1985, 5-6). It is our contention that this interplay opens up a “third space” of engagement and critical reflection as it allows participants to oscillate between empathetic engagement and reflective distancing, which in turn fosters meta-cognition,3 a process central to deep learning4 and critical thinking. The interplay between empathy and distance is critical in understanding the performance dynamic of FrontLines and how the students negotiated the challenge of enacting real people (rather than fictional characters) and speaking personal texts (rather than fictional scripted dialogue). Although applied drama/theatre has been seen as a practice that predominantly takes place outside of conventional or mainstream theatre spaces and that does not necessarily require the creation of a product for reception (Nicholson 2005, 2), it is our contention that more “formal” performance processes may facilitate the kinds of learning described above, albeit in a different way. Where traditional Drama in Education, Theatre in Education and Theatre for Development processes of learning are premised on the central aspect of explicit participation with a particular learning target in mind, we believe that deep learning can happen in less overt ways, through processes which are not explicitly participatory processes, such as the FrontLines project, given what Nicholson (2011, 5) calls the “points of connection between lived experiences and theatrical representation”. Performance-making, as a “contingent and reflexive” space, can engage participants and audiences in (re)new(ed) understandings of the past and introduce alternative voices or counter-discourses into public debates, bringing “imagined worlds into being and becoming, moving participant and audiences alike into palpable recognition of possibilities for change” (Pollock 2005, 1). These ideas connect directly to Freire’s notions of experiential learning, and thus clearly dovetail with the intentions of the project. Applied drama/theatre allows for experimentation with, and adaptations of, real-world interactions that question the models and maps that shape our minds and behaviour. The above notions underpin much of the interplay between drama/theatre and education and how this interplay manifested in the Frontlines project.

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Collaborative Creative Process A third frame is derived from notions of creative collaboration and how the collaborative process operates in the theatre-making endeavor. One of the first things many Drama or Theatre students learn is the maxim “Theatre is a collaborative art”. This usually refers to the fact that theatre is an art form that is made by a number of people, all of whom perform different tasks in working together, under the guidance and vision of a single director to create the final performance product. However, in the case of the FrontLines project, our process of collaboration involved a number of different types and processes of collaboration. Firstly, we worked collaboratively as directors, sharing and negotiating our vision(s) for the production. Secondly, we worked collaboratively with the cast, with cast members being asked to act as co-creators of the work, through staging of pieces, choreography, musical composition, and contributing of their own creative writing. Thirdly, the work was also created and realised onstage in collaboration with other theatre professionals such as set and lighting designers. Thus, the project sought to engage multiple processes of collaboration, all of which acknowledged the cultural agency of all participants, in fulfilling the vision of the work. The learning that occurs through this type of model may be secondary to the stated goal of providing a product for audience reception; this goal, however, should not detract from the implicit and embodied learning that can occur through the experience of such practices. There is a vast body of literature relating to the collaborative model of theatre making, including from the field of applied drama/theatre practices. What we are interested in, however, is the potential learning implicit in the act of collaboration and performance. Vera John-Steiner, in her study of creative collaboration, constructs the act of collaboration as a neo-Vygotskian “zone of proximal development”5 showing how In the course of intense partnerships, new skills are acquired. The partners may develop previously unknown aspects of themselves through motivated joint participation. The collaboration context provides a “mutual zone of proximal development where participants can increase their repertory of cognitive and emotional expression”. (2000, Chapter 7, paragraph 3, line 614)

Thus, in neo-Vygotskian terms, acts of creative collaboration create contexts in which participants are able to learn from each other, as they each bring their own set of knowledge(s) and experiences to bear on the

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collaborative task. The FrontLines project, through its varied types of collaboration, accessed multiple pathways of learning, opening up spaces for exchange of ideas between us as the directors, between us and the cast, between members of the cast themselves, and between us and the design team. Each of these spaces offered a pathway for dialogue and learning to take place. Thus, it is our contention that this type of collaborative work can create a space for teaching and learning, functioning as a critical, dialogic pedagogy. The act of collaborative theatre-making can also destabilise the traditional power relationship between director/actor, lecturer/student, and open up multi-layered, differentiated pathways for teaching and learning in accordance with Freire’s ideas on dialogical education. In post-apartheid South Africa, the need for a creative and critical pedagogy which addresses issues of social justice, as well as one which builds a sense of responsible citizenship, and which empowers students to become selfsufficient, resourceful and critical thinking individuals, is a daily reality. Collaborative theatre-making has the potential to facilitate such an interactive and “engaged pedagogy” (hooks, 1994) for those involved in the process, both students and teachers, or by extension, performers and directors.

Embodied Learning For us, the power of drama/theatre as an applied, collaborative and engaged educational approach (in all its varied manifestations) lies in its connection to experiential and embodied learning—the fourth major contribution to the analysis of our practice. As Nicholson (2005, 56) states, drama/theatre and (for us) performance are created through bodies, voices and material elements; thus, the physical embodiment of knowledge and understanding through these components are integral to the art form in itself. Embodiment is fundamentally experiential and this fosters the kind of deep learning that we are seeking, a learning that moves beyond abstract concepts into a lived, experiential and felt engagement with the world. The notion of embodied knowledge is not confined to drama/theatre. There have been significant developments around this notion in several disciplines: the broad shift in the humanities towards acknowledging that knowledge is not disembodied and objective, but embodied (Ignatow 2007, 115-116); the relatively recent focus in the social sciences on

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theorising the body as “a performative, as a politic, as interrelated with domains of socio-cultural activity” (Munro & Coetzee 2007); and research in neuroscience that acknowledges sensory and somatic aspects in the construction and representation of conceptual knowledge (Damasio 1994) provide a theoretical basis for our understanding of drama/theatre/ performance as inherently embodied and for embodiment as central to deep learning as articulated above. Embodiment can be understood as the ways in which we understand ourselves, and our environments, through the body; it also refers to the ways in which we make meaning of the world through our bodily experiences (Green 2002, 145). Embodiment situates the body in a network of connections whereby sociality, history, culture and corporeality inform and mediate one another. The body mediates between internal/external or subjective/objective experiences to make meaning (Merleau-Ponty 1962) and thus knowledge cannot be separated from our lived experiences (Küpers 2005, 115). Bodies hold knowledge that may not yet be present in the conscious mind (Lawrence 2012, 10). Performance can assist in recognising and articulating such knowledge, as performance specifically taps into “visual, emotional and visceral domains that are often discouraged . . . in orthodox academic writing” (Horsfall & Titchen cited in Lawrence 2012, 11), and foregrounds the body as primary signifier and agent of experience and meaning-making. Meaning-making in performance centres on the interplay between embodied experiences and reflection upon these embodied experiences. This resonates with Freire’s notion of praxis. In the act of interpreting and shaping images, roles, and symbols, performancemaking facilitates an experiential engagement with feelings, ideas, meanings, and the political dimensions of identities that are read and understood through the body. The act of performance makes visible such readings and understandings. Performance thus accesses multi-modal, multi-sensory, extra-cognitive faculties in relation to meaning making and understanding. The four-tier frame outlined above speaks to the educational imperatives embedded in the FrontLines project, seeking to weave together the following elements: x

an exploration of historical events from multiple perspectives that offer a kaleidoscopic vision of global conflict narratives;

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a recognition of the connection between the local and the global in the experiences and effects of conflict from multiple focal points; an empathetic engagement with, and deep learning about, the subject matter of the performance material; a critical awareness of “smaller” narratives on the margins of dominant accounts of history in order to imagine possibilities for the future through remembering history in negotiating one’s place in the world; an exploration of theoretical ideas in a playful/embodied way; an attempt to develop creative methodologies based in applied drama/theatre and on collaborative practices, to challenge traditional dichotomous models of teaching/learning, directing/acting.

We aim, therefore, to foreground an applied, embodied, and critical approach to teaching, learning and performance-making that offers a methodology for developing theatre that may (re)imagine and (re)shape our lived interactions in/with the world. This leads us into a consideration of the subject matter of FrontLines, the working process, and their connection to our four-tier frame.

3. The FrontLines Project FrontLines as a performance piece grew out of a desire to examine how war and violence impact on the lived realities of individuals in multiple contexts; in particular, we were concerned to explore the experiences of individuals rather than countries, the narratives of people rather than politics. The project is based largely on documentary material: letters from combatants and civilians, eye witness reports, testimony, and journalistic evidence. The fact that the material belongs largely to real human beings, and that the narratives being shared are real rather than fictional, lends an added element to the process, enhancing the potential to translate the stage experience into changed perceptions of, and the humanization of, narratives of war. The texts also work across national, religious, economic, and class boundaries, challenging notions of dominant historical discourses by offering alternative multiple histories that have often been unspoken. We wanted to bring micro-narratives of actual people— perpetrators and victims—to the stage in order to offer an alternative to the dominant historical discourses of war. This facilitates the (re)membering of history in order to speak to the present moment and build social

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responsibility. Through engaging with the material, the students are steered into processes of learning that operate, often unconsciously, as they are asked to engage contexts beyond their own in an understanding of the global narrative in which they play their own roles. There is, unfortunately, a plethora of stories about war, conflict and violence. For practical reasons, we confined our explorations to conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries, a time frame which alone provided a frightening surfeit of material from which to choose. The material developed along with the work; in each version, new stories were added reflecting the contemporary circumstances in which we found ourselves. For the Pretoria version of the project, this necessitated negotiating such key global developments as the Arab Spring, the death of Osama Bin Laden, and the fall of Gadaffi in Libya; this was accomplished through sourcing new material and deleting some existing material to better align with the current global situation. Thus, the work itself attains a quasidialogic status, responding to the dynamics of any given moment in ways that shift the work to create a piece with resonances of the earlier ones and layered with intertextual tropes, but nonetheless a new product. Conflict is a complex phenomenon, for which it is impossible to find a simple, all-encompassing solution; we were not seeking answers. Moreover, we were not necessarily concerned to examine why conflict happens, the socio-political imperatives that drive societies into wars; nor were we interested in promoting particular ideologies, although the process of performance-making inevitably presents an ideological position based on the subjectivities of those involved. The only overt political premise in FrontLines was to foreground the horror of the suffering engendered by war. We wanted to explore the human experiences of conflict, not only as an exercise to interweave private narratives with the public discourse of war, but also to offer ourselves, participants and audiences alike, the opportunity to bear witness to the human face of war and suffering, and to recognize that this suffering knows no divisions of race, colour or creed. Thus, we can juxtapose the experience of Soweto 1976 in our own context, with the experience of the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre. We can also recognize the parallels between the grief of the family of an American killed in the 9-11 attacks and the Afghan woman whose children have been killed by a US drone strike. These experiences appear different on the surface—and their underlying causes and contexts are, of course, profoundly different—but in the

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actuality of living through such suffering, a sense of our shared humanity and social responsibility can emerge. As mentioned earlier, the overarching approach in making the production was that of collaborative creation, which aims to place educational and creative processes within Freire’s dialogical framework by challenging the authority of a single voice, singular meanings, singular creative roles and a hierarchical student-teacher relationship. For the Pretoria version of the work, very specific challenges and problems emerged in this regard. In particular, the time constraints and the rehearsal process that took place in two different locations (Pretoria and Durban) before integrating the work done in these locations into a cohesive whole, meant that it was not always possible to allow the students full creative freedom. However, they still contributed creatively to the staging and interpretation of existing material, and to shaping certain pieces of the finished text, as the collaboration evolved. Despite the unique circumstances and innate challenges, therefore, a similar pattern evolved— from an initial sense of distrust, through real fear at the pressure of the process, towards a greater sense of ensemble, and eventually into the finished work in which the dividing lines between the various participants and the various sections had disappeared. Early rehearsal sessions were thus mainly about trying to break down distrust and anxiety and the sense of students competing and having to prove themselves in some way. For us, it was trying to establish a sense of ensemble and creating a space in which students could share an artistic and educational journey. This was done through trust-games, collective breathing exercises, and exercises foregrounding emotional, vocal and physical attuning. The dynamics of the rehearsal process were different each time because the number of cast members who had been involved in previous versions varied. The presence of cast members who had participated in earlier versions often assisted in creating an ensemble feel – an interesting factor in terms of the collaborative creative process. We will outline some of the processes utilised in the Pretoria version that followed this initial starting point in relation to our four-tier frame.

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Fig.5-1 Students engaged in rehearsal exercises.6 Photographer: Luke O’Gorman

4. FrontLines and the creative process Collaborative creation by this multicultural cast required of students and teachers to form synergetic relationships as they constantly shifted roles from performer to director, choreographer to editor, learner to teacher, writer to musician. The images below illustrate some of the dynamics of the rehearsal process:

Fig. 5-2 A collaborative discussion session. Photographer: Luke O’Gorman

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Fig. 5-3 Shifting student-teacher dynamics and role responsibilities through student-driven directing and staging explorations. Photographer: Luke O’Gorman

We facilitated the students’ engagement with the thematic and aesthetic content of the production by making use of varied applied drama/theatre methodologies such as hot-seating, tableaux, letter-writing, creative writing, role-reversal, mantle of the expert, forum theatre, and body mapping.7 The process thus drove a reconfiguration of the original project with changes in text, context, music, movement and imagery. In creating new text, the language base was opened up to include some Afrikaans and seSotho (as well as English, isiZulu and even Hebrew, which were in the original version), and students created ways in which to engage visually and physically with the new material. All participants learned the music, and some students created original music. We recreated many of the dance pieces and reimagined many of the existing scenes to acknowledge the perspectives and contributions of the students. In some cases, we reworked and reworded the piece using new text. We continually encouraged students to respond to material in a variety of embodied and written modes to foster deeper levels of understanding and empathetic engagement with the human context. Students made meaning from material through discussion and improvisation, by kaleidoscopically

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piecing together content and by (re)interpreting the content and its presentation via repetition and revision from a variety of perspectives.

Fig. 5-4 Creating tableaux as a stimulus for generating and staging text. Photographer: Luke O’Gorman

While a detailed discussion of the final production product is outside the scope of this paper, we do want to offer a few examples from the text to illustrate some of the dramatic techniques and performance modes involved in relation to the key theoretical ideas. In keeping with the idea of presenting multiple voices and to contrast “smaller” narratives with dominant narratives in the (re)membering of historical events, we devised a narrative and visual collage mode of performance, which reinforced our idea of presenting a kaleidoscopic vision of global conflict narratives. The majority of the text for the production was sourced from letters. This kind of writing allows for insight into the unique individual perspective of ordinary people experiencing war. For example, this letter from a confused young man on his way to the Caprivi in the South African Border War: We had to catch the train to Cape Town from the station near Milpark. I told my mom she couldn’t come if she was going to cry like all those mothers on TV. . . . I remember thinking: this isn’t so bad, I don’t know what the fuss is about. It was quite pleasant. But the minute you stepped through the gate—what a rude awakening! They screamed and shouted and called us all sorts of names. Some of the things that stood out for me that

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day were: the stale sandwiches—which you had to eat—vrot8 bananas and coffee so sweet you could die from insulin overload, having to close the windows at Joburg station so that the enemy could not see in to count the number of troops, and that my mom didn’t cry. (Thompson 2006, 3)

Excerpts from eye witness testimony were used, establishing fragmented, achronological narratives; for example, shifting from the bombing of Hiroshima to the memories of a Holocaust survivor, as evidenced in the following two excerpts of testimony: I saw the flash of light in the radium laboratory. Not only my present but also my past and future were blown away in the blast. My beloved students burned together in a ball of fire right before my eyes. Then I collected my wife, whom I had asked to take care of the children after my death but who now had become a bucket-full of soft ashes, from the burnt-out ruins of our house. She had died in the kitchen. (Dr Takashi Nagai, in Keegan et al 2003,170) I don’t know. I don’t know if it was worth it. I don’t know if it was worth it. Because you know, when I was in the concentration camp, and even after, I said to myself, “You know, after the war, people will learn. They will know. They will—they will see. We will learn.” But did we really learn anything? I don’t know. I don’t know if we learned anything. Or if we ever will. I don’t know. (Helen K., in Greene & Kumar 2000, 250)

We also explored rapid shifts in narrative voice and points of view. In this first example, a bereaved mother who lost her 19 year old son in the Vietnam War reflects many years later on the experience: Dear Dick You were my first born. With your laughing eyes and mischievous grin, you stole my heart . . . Captured forever in my mind, is the image of your final hug, as you raced for the plane that would take you to Vietnam . . . I found out later—on June 6, 1968, you were on team with some South Vietnam soldiers, and your group was pinned down under fire. You were hit several times before you died. You were only 19 years old . . . It’s been a long time my son. I still miss you. I will always miss you. Sometimes I look at your friends that you went to school with, and I wonder what you would be like now; what my grandchildren would have been like. But you will never come back. You’re gone forever . . . I know I will never hold you in my arms again. But I will forever hold you close to my heart because you will always be my firstborn—my shining star. Love, Mom. (Carroll 2001, 440-441)

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An entirely different experience of a mother and son living through war is captured here in the voice of a young man going off to fight in the First World War believing in the nobility of the cause: Dear Mother and Father Well, Mother, this is the proudest day of my life. We leave for “over there” tonight. . . . I don’t want you to worry about me at all, for I am coming back and will be 100 percent better for having gone, for in the army one gains a knowledge of life, that is impossible to gain elsewhere. All I want of you all is to “Keep the home fires burning” and it will not be long until we come marching home our mission accomplished, and happy to have survived the hardships of war. When you speak of me in France, do not do so with a heavy heart, do it in a proud way, for it is indeed, a thing any parent should be proud of . . . Well, I will say good bye to all and “don’t worry.” Love and best wishes Your loving son Lester P.S. Put this number down someplace and don’t lose it. In case anything happens you will need it to get my insurance. “2.695.642” (Carroll 2001, 129)

The epistolatory and testimonial material was supported with poetry, movement, visual collage, soundscape, and dance. The image below, for example, contrasts the still speaker with the gestural tableaux of the moving performers in a section that juxtaposed the experience of an American soldier in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War, and Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib:9

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Fig. 5-5 A physicalized expression of the Abu Ghraib material. Photographer: Christina Reinecke

The project as a whole unfolds through episodic scenes and shifting viewing frames; for example, moving between embracing the fourth wall in one scene where the romance and disintegration of a young couple’s relationship is played out in a silent gestural performance with the audience as eavesdroppers, to engaging physically with the audience by utilizing the auditorium as an extension of the stage space to hand out poppies, marking the end of World War I, or using the catwalks in the theatre to create a sense of the audience being surrounded by Vietnam War protesters. Together, we thus created a verbal and visual “score” around existing and new content that integrated varying ideas about, and perspectives on, the content and it presentation. In doing so physicality, image and sound were placed on equal footing with the spoken word. Thus, we drew disparate pieces, multiple voices, numerous artists (and multiple technical challenges) together in a way that could facilitate ownership for all involved. As we continuously shifted between the roles of performer, director, choreographer and teacher, we worked to utilize dialogic and transformational methods of co-creation in building the work. In doing so, we actively engaged with our four-tier frame during the creative process.

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5. Learning through FrontLines via the four-tier frame What emerges out of the FrontLines exercise in the context of the fourtier frame is a twofold phenomenon of learning: first, a learning process happens to do with the content—an exposure to unknown knowledge/s, and engagement with the demands of social justice, humanity, social responsibility—which has to do with education in the broader sense of the word, as a way of engaging with the world outside of oneself in a global context. This connects to Freire’s notion of education as an agent for social transformation as well notions of deep learning in as much as the knowledge gained from the experience may become rooted “in our apparatus of understanding, in the embedded meanings that define us and that we use to define the world” (Tagg 2003, 70). We argue that the engagement with the multiple histories that form the content of the work intersects with the key notion of critical consciousness as discussed earlier in our four-tier frame. Freire suggests that critical consciousness firstly, requires an awareness of one’s ways of engagement with and one’s place in the world to encourage change and transform the world (Freire 2000, 21); secondly, that the process of becoming (critically) conscious includes both feeling and experiencing and involves reflection and action (praxis); and thirdly, that the engagement with smaller narratives can rupture the privileged dominant narratives in order to imagine and embody possibilities for the future. Thus, we would submit that in FrontLines we have employed the experiential potential of performance-making towards the purpose of critical consciousness-raising through which participants and audiences alike may be challenged to (re)negotiate their place in the world. This is perhaps made most apparent in the individual creative writing pieces that students were asked to develop in response to the prompt of making a map of their new world. We offer here two examples to convey a sense of how their responses reflect an engagement with themselves in context: When I make the map of my new world I will not erase the geographical lines that were traced I will embrace the history of each place And as I face the future—I will Understand the blood spilt Should be etched in the lines of my hand. (Govender, 2011)10

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The memories of the broken down ruins of the old world, will be replaced by structures of the future. Our forefathers and mothers will be remembered in history by their footprints before us. The time is now to print our own on the surface we call Earth. (Collopy, 2011)

Fundamentally, this is a process of experiential engagement with the world through embodied and empathetic engagement with the “smaller narratives” amidst the dominant narratives of war, to imagine a more humane world view of the self and the self’s relation to others. Some of the original work that students produced evidences this dynamic. Here, for example, a young black man reflects on his understanding of the 1976 Soweto Riots and their impact on his own life: Last night I heard a scream… last night I had a scream… for a dream that seemed so real it tends to turn my future dim… I’ve always been told to walk towards the light… but in this dream the horizon didn’t seem too bright… in fact in sight… was a darkness that grew both in width and height… ... there was light… but it came from burning homes and gunshots… bloody ties that gave birth to raging poems with tied knots… bullets flew across the skies like a swarm of hornets… the type that would sting even when not cornered… claimed the life of Hector Peterson though he did not taunt it… ... I had been brought back to june sixteen… to see where my education has been… black and white photos of grass not green… spiritual mind visions physical eyes have never seen… taken back to my youth’s horror scene… if it wasn’t for then… I’d be reciting in Afrikaans… most young blacks wouldn’t stand a chance… it would be hard for poetic tongues to dance… we’d merely just… take a glance…

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Manqele actually wrote this poem long before the FrontLines project, but it became a critical element in the work once he offered it after a rehearsal, in which the performers were asked to think about their responses to particular historical events. The above examples evidence the consciousness-raising that we believe is central to the aesthetic and philosophy of a Theatre of Humanity. In its staging, it was juxtaposed with the iconic image of Hector Pieterson being carried away, as illustrated below:

Fig. 5-6 Reality and performance—a mirror-image.12 Photographer: Christina Reinecke

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The second phenomenon that occurs is on the pedagogical plane, where there is a process of experiential and embodied learning that happens through the acts of collaboration in the context of applied drama/theatre methodologies. The learning occurs along a number of trajectories. Firstly, the experience of working with multiple directors: in each instant, students had to get used to working with director/s they do not know, who are not their teachers, and who have very different methods of working, but who have also evolved a method of working collaboratively with each other. This means that the usual director-actor relationship has to be re-negotiated and the hierarchical structure redesigned.13 The emergent form, of necessity, engages a dialogic process, based on communal problem solving, and a pattern of shared compromise in the act of making the work. Secondly, collaborating in the process of making: students learn by contributing and being asked to contribute creatively to what is put on stage, through improvisation and offering their own interpretations. They are thus co-creating knowledge and meaning in a dialogic process. This occurs not least because the collaborative process forces students to activate their own creative juices and their own philosophical connections to the material. Such a process connects to Dorothy Heathcote’s observation of education being about getting to grips with what students “already know, but don’t yet know that they know” (Wagner 1999, 13), which knowledge often surfaces as embodied knowledge or understanding. It also generates a clear sense of ownership of the work, as is evidenced by the responses gleaned from participants. Students engaged actively in the creation process—making, not just doing; indeed, there was some resistance to this in the sense of wanting to be told what to do in the more traditional model of theatre-making—so our approach takes time to get used to, but then creates a more textured and complex structure that facilitates deep learning. Thirdly, learning from each other: students have to work together, have to negotiate their differences in demographic, in learning background and styles, in language (particularly in Pretoria), in socio-economic background, in knowledge of the world, and in knowledge of the piece (people who had done it before were different from ones who were new to it). Interestingly, this is not entirely driven by us as co-directors; we create the rehearsal space and working process, in which the learning can take place, but it is not necessarily a conscious or explicit learning, it is implicit

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and happens on an experiential and embodied, rather than a cognitive plane, and the students themselves shape much of this. This is not about performance skills alone—although that is a by-product—but it generates learning in a life-skills context and can be, for some students, quite a radical learning process, making them rethink how they see people who are different from them. As the response from Student A demonstrates: On a personal note, working on Frontlines was at times amazing, at times frustrating, but mostly it was an experience in working within a different culture, with different people who I would never have worked with in Durban. As South Africans we like to think that we are all one, but in truth each corner of this country is filled with different languages, cultures and beliefs that make ensemble work that much harder. . . . I learned that “our” way of doing things doesn’t work for everyone, and that compromise is the key to ensemble work. Without that sense of togetherness, it is impossible to work well as a group. (Personal communication 2011)

This, too, is connected to the notions of learning as a dialogue, an engagement with praxis, and the facilitation of critical and deep learning. As Vygotsky points out, “What the child is able to do in collaboration today, he will be able to do independently tomorrow” (Vygotsky 1987, 211). Fourthly, learning by observing: a learning process takes place that derives from the modeling of action—the students watched us collaborating, making it up as we went along, challenging and refining and feeding off of each other’s creative energies. The process of watching is a learning one as well; we recognize that the process can be open. As the teacher—or the director/facilitator—one does not have to have all the answers. Often answers come from the participants.14 This process disrupts a hierarchical actor-director relationship, and for many this is very risk-intensive because it makes one vulnerable and holds one accountable for more than just learning one’s lines. Additionally, because the material is “true”, because it is personal, and because it is the words of actual people, the performance demands a level of integrity and respect in our handling of it and in its performance embodiment. We stressed always that we had a responsibility beyond entertainment or education in the piece; we had a responsibility to the people whose words they were speaking and whose stories they were telling. The final phenomenon we want to interrogate is connected to the notion of learning by doing: the actual process of making and performing in

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FrontLines constitutes a lived experience of embodied learning. According to Lawrence (2012, 7), people come into consciousness first through their bodies and “cognitive knowledge that appears to be wholly rational . . . often has affective and somatic [embodied] components” (Lawrence 2012, 8). This, for us, provides a bodily basis for Freire’s principle that was demonstrated via the physicality of multiple role-taking, dance in response to the content and the felt experience of envoicing and enacting perspectives on the content. The process of becoming (critically) conscious includes both feeling and experiencing and involves reflection and action (praxis) (Lawrence 2012, 9), which was done via reflective writing (as evidenced above), discussion and as performative responses. Our mode of performance involved the conscious foregrounding of the construction of perspective by interchangeable role-play (the race and gender of the performer did not always have to respond to the race and gender of the role, and performers took on many different roles during the course of the theatrical performance), through embodiment and envoicement of multiple perspectives in order to foreground the idea of a common humanity. The performance mode also allowed performers to situate their voices in relation to the material and to personalise the content, allowing more voices and layers of embodied interpretation to surface in the act of (re)membering and (re)telling. By telling and retelling the stories contained in the material, the rehearsal process made visible the underlying social, political, and personal dimensions of human interactions in conflict contexts. Witnessing a story being interpreted on stage allows for a distancing from the story or experience (Rogers 2005, 8) that may reposition the performer (and audience member), and potentially alters the perceived “reality” of the event (Jackson 2007, 141). This allows students to question dominant historical narratives, view stories from another point of view, or even multiple points of view, that offers the possibility critically to re-evaluate stories, events, or experiences (Salas 2000, 290; Park-Fuller 2005, 7). The act of embodying the “character” or role (the conflict survivor, the letter writer, the war veteran) places the student in a position in which they are engaged in a process of metaxis—being simultaneously both themselves and the other—that creates space in which learning happens. This kind of learning, through embodiment of the multiple and often contradictory voices of the FrontLines narrative, draws attention to the interplay between the stability (key themes/histories) in, and mutability of,

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narratives which in turn draws attention to narratives and experiences as unstable constructs—emphasising the construction of personal “reality” in which meaning(s) and understanding(s) can be (re)negotiated and (re)imagined to imagine change. The conscious foregrounding of the construction of multiple voices by interchangeable role-play fosters continuously shifting subject-positions where the subject (in this case the performer) (re)embodies, and is (re)constituted by/through, multiple and sometimes conflicting identities and perspectives. It is this paradoxical mode of engagement with a mediated lived experience of the subject that allows him/her to oscillate between identification and distancing/detachment. We posit that this oscillation creates an awareness, a critical consciousness, of the rupture between dominant values/histories and the smaller narratives surfacing amidst these histories and their respective value systems. This identification-detachment effect that comes from watching a story and/or oneself being performed and interpreted on stage embodies metaxis. We assert that the embodied act of performance and migration between subject positions (via continually shifting roles, modes of performance and perspectives) allows for performers to become empathetic witnesses as well as critical, engaged participants, which, we argue, humanizes the experience of war and conflict and facilitates deep learning. We posit that deep learning takes place in the intersection of these. By overtly re-assembling stories, experiences and perspectives through performance, a “discursive repositioning can take place” (ParkFuller 2005, 10), which for us amounts to critical consciousness, critical reflection and praxis. By reconfiguring the relationship between subject and object, observer and observed, the pedagogical experience is “potentially transformed into a dynamic event that can stimulate critical questioning. Who are we? What are we doing? Why are we doing it? In this sense, we stress the importance of experience via the vehicular medium of performance” (McKinnon & Lowry 2012, 49). Our pedagogical process is perhaps best defined not in terms of teaching discrete bodies of knowledge(s), but in terms of an active engagement with “transposable forms of thinking through action” (McKinnon & Lowry 2012, 50).

5. Conclusion The project thus aimed to teach students to see themselves in relation to a bigger world, and this is the broader educational goal in terms of building a Theatre of Humanity. We believe that it suggests a model for

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ethical directorial engagement with students in the making of theatre within the broader context of education. It is a pedagogical approach intended to foster critical thinking, pluralism, multi-vision, and experimentation in the learning context. Furthermore, students had to find their own cultural agency in accordance with Freire’s vision; they had to work experientially and through empathy (applied drama/theatre); they had to work collaboratively (collaborative creation); and they had to work in a physically engaged way (embodied knowledge). Thus, we can see how the four-tier frame connects to our performance-making process and how it can be utilized in creating future learning-though-performance projects. Perhaps the best testament to the project is to be found in the response of some of the students involved: Having seen the first three productions, I thought I knew the emotional toll the stories would take on me. But until it’s you onstage reading out the names of the dead, speaking about the places that are now relics of the most heinous atrocities and then experiencing the emotions that poured through the hearts of soldiers, their friends and family, you cannot imagine the impact it has on you as a performer and as a human being. Perhaps the most important lesson I could hope to take from this experience is that the race of humans is incapable of learning from our past. We celebrate the anniversaries of innumerable soldiers’ deaths from wars fought years ago, but continue to destroy human life as if it is no more important than an empty soda can. It is through the stories in FrontLines that we learn (hopefully) that over the entirety of our history on this planet, war has accomplished nothing. Empires fall, dictators die and bullets rust in the decay and lifelessness of an old battlefield. There is no hope when tanks roll into the streets of Tripoli, or when mines go off in a forgotten stretch of land in an African country that the world seems to have forgotten. There is no hope when segregation exists, when apartheid is practiced and when genocide is a word known to both adult and child. This is the reality of our world. Our new Frontline is not one to be defended with guns and warships, but with respect and tolerance. It is easy to hold a gun, but it is far harder to hold a hand, especially that of an enemy. . . . It is perhaps interesting to note that the solutions to war and conflict and genocide and hate can be found not in FrontLines itself, but rather in the process that allows the production to exist. Unity, compromise, respect and commitment are as equally indispensible to this process, as they are to any real peace in the world. The lesson then is not to learn from the stories of war and hatred, but rather from the vehicle that delivers these stories to the audience: theatre. (Student A, Personal communication 2011)

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and For me the Frontlines experience was always something that I had observed from a distance and wasn't sure if I liked but since being involved in it I felt that I have truly grown, not only as a performer but as a person too. It's one of those things that, yes it does push you to become a better performer through means of the variety of styles that it encapsulates but at the same time the content that you are dealing with really gets you to question your views on humanity and as to whether or not humanity will ever learn from its past. After the Holocaust they said that it would never happen again, yet atrocities like Rwanda, Bosnia and Cambodia still happened. It gets you thinking about what us humans are really capable of and whether the animals that we hunt and kill are actually more civilized than the humans that walk and talk. The experience will be something that I will always remember for everything that it taught me. (Student B, Personal communication 2011)

Through engaging with material like FrontLines, the students are steered into processes of learning that operate, often covertly, as they are asked to engage contexts beyond their own in an understanding of the global narrative in which they play their own roles. It is our contention that the FrontLines project engendered an empathetic engagement with the human condition that transformed students’ understanding of effects of conflict, and assisted them in imagining possibilities for a more humane future. Through empathetic engagement with narratives beyond our own contex—and learning to traverse the spaces between our relative experiences of the world—we may find points of connection, thus facilitating a more profound understanding of the “other”, a critical endeavour if we are to address the wounds of a fractured world. By doing so we may begin to sing our own songs of freedom—literally, figuratively, and metaphorically—as an educational imperative; freedom in learning, in creation, in understanding, in imagining—all the aspects of theatre and learning that we hope to engender in our work as a voyage of discovery towards a Theatre of Humanity.

References Ackroyd, Judith. 2000. “Applied theatre: problems and possibilities.” Applied Theatre Researcher,1.(2000) Accessed January 16, 2012. Available from: http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/81796/Ackroyd. pdf.

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Biggs, John. “What the Student Does: teaching for enhanced learning.” Higher Education Research & Development 18. 1. (1999), 57-75. Accessed January 12, 2013. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0729436990180105. Boal, Augusto. Games for actors and non-actors. (2nd Edition). New York: Routledge, 1992. —. The rainbow of desire: the Boal method of theatre and therapy. London: Routledge, 1995. Bogart, Anne. and then you act: making art in an unpredictable world. New York/ London: Routledge, 2007. Bolton, Gavin. “Changes in Thinking About Drama in Education.” Theory into Practice 24. 3. (1985), 151-157. Carroll, Andrew, ed. War Letters. New York: Scribner, 2001. Coetzee, Marié-Heleen. “(Re)Storying the self: exploring identity through performative inquiry.” South African Theatre Journal 23 (2009), 94114. Collopy, Brett. The map of my new world. Unpublished excerpt, FrontLines, 2011. Damasio, Antonio. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. New York: Avon Books, 1994. Entwhistle, Noel. Teaching for Understanding at University: Deep Approaches and Distinctive Ways of Thinking Universities into the 21st Century. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Freire, Paulo. The politics of education: culture, power, and liberation. Translated by D. Macedo. Westport: Bergin & Garvey, 1985. —. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Continuum, 2000. Geene, Joshua M. and Shiva Kumar, eds. Witness: Voices from the Holocaust. New York: Touchstone, 2000. Govender, Kamini. 2011. The map of my new world. Unpublished excerpt, FrontLines, 2011. Green, Jill. “Somatic Knowledge: The Body as Content and Methodology in Dance Education.” Journal of Dance Education 2. 4. (2002), 114118. hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York/ London: Routledge, 1994. Horsfall, Debbie and Angie Titchen. “Telling participants' stories.” In Being critical and creative in qualitative research, edited by Joy Higgs et al. 88–96. Sydney: Hampden Press, 2007.

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Ignatow, Gabriel. “Theories of Embodied Knowledge: New Directions for Cultural and Cognitive Sociology?” Journal for the theory of social behavior 37. 2. (2007), 115-135. Jackson, Anthony. Theatre, Education and the Making of Meaning: Art or Instrument? Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. John-Steiner, Vera. Creative Collaboration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Kindle Edition. Keegan, John, Phillip Knightley, Sarah Jackson and Annabel Meurillo. The Eye of War. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003. Küpers, Wendelin. “Phenomenology of embodied implicit and narrative knowing.” Journal of Knowledge Management 9. 6. (2005), 114–133. Lawrence, Randee L. “Intuitive knowing and embodies consciousness.” New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 2012. 5-13. Available from: Doi: 10.1002/ace20011 Manqele, Nhlakanipho. Screams before my time. Unpublished poem, FrontLines, 2009. Martinez, Michael. E. “What is metacognition?” Phi Delta Kappan 87. 9. (2006), 696-699. Accessed January 10, 2012. Available from: http://www.gse.uci.edu/person/martinez_m/docs/mmartinez_metacogn ition.pdf. Maxon, Eron. “Translating Freire: Laying the Foundations for Dialogue in the Applied Drama Workshop.” 2010. Accessed November 10, 2012. Available form: http://www.scribd.com/doc/40359199/TranslatingFreire-Laying-the-Foundations-for-Dialogue-in-the-Applied-DramaWorkshop. McKinnon, Jocelyn and Sean Lowry. “Embracing Failure through Performative Pedagogy: A report from the margins.” Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts 17. 1. (2012), 47-50. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge, 1962. Merriam, Sharan B. Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2009. Meskin, Tamar and Tanya van der Walt. “FrontLines: Cartographies in/as/of action.” Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Art and Social Justice International Conference, March 21–24. Durban: Faculty of Arts & Design & Art for Humanity, Durban University of Technology, (2010a), 171-196. Meskin, Tamar and van der Walt, Tanya. “Photography, archaeology, and representation: chronicles of conflict and the architecture of action.” South African Theatre Journal 24. 1. (2010b), 125-154.

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Munro, Marth and Coetzee, Marié-Heleen. “Mind the Gap: Beyond Whole-brain learning.” South African Theatre Journal 21 (2007), 92108. Nicholson, Helen. Applied drama: the gift of theatre. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. —. Theatre & education. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. —. Theatre, Education and Performance. Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. O’Toole, John, MadonnaStinson and Tina Moore. Drama and curriculum: a giant at the door. Springer E-book. Accessed January 17, 2013. Available from: doi: 10.1007/978-1-4020-9370-8. Park-Fuller, Linda M. “Beyond Role Play: Playback Theatre And Conflict Transformation.” 2005. Accessed January 17, 2013. Available from” http://www.playbacktheatre.org/wpcontent/uploads/2010/04/LindaPark-Fuller-Beyond-Role-PlayPlayback-Theatre-and-Confl.pdf Pollock, D, ed. Remembering: oral history performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Rogers, Tracie. “‘De Day We See Wind in Grenada’: Community Dialogue & Healing through Playback Theatre.” 2005. Accessed January 17, 2013. Available from: http://portal.unesco.org/culture/es/files/30186/11415087821TracieRog ers.pdf/Tracie%2Brogers.pdf Salas, Jo. “Playback Theatre: A Frame for Healing.” In Current Approaches in Drama Therapy (2nd Edition), edited by David Read Johnson and Renee, 445-460. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 2009. Shaul, Richard. 2000. Foreword. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 1970. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Continuum. Tagg, John. The Learning Paradigm College. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Company, 2003. Thompson. J.H. An Unpopular War: From afkak to bosbefok. Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2006. Vygotsky, Lev S. 1978. “Interaction between learning and development.” Translated by M. Lopez-Morillas. In Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes, edited by Michael Cole, Vera JohnSteiner, Sylvia Scribner and Ellen Souberman, 79-91. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —. “Thinking and speech.” Translated by N.Minick. In The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky: Vol. 1. Problems of general psychology,

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edited by R. W. Rieber & A. S. Carton, 39-285. New York: Plenum Press, 1987. Wagner, Betty. Dorothy Heathcote: Drama as a Learning Medium. London: Greenwood Press, 1980. “What does Praxis mean.” Accessed January 8, 2012. Available from: http://www.webanswers.com/arts-humanities/what-does-praxis-meande854f.

CHAPTER SIX THEATRE AS AN ARTISTIC INTERVENTION IN POST-TRAUMA SITUATIONS: HUSH: A VERBATIM PLAY ABOUT FAMILY VIOLENCE HILARY HALBA AND STUART YOUNG

How events are remembered, written, archived, staged, and performed helps determine the history they become. (Carol Martin 2006, 9)

In 2008-9, as part of what has become a larger, ongoing investigation into strategies of making documentary or, more specifically, verbatim theatre, we undertook a practice-led research project on the subject of family violence and the trauma associated with that violence. Working with a group of theatre-makers and researchers from the University of Otago and the wider Dunedin professional theatre community, we duly created the play Hush: A Verbatim Play About Family Violence, which premièred in Dunedin in March 2009. In 2010-11, through collaboration with Talking House, a community theatre company, and thanks to a grant from Creative New Zealand, the government’s national arts development and funding agency, the production was revived and toured to other parts of New Zealand, before returning to Dunedin for a second season.1 In choosing the subject for this project, we were mindful that conspicuous sources of inspiration for modern British documentary theatre, for example, have been momentous international political issues, such as terrorism and the war in Iraq, and local traumatic stories of ethnic or racial violence and miscarriages of justice. Hush examines an issue that has assumed great prominence in New Zealand, where, in the 2000s, family violence reached almost epidemic proportions. For instance, the New Zealand Violence Against Women Study, published in the New

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Zealand Medical Journal in 2004, found that one in three women have been victims of intimate partner violence (Fanslow and Robinson 2004).2 Meanwhile, cases of child abuse have featured routinely and sensationally in the media, most famously the deaths of James Whakaruru (1999), the Kahui twins (2006), and Nia Glassie (2007). According to Raema Merchant (2010), such cases—more likely to be younger children and to have been murdered at the hands of their abusers—become the “faces” of child abuse in this country (117), although they represent a small percentage of actual instances of child abuse in New Zealand (116); scores of other cases go virtually unreported. In exploring the topic of family violence we were concerned to counter the discourse fomented by such selective and sensationalist reportage, whose tenor and characterization of those involved serve to distance many viewers and readers from the issue. his is particularly because a family’s ethnicity often determines the level of media interest: MƗori3 child abuse is over-reported in the media by forty-two per cent (Merchant 120). We wished to present family violence as potentially, if not actually, much closer to us all and as more nuanced than the extreme cases might suggest. So, Hush tells stories of family violence. Apart from a letter that we received from a survivor of family violence, the material for Hush derives entirely from face-to-face conversations or interviews conducted and filmed by members of the company. Featuring 16 participants (interviewees), Hush is built around the testimonies of five principal “characters”, each a victim, a perpetrator, or victim-turned-perpetrator. Their stories weave throughout the play and so are juxtaposed with one another, while interspersed are observations by representatives from agencies and professions that deal with the issue and those directly affected by it, including police, psychotherapists, a general practitioner, a prison nurse, and a family court co-ordinator, among others. In making Hush, we were conscious of a range of ethical and moral considerations, and the project was carried out according to the University of Otago’s strict ethical protocols. We took care to interview only people who were psychologically and emotionally safe in relation to their experience of family violence—people who were referred to us by professionals and agencies and who we knew had ready access to specialist support. Nevertheless, we were mindful that participants risked a problematic re-experiencing of trauma. As Amanda Stuart Fisher remarks, “For the survivors of trauma… the human desire to provide an account of oneself can become a profoundly troubling process” (2009, 108). Confirming that insight, Karen Brounéus’s empirical research on the post-

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genocide reconciliation process in Rwanda reveals that, contrary to common assumptions and expectations, the exercise of truth-telling in the Central African country served to reinscribe victims’ trauma rather than to heal psychological wounds (2008; 2010). Therefore, we could not be complacent about the possible consequences of our interventions in people’s experiences and stories. Our stated agenda was to honour the interviewees and their testimony. We sought to avoid the sort of scenario that Norman Denzin cautions against, in which “Interviews objectify individuals” and turn “transgressive experience into a consumable commodity” (2001, 28). Moreover, we were concerned to create a safe environment for such traumatic testimony to be re-presented and heard. Needless to say, our appreciation of these issues evolved during the course of the project. Our most vulnerable participants—those who had experienced family violence directly as perpetrators and/or victims—said that they shared their stories largely because they wanted to help others learn from their experience, to remove a kind of veil of silence from the topic, and, therefore, to let others trapped in such violence know that they are not alone. Our dramatic and theatrical interventions took two principal forms: the first was the dramaturgical task of creating the play itself; the second was its particular theatrical expression. The process of selecting, editing, and arranging such material is, of course, a complex dramaturgical exercise, one which, as Carol Martin notes, “relies on the formal qualities of fiction as much as on archival evidence” (2006, 11). As we embarked on the task of selecting and editing material from those recorded conversations, we were mindful not only of such conventional playwriting principles as identifying strong narrative arcs, breaking the routine, and positioning characters and stories in relation to one another in order to highlight points of both commonality and contrast. Our dramaturg Fiona Graham asked us to identify those pieces of testimony that had stuck with us as well as particularly memorable verbal and gestural details accompanying the telling of those stories. Consequently, from the outset of the writing process we were mindful of performative features such as physical action and rhythm, not simply the oral archive. In weaving together the different strands of the play, we worked not with transcribed text, as we had anticipated, but, like a film-maker, in an edit suite, where we experimented with the sequence and juxtaposition of excerpts.

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Our first draft of the play did not work at all: we re-arranged elements of the testimonies and their narratives in a way that presumptuously added an inappropriate layer of interpretation and theatricality. In its explicit identification of victims and perpetrators, our structuring of that draft revealed an unfortunate element of judgement, which threatened to jeopardise our aim of presenting this material on family violence in a way that avoided the simplistic, subjective, and sensationalised reporting of media accounts. For instance, in that first version, we initially identified one of our interviewees, Doug, as a perpetrator and only subsequently traced the abuse he had suffered as a child. Our (re)ordering of the elements of Doug’s story failed to honour the trauma he had experienced, and, in Denzin’s terms, “objectified” him inappropriately. Stef Craps and Michael Rothberg remark that “both victims and perpetrators can suffer trauma” (Craps 2013, 15), hence the experience of trauma “lies beyond guilt and innocence or good and evil” (Rothberg 2009, 90). We duly started “writing” all over again, registering that we needed to respect the way in which our participants had told us their stories, because, as Laura W. Black observes, stories are important ways in which people “construct and manifest aspects of their identities” (2008, 98). Accordingly, Hush now tells Doug’s story largely as he did: his journey from childhood victim of abuse from an alcoholic father to adult abuser of his partner and children, to successful graduate of an Anger Management programme.

Fig. 6-1 Danny Still as Doug, in Hush, Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre, Auckland, November 2010. Photographer: Martyn Roberts.

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Notwithstanding the intention to honour our participants and their stories, as the re-editing of Doug’s story illustrates, we readily acknowledge that our role was highly instrumental throughout the various stages of the project. In re-telling Doug’s and others’ stories, we do not try to suggest, as some documentary theatre does, that this testimony comes directly and unmediated from the sources’ mouths. The framing of the interviews (including their location, the contributions of the interlocutors/interviewers, and the very presence of the camera), the subsequent selection and editing of those testimonies, and their reproduction in performance all bore our imprint. At each stage of such a process “transformations, interpretations, and inevitable distortions occur” (Martin 2006, 10). However, although poststructuralist thought impresses upon us that “social reality” and “reporting on social reality” is “constructed,” documentary and verbatim theatre “does not necessarily display its quotation marks” (Martin 2006, 14). By camouflaging their interventions in the representation of testimony, theatre-makers can create an illusion of transparency and seem merely to “record” information, implicitly pretending to present not a version but the version of what occurred (Paget 1990, 39). Such plays become, in Stephen Bottoms’s words, “disingenuous exercises in the presentation of ‘truth’” (2006, 57-8). Instead, we subscribe to the reporting approach that Derek Paget advocates, whereby documentary makers acknowledge their contribution and subjectivity (1990, 39). Like other documentary and verbatim theatremakers who invite audiences “to examine the way documentary functions” (Martin 2006, 12), we were concerned to make visible in Hush the “invisible” writing/editing and rehearsal strategies that produced the play and its performance; that is, we foreground elements of the construction of the drama and the devices of documentation and representation. Thereby, we recognise the necessary partiality of documentary theatre’s efforts to uncover and reproduce “truth”. Our dramaturgy also rejects easy narrative closure in favour of an unsettled ambivalence. One way in which we register for audiences our place in the mode of (re)production in Hush is through the inclusion of instances when interviewees fortuitously point both to an interlocutor/interviewer’s presence and also to the theatre-makers’ subsequent mediation of the interview material. For instance, we include several occasions when Doug addresses an interviewer personally. Meanwhile, a psychotherapist also draws attention to the frame of the interview, and he comments on the theatre-makers’ disposition to their task: The whole thing got me—; is the camera running? Um... what, what I got

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Fig. 6-2 Simon O’Connor as Psychotherapist, in Hush, Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre, Auckland, November 2010. Photographer: Martyn Roberts.

As we have indicated, a significant dramaturgical consideration in the composition of Hush was the extra- and non-verbal “score”, or signifiers, that accompanied the actual testimony. Taking her cue from standard documentary theatre practice, Martin identifies such elements—“glances, gestures, body language,” not to mention vocal inflexions and intonation—as being “outside the archive” and therefore “created by the actors and directors” (2006, 11). However, in our practice those elements, which are all part of the digital record, belong very much within the archive. This has helped to determine the particular technique for reenacting the recorded testimony in performance, a technique that also serves to make transparent the processes of mediation and representation. In re-presenting the interviews, the actors use MP3 players, or iPods. With the edited testimonies of participants playing in their ears, the actors repeat not only the words of their subjects, but, as closely as possible, replicate their accents, inflexions, and hesitations. We adopted this device from the practice of Alecky Blythe and her London-based company Recorded

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Delivery, who have used earphones in their London productions, including Come Out Eli (2003), Cruising (2006), and The Girlfriend Experience (2008). (The Australian company Urban Theatre Projects also used earphones in their production Stories of Love and Hate (2009), about the 2005 Cronulla Riots in Sydney.) However, whereas in Blythe’s productions, the cast listens to the one recording of the whole script, our actors hear their own edited lines on individual players, which gives actors greater autonomy over their performance and provides a more nuanced theatrical rhythm. We have also complicated Blythe’s method in another way: having recorded all of the interviews on camera, we require the actors to emulate as precisely as possible each gesture and involuntary movement accompanying the words. Here we draw on the work of the American actor and documentary theatre-maker Anna Deavere Smith, known particularly for her virtuosic performances of her solo plays Fires in the Mirror (1992) and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1994). In those instances where she had filmed interviews, Deavere Smith carefully studied the videos in order to impersonate the interviewees physically as accurately as possible in performance. In order to approach the task of reproducing the testimony freshly each night, throughout the season our actors continue to rehearse daily with the edited interviews. This prevents repetition of the previous night’s performance, with all its slight imperfections and improvisations, instead bringing the actors back to the immediacy of the original testimony. This technique of closely replicating both the verbal and physical scores of the participants combines a kind of Brechtian distancing with a heightened form of realism. Because the MP3 players are clearly visible to the audience, they draw attention to the process of mediation, and therefore, “expos[e their] own means of production” (Denzin 2001, 33), reminding audiences of the “gap” between actor and character that Deavere Smith talks about (quoted in Kondo 2000, 96), and consequently presenting the actor “as both character and performer” (States 1985, 119). Meanwhile, the discipline of strict imitation makes the actor a technician; it prevents the actor from colouring her performance with embellishments and from interpreting the role and creating it expressively as traditionally an actor might. Instead, she seeks the “wondrous ‘doubling’” that Richard Schechner found in Deavere Smith’s work (1993, 64). Consequently, this reflexive, de-familiarising technique highlights the

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inherently complex nature of representation in documentary and verbatim theatre, whereby the original speaker is simultaneously a presence and an absence.

Fig. 6-3 Erica Newlands as Amanda (left) and Nadya Shaw Bennett as Amanda’s daughter Jessie, with an MP3 player visible, in Hush, Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre, Auckland, November 2010. Photographer: Martyn Roberts.

This approach to performance, which paradoxically effaces the performer while foregrounding the process of mediation, proved particularly appropriate for the re-presentation of traumatic testimony in Hush. Conventional Western acting practice encourages a close, empathetic identification with character by actor. An approach to acting that is not predicated upon the actor’s identifying with the character, and therefore from her potentially subsuming the character within her persona, ensures that the alterity of the trauma survivor is respected and preserved. Carolyn Dean and Dominick LaCapra, among other trauma theorists, argue that the facilitation of a “disingenuous empathy” or “incorporative… identification” with victims of such trauma as the Holocaust (Dean 2004, 9; LaCapra 2004, 76), “obliterat[es] boundaries between self and other…—a reductio ad absurdum of empathetic logic in which the imagination absorbs and thus annihilates what it contemplates” (Dean 2004, 9-10). Instead of an “incorporative” empathy, our performance

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technique involves an “unsettled” or “heteropathic” empathy, which respects boundaries between self and other (LaCapra 2001, 41; LaCapra 2004, 76), something that has implications not only for the actor“character” relationship, but, as is discussed below, also for the audience’s reception of the testimony. In relation to our experiments with the acting in Hush, during the initial rehearsals we had an instructive, cautionary experience, involving the actor (Cindy Diver), who played Rose, the figure with probably the most traumatic story of abuse in the play. Rose had been physically, sexually, and psychologically abused over many years by her husband, and for a long time remained trapped in the relationship. As is the case with others who have experienced abuse and trauma, Rose recounted much of her story in a fairly matter-of-fact way; she was relatively inexpressive emotionally. Moreover, as the interview progressed, she spoke in a slightly fatigued manner, slumped in her chair. With the best of intentions, born of a strong sense of obligation to her subject, Cindy’s actorly instincts duly asserted themselves. Of course, at times and in different ways during the performance of Hush, the theatrical re-presentation of our subjects’ testimony requires a degree of dilation—verbal articulation or projection and clear physical definition—in order to ensure that audiences can discern words and perceive actions. However, as if to compensate for a manner of delivery that went against received theatrical convention and indeed all her training, which requires a search for an assumed subtext, in rehearsal Cindy sought to express the emotions that she assumed to underlie Rose’s testimony. Accordingly, she began to “emote” and to inject vocal and physical energy into the lassitude. Consequently, Cindy, in LaCapra’s terms, “incorporated” Rose within her actorly self. Ironically, this amplification proved less compelling than the understated, measured manner of the original delivery. Adhering to the precise replication of the testimony is vital not only in terms of respecting the sufferer, the subject. It also seems to ensure the wellbeing of the actor. The actors who performed in Hush reported a range of responses to repeating the traumatic testimonies. Chief amongst these was their acknowledgement of the sheer technical discipline and virtuosity necessary to reproduce so specifically the gestural score of each interview whilst simultaneously emulating each word, inflection, and verbal stumble. Such precision required focussed attention to every detail of body and voice to the extent that several actors characterised the process as a “purely mechanical exercise” which discouraged empathy and protected

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them from internalising the emotions and trauma expressed in the testimony. Nevertheless, extended immersion in Hush’s stories of abuse— in the stages of research and editing/writing as well as in rehearsals and performances—inevitably affected members of the company, some of whom had undergone analogous experiences. At least one cast member reported feeling emotionally exhausted after each performance, and inevitably, the actors carried some of those characters with them beyond those performances. In order to ameliorate actor trauma, rehearsal room exercises focussed upon complicité—perhaps paradoxical in a play where hardly any actor interaction occurs—and this strategy generated a strong, supportive ensemble. Actor safety was monitored throughout the project, with post-performance forums providing an opportunity for actors to step out of role and discuss the process. Meanwhile, the distancing created by the performance technique also affected the audience’s reception of the testimony. The refusal to identify emotionally with—to “absorb” or “incorporate”—the experiences described in Hush worked to prevent the sort of “pornographic” representation of trauma, decried by some commentators in Trauma Studies, that “effectively obliterat[es] the actual sufferer” (Dean 2004, 51; Taylor 2012, 203). At one post-performance forum, a spectator—an actor and director—compared the experience of watching Hush with viewing a television news magazine programme like 20/20. In contrast to the discomfort she feels when an invasive camera hones in on, and takes perverse, voyeuristic pleasure in, its subject’s anguish, with Hush she felt completely confident that our participants were safe and not being exploited or put in danger of being re-traumatised, and so she felt utterly safe too as she watched. Notwithstanding this particular response, as Stuart Fisher remarks, to hear such testimony “is, to some degree, to enter in to the traumatic in a way that is immediate and unsettling” (2009, 114). Therefore, we had a counsellor present at each performance of Hush in case anyone in the audience became distressed or wished to talk to someone suitably qualified. Meanwhile, the forums after each show (co-facilitated by the counsellor) offered audiences the opportunity to speak to any issues raised by the play. That watching a performance of the play proved illuminating and cathartic for some audience members is illustrated by a letter that we received by email:

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WOW—what a gift Hush is to me. It was so powerful seeing myself reflected in all of those people… While emotional it was also good to notice I could look at it more objectively now… and now I am free from all of that influence I feel more empowered to tell my story—maybe it might help another woman to do something to make a difference for herself… The panel afterwards for me was very thoughtful and thought provoking. The de-briefing idea I imagine helps the cast as well as the audience to reflect on what they had just been involved in. A very powerful way of telling the stories… It took a lot of courage to say something personal last night… These are real people we are talking about and there are people in your audiences who have “been there” or ARE there now! (Campbell, unpublished email)

The North American writer Thomas King remarks, “stories [are] medicine,… a story told one way [can] cure, … the same story told another way [can] injure” (2008, 14). As we have indicated, we were mindful that not only audiences, but above all participants in our project, risked a problematic re-experiencing of trauma or further psychological damage. In fact, involvement in the Hush project represented great kudos for the participants. Responses from some suggest that watching a performance of the play—the theatrical re-telling of their stories—was, in psycho-therapeutic terms, a deeply affirming, even empowering experience; it conferred self-esteem and self-confidence. A letter from one participant testifies to this very movingly; she was surprised to find that, re-articulated in a space where it acquired new gravitas, her story was listened to with respect: One of the stories was mine. I noticed that no one laughed, no one said, “that’s not true!!” no one walked out, they just listened, watched, not knowing it was me, even so, they saw me, I saw me. I saw me being believed. I saw me in my deepest vulnerability, in how it was for me to tell others what happened to me… I saw how uncomfortable, how moved to silence people were by my experience… This production gave me a freedom, a voice, a safe place to tell my story, my real life experience and how it was for me, its effects, hurts and how I am healed and am healing. Being able to have my life make a difference to others’ lives. To help people understand what family violence involves, the pain, the issues, how it is to have someone you love be violent and abusive at increasing levels, till there is no love anymore… During the entire process of this production, my story was believed, honoured and respected. I was dealt with sensitively and with compassion… This made the entire experience a positive step in faith in my healing. I told my story not just for myself, but for the women I know

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who have suffered abuse and violence as children and/or adults, and those who remain in captivity of silence waiting to be released from their bondage… (“Rose” unpublished letter)

Fig. 6-4 Cindy Diver as Rose, in Hush, Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre, Auckland, November 2010. Photographer: Martyn Roberts.

King says, I tell [stories] to myself, to my friends, sometimes to strangers… Because they are a particular kind of story. Saving stories, if you will. Stories that help keep me alive. (2008, 25)

Or, as the poet Antjie Krog puts it, reflecting on the project of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, “We tell stories not to die of life” (1998, 64). In seeking to break the silence on family violence both at a personal level and in a wider social and political context in New Zealand, the project of creating Hush focussed not only on the constituent stories themselves, but also on fashioning dramatic and performance strategies that were appropriately complementary in representing them. The efficacy of those strategies was confirmed by responses to Hush from both participants and spectators, thereby attesting to Yael Farber’s claim that “The essential component of testimonial

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theatre lies in its capacity for healing through speaking, hearing and being heard” (quoted in Stuart Fisher 2009, 113).

References Black, Laura W. “Deliberation, Storytelling, and Dialogic Moments.” Communication Theory 18 (2008), 93–116. Bottoms, Stephen. “Putting the Document into Documentary.” TDR: The Drama Review 50 (2006), 56-68. Brounéus, Karen. “The Trauma of Truth Telling: Effects of Witnessing in the Rwandan Gacaca Courts on Psychological Health.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 54. 3. (2010), 408-437. —. 2008. “Truth-Telling as Talking Cure? Insecurity and Retraumatization in the Rwandan Gacaca Courts.” Security Dialogue 39. 1. (2008), 5576. Campbell, Jenny. Email message to Stuart Young, February 19, 2011. Craps, Stef. Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma out of Bounds. Houndmills, Hamps: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Dean, Carolyn. The Fragility of Empathy after the Holocaust. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2004. Denzin, Norman K. “The Reflexive Interview and a Performative Social Science.” Qualitative Research 1 (1)(2001), 23-46. Fanslow, Janet and Elizabeth Robinson. “Violence Against Women in New Zealand: Prevalence and Health Consequences.” New Zealand Medical Journal 117. 1206. (2004): Accessed December 18, 2012. Availbe from: http://journal.nzma.org.nz/journal/117-1206/1173/. Halba, Hilary and Stuart Young et al. Hush: A Verbatim Play About Family Violence. Unpublished play script, 2009, last modified October 2011. Microsoft word file. King, Thomas. “The Art of Indigenous Knowledge: A Million Porcupines Crying in the Dark.” In Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research, edited by Gary J. Knowles and Ardra L. Cole, 13-26. California/ London/ New Delhi/ Singapore: Sage Publications, 2008. Kondo, Dorinne. “(Re)visions of Race: Contemporary Race Theory and the Cultural Politics of Racial Crossover in Documentary Theater.” Theatre Journal 52. 1. (2000), 81-107. Krog, Antjie. Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998. LaCapra, Dominick. History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2004.

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LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Leask, Anna. “NZ’s ‘Shocking’ Child Abuse Record.” New Zealand Herald, December 10, 2011. Accessed December 11, 2012. Available from: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=1077 2163 Martin, Carol. “Bodies of Evidence.” TDR: The Drama Review 50. 3. (2006), 8-15. Merchant, Raema. “Who are Abusing our Children? An Exploratory Study on Reflection on Child Abuse by Media Commentators.” Unpublished master's thesis, Massey University, 2010. Paget, Derek. True Stories? Documentary Drama on Radio, Screen and Stage. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990. “Rose” (participant in Hush). Unpublished letter to the authors, 2009. Rothberg, Michael. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. Schechner, Richard. “Anna Deavere Smith: Acting as Incorporation.” TDR: The Drama Review 37. 4. (1993), 63-64. Smith, Anna Deavere. Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and Other Identities. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1997. –––. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 on the Road: A Search for American Character. New York: Anchor Books, 1994. Stuart Fisher, Amanda. “Bearing Witness: The Position of Theatre Makers in the Telling of Trauma.” In The Applied Theatre Reader, edited by Tim Prentki and Sheila Preston, 108-115. Abingdon, Oxon, and New York: Routledge, 2009. States, Bert O. Great Reckonings in Little Rooms. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Taylor, Barbara. “Historical Subjectivity.” In History and Psyche: Culture, Psychoanalysis, and the Past. Edited by Sally Alexander and Barbara Taylor, 195-210. Houndmills, Hamps: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

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A Verbatim Play about Family Violence

All the words in this text are taken from testimonies of real people who have encountered family violence.

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HUSH This play was created, from the testimonies of people who have encountered family violence, by Hilary Halba, Stuart Young, Cindy Diver, Erica Newlands, Simon O’Connor, and Danny Still, with guidance from dramaturg Fiona Graham. All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be made to Hilary Halba or Stuart Young, Theatre Studies programme, University of Otago, P. O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand. © 2009 Hilary Halba, Stuart Young and others

Characters Sarah Family Court Co-ordinator GP Policewoman Policeman Rose LE

Gave her testimony through a letter. Read at the beginning and end of the play. Mother of two. General Practitioner Regional Family Violence Coordinator Regional Family Violence Coordinator Victim of abuse Agency worker and victim of abuse

Doug Amanda Psychotherapist Prison Nurse Jessie

Victim and perpetrator of abuse Mother of an abusive daughter

Neighbour

Neighbour to a victim and a perpetrator of abuse

Agency worker Counsellor Age Concern Social Worker Lawyer for Child

Abusive towards her mother

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Hush was first performed at the Mary Hopewell Theatre, Dunedin, 12-22 March 2009. It was performed at the Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre, Auckland, 22-27 November 2010, and then toured Otago, Southland and South Canterbury, including a season at the Fortune, Dunedin, 14 February—5 March 2011. The cast was as follows: Family Court Co-ordinator GP Policewoman Policeman Rose LE Doug Amanda Psychotherapist Prison Nurse Jessie

Danny Still Hilary Halba Erica Newlands Simon O’Connor Cindy Diver (Mary Hopewell and Auckland), Karen Elliot (Southern tour) Hilary Halba Danny Still Erica Newlands Simon O’Connor Nadya Shaw Bennett Nadya Shaw Bennett

Neighbour Agency worker JR

Simon O’Connor Nadya Shaw Bennett Nadya Shaw Bennett

Age Concern Social Worker Lawyer for Child

Erica Newlands Simon O’Connor

Director & Stage Manager Designer & Lighting Operator

Stuart Young Martyn Roberts

1 SARAH

(Light up on Sarah’s letter; a voice—or voice—from the dark) My name is Sarah. I have represented New Zealand, South Island, and Otago in sport. I qualified with Honours at tertiary level. Recently I’ve learnt 21 songs in one week on the recorder. My IQ is 174— tested by MENSA. I have been the personal assistant to the finance manager of an international company. I worked in a bank, and held responsible roles at a play centre.

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I know New Zealand sign language. I’ve taught both my children to read and write, and been responsible for their education entirely. But, yet, I am suffering from Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome. Sometimes I can’t remember what I am doing even though I have just started doing it. I feel like a social leper and have no friends, and I have absolutely no self-esteem. I feel completely unloveable at the moment and struggle with hope. At the moment I like the colour black, whereas I used to like rainbows because they were every colour. 2 FAMILY COURT CO-ORDINATOR I mean violence is throughout… society… and… always has been—domestic violence. And it’s not any one race, or any one socioeconomic group. It goes through all groups. We tend to stereotype it. 3 GP

The, the presentations of family violence are different in different groups in society, you know, that—I think there probably is significantly less of the direct, physical violence, but there’s some pretty abusive relationships that are, are more subtle, really…—um, psychological abuse. And I, I mean, I think of people I know who remain in extraordinarily negative and destructive relationships, um, which is not good for anybody in the family, but they have too much to lose: they live professional lives, they have good money, they have beautiful houses, y’know. Their children have all the practical, um, advantages and, and they lose that if they actually blow it out of the water.

4 POLICE 1 POLICEWOMAN Yeah… and it’s like, I mean, I saw this picture. I don’t know if you saw that picture in the paper on Tuesday… [I] cut it out to send it to you. (Laughs) It’s, it’s a picture of like what looks like the perfect couple: a couple walking along… just that… It’s s-.

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You know how in Tuesday’s paper they have, um, all these different, you know, pictures. They just capture pictures of people, and it was a thing in the Octagon. And there’s this picture of what looks like the perfect couple. And I thought, “Gosh, here they are walking—this couple—walking along: baby… an’ child in the buggy. Um, she looks like she’s pregnant, having another baby, and they look the perfect couple, and they… It was how I… (Looks at Policeman) Remem-, remember that, um, that—you asked me to go check on this woman when I was working down north and I went to the house and did some checks… POLICEMAN

Ah yes… yeah, yeah, yeah.

POLICEWOMAN POLICEMAN

Yeah, it’s her.

Oh, yeah.

POLICEWOMAN And they look like the perfect couple and, you know,… hideous, um, domestic violence that goes on there. And the last time I paid a visit to her, you know, she talked about how… “Oh well, he’s broken my cell phone now. He— and dragged me down, you know. A, a, a neighbour came across and he was bashing my head against a, a, a, a tree.” And I thought, and here—and she looks like she’s pregnant again, um—and I thought, and they, and that’s, and I, I looked at that photo and thought, “Oh, my goodness.” I thought, “I’m going to cut that out,” cos, you know, i’, it could be our next homicide. 5 ROSE

It was actually at… my parents’ place, and it was in the lounge, and I actually thought he was going out— . There was this—. Um, my sister was going out with this other guy, and his brother called in and had this girl and this guy with them, and I thought they were going out, you see? And, um, but they weren’t, but this other guy was sitting there and I felt a bit sorry

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for him because he was quite quiet. So I went and talked to him. But I felt relatively safe because I thought he was going out with this other girl, you see. So that’s how I met him. And seem’ly [seemingly] he thought I was quite nice and I thought he was quite nice, so that’s kinda how we met. Thing is you don’t know you are getting into an abusive relationship. And there were little things that, um, at times—. Like he said, um—. He didn’t, he didn’t tell me about, you know, violence that happened in his family, um, growing up or anything, um. But you know when we were leading up to get married, we had this… well… He didn’t want me to get an automatic washing machine. I was going to pay for it, but he didn’t want me to get one because he said it wasn’t very fair, because none of his family had one; they just had a ringer one. So I couldn’t get one either, ahem. And he wasn’t very nice to me over it and I thought, “I don’t like the way he’s not being nice to me over this.” But then he was nice again. And this is the, the thing: they’ll be horrible and then they’ll be nice. 6 LE

Uummm. It’s, it’s kind of weird talking about it sittin’ in here, cos it’s so far away and so long ago in a way, and it’s like not something that a lot of people that I know here have, have, would, would have had, y’know. It’s like wild west in a way. There was a culture of violence in the community I was in; it was just rampant really… [My parents] are, um, very individual people, and they are both, um, born in the year of the tiger. So, they’re both, err, fire tigers. So, they’re really ferocious people, ahh, but they’re really individual people. But… so… their, their union is, um, fraught… with, um, fire… is a way of a way of thinking about it.

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My first memory was… when I’s—. I must’ve been just starting to walk an’ I, we’re in Brockville, and I witnessed Dad getting angry at Mum and—. There were bowls of custard on the bench an’ I can remember him throwing the custard at me. I was crying and screaming on the ground an’ he threw all the bowls of custard at me. And then, for some unknown reason—I don’t know why—I started to giggle. And I reckon it’s because all the, all missed me… I don’t know why. I was only—I musta just started walking or just started, just before I started primary school from memory. I can’t figure out why I laughed about it, but later on I laughed because I thought all, all the custard had missed me. It wasn’t so much the physical in the early days; it was more the mental—the way he used to stuff with our heads. My brother said to me that out of all the kids Dad gave me the hardest time. Perfect example: I was in a pub one day—the Beach Hotel, sitting there. I was… up o[ne] o’ those upstanding bars and I’s having a beer with my mate. I go to shoot a game o’ pool an’ all of a sudden I hear, “Noote. Eh, dumb ass. Eh, idiot… fool! Eh, you… Yeah, you!” An’ I look around. Who is it? My father, abusing the shit outta me like he always did. He use ta call m’—I don’t know if you ever saw a, um, a tv programme where the dumb, where the dumb priest was called Noote? Ah well, that’s what he called me, cos he thought, you know—. An’, yeah, he jus’ started abusing me— verbally—while I was at the pub with my friends. An’ I had a mate o’ mine sittin’ across the bar from me. He says, “What are you doing?” I said, “whaddaya mean, what are ya doin’?” He says, “Normally, Doug, you’d go up an’ smack someone for that.” I said, “I can”t. “So whaddaya mean, ‘I can’t’?” “That’s my father, mate.”

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An’ he absolutely went, “You’re joking!” I said, “Yeah, I’ve had to put up with that all my life, mate.” 8 AMANDA

You know, I was in an abusive relationship. The only difference from my abusive relationship and that, and what people considered to be a normal abusive relationship was… it was my daughter. I, I worked, I worked with abused people for goodness, for Christ’s sake, and I was being abused at home.

9 GP

I think the difference of being a GP over being someone in an agency where you’re dealing specifically with violence is that things come to us, um, unpackaged. They come to us randomly and, y’know, undiagnosed, so that, so that an awful lot of what we see—which turns out maybe to be family violence—comes in its very unformed early stages. And it’s a different way of dealing with it, y’know. There’s an awful lot of stuff that might be due to family violence, that might be a problem, or it might not. And it’s just like someone who comes along with tummy pain. Well, they might have appendicitis, or they might have bowel cancer, or maybe they just have indigestion, y’know? It’s, it’s like, er, being alert to the possibility of something serious, but also being aware that common things happen commonly and mostly it isn’t—is actually part of what we do. And that’s why I think it’s hard… to ask the question sometimes.

10 PYSCHOTHERAPIST The whole thing got me—. Is the camera running? Um... what, what I got interested in was— because I, because I’ve been interested in it for a long time—was what empathy is and what attunement and mirroring is. It’s fundamental to my profession and it’s fundamental to yours, and, ah... I think it is, at least I hope it is (laughs). Eh, ahm… And, and, and I’m also, I’ve also for long been reading about the brain and fig—, trying to figure what actually happens to the human brain when—. What is it that,

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that mammals can attune to each other? What is it that we can read each other’s minds? Our, our, our social networks, the family structures, our intimate relationships, our enmities, ah, ah, the people we hate as well as the people we love—all of that’s determined by our ability to, er, to read each other’s minds and our early experience of what each other’s minds are. So, if, ah, if love and violence go together, for instance—which is fundamental to your project now—ah, in my early life, then, when I seek love, I will seek violence. 11 PRISON NURSE And I still remember this young man who I had a lot of time for. It was New Year’s Eve and I was doing my lock up and tucking the wee boys into bed as I do. Sometimes I’d walk the corridors and say things like, “’Night, John Boy, ’night Elizabeth.” And they’d all call back to me. It was always quite fun. And I said, “I s’pose I can’t say have a good New Year, can I?” And one wee guy called out and said, “Oh yeah, it’s not all bad.” He said, “I won’t get beaten up.” And I said, “Well, why, why would you get beaten up?” And he said, “Oh, I get beaten up every New Year’s Eve. It’s either the Mum or the Dad’ll take a swipe at me.” So he saw it as being positive cos he was locked in [a] prison cell. He wouldn’t get beaten up by the morning. “So it’s not all bad, darling.” So I thought, “Oh, that’s your life, that’s his reality, to be in there.” And I’ve had other, you know—. I think it was cos I was a older woman with teenagers, and I’d have young guys that would say to ya sometimes—or come up for some reason to get a pill or a Panadol or something—and they’d say, “I wonder what my life would have been like if I’d had you as a mother?” So and I said, “Oh I haven’t got any sons.” “You got daughters, then?” And I’d say, “I don’t need son-in-laws just now either.”

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But, yeah, it was just that sorta wee look saying, “Wonder what it’d be like?” And I said, “What is it I have?” And he said, “Oh well, you’re just concerned and interested, and you kinda respect me sometimes.” I said, “I hope I respect you all the time, and I mean that. All the time,” I said, “Yeah.” And he said, cos he said, he’s never been respected. Not from anything. Nothing he’s ever said has been of any importance to anybody. 12 LE

Umm… and I remember waking up and being afraid of the sound and not knowing for a while what it was. But then I’d hear swearing and yelling, and I would, um… At, at some point I think I was sleeping with my brother and sister in the same bed—three in a double bed. So, I’d actually wake up and… attend to them. So, I’d –. (Looking at interviewer) Yeah, younger. So, I’d kind of… get them to put their pillows over their ears—like squeeze the pillow over your ears so you can’t hear. So I would, I would get up, and sometimes I’d go and confront my parents. I’d actually walk into the room and… stand there looking at them. And so they’d, they’d sort of be like, “See what you’ve done.” Y’know? There’d be like, sort of accusations, or some kind of conversation going doomph, doomph, dooom. Not a whole lot of attention being paid to me here. But I’m just standing there, um, as a witness… cos I knew if I walked in i’, it stopped, um, and… it would stop, but it might start up again. He didn’t hit us. I re-, I remember that. But, I remember when I was growing older… that… I would, um, I would challenge him… and he, he would throw his dinner at me, um, from the table and it would hit the wall. Or he would grab me by the neck and lift me off the floor—by this, by the collar—and just lift me up off the floor and put his fist up like that. And I’d say, um, somethink like, “You’re such a big boy”—like that—and “You’re

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such a man,” and he would smash the door… with his fist, or punch a hole in the wall, or rip the door off the hinges. But he wouldn’t hit me. 13 JESSIE

Maybe, but I can remember, um, one part of Mum being pregnant with her, I think. Um, I musta got a bit jealous or something ’n’ threatened to kick her in the stomach.

14 AMANDA

I don’t know if it was a reaction to my pregnancy, but she would say things to me when I was pregnant about, um,… “If, if you, if you don’t let me do that, I’m going to kill that baby inside your stomach,” and things like that, you know—at a tiny age. And I can remember, I used to have to physically pick her up and carry her places and she would try and thrash out at my stomach because she wanted to kill the baby. She knew my weaknesses. She always knew my weaknesses. And that’s typical abuser behaviour – is to hone in on the most sorest point of a person, to be able to manipulate that to their advantage. And she did that from a very, very young age. She was quite gifted in manipulation.

15 JESSIE

I don’t know why. I just think cos she was the easiest target ’n’ she just cries. Like, I can remember she tried to quit smoking and I swear I was purposely more of a bitch than what I usually was so she would start smoking. I, I guess it was just—actually, yeah, it woulda just been the control; that’s what it would’ve been. I wanted to do what I wanted to do, and I wanted other people to do what I wanted to do. So I would get violent because that’s the only way I could control the situation.

16 AMANDA

And I remember—I don’t know how old she was, but I went to the doctor’s. She was only, you know, just in school—round that age. And I went to the doctor’s and I said, “There’s something wrong with my

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daughter. I need help. She’s out of control. She throws huge tantrums. I need help.” And the doctor turned around and says, “Well, you need to go home and look at your parenting skills.” And I said, “Well, how can I do that? How do I know—? I mean I’ve got a son that’s fine.” And, um, and so I did… I took him seriously, went home, took a hard look at myself and, and probably tried some new techniques. There was no Supernanny back then. So I had, I had nothing, really, except for my Mum, who was always very opinionated and had ideas. And it sort of scared me from asking for help for a very, very long time. 17 DOUG

An’ he picked me up, an’ came into my bedroom, an’ he said, “Yer shoes aren’t polished.” I said, “Yeah, I know, I’ll polish them tomorrow.” He said, “That’s not good enough.” An’, being drunk, he got angry with me, pulled me out [into] the hallway, and then threw me from one end of the hallway to the other. An’ I hit the wall at the other end, an’ I put a hole in the wall where he threw me. This is about ten or eleven. Fell to the ground, started crying. He hit me again because I was crying, and then I wet myself because he’d hit me, and he hit me again because I wet myself. So, in one instant I had been hit three or four times for no apparent reason apart from shoes not being polished.

18 ROSE

This one night that he came home, and it was not long after I’d had my second baby, and she’d have only been about six weeks old, and I’d had the flu which had turned into pneumonia, and I was awake feeding her quite often during the night, and I had a, um, just under three-year-old to get up to who was very active during the day, and he’d been out drinking, and he came home drunk, and, um, he was wanting to have sexual relations with me. And I said, “Oh, no, look, I’m just tired.” But he kept on, and I just… kept on, and I just would say, “No.” And,

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um… (sighs) Yeah, he just kept going, and he didn’t stop. And, um, he, um, you know, I’ll, I’ll never forget what he said to me at that particular time. And he just… forced my legs apart with his leg and, um, kept going. And, um, afterwards I kind of just—he went off to sleep and I just sort of cried for a while, and I tried to kind of think about, think well, you know, I mean, he’s my husband, and it’s sex. But it wasn’t, really. You know, I mean, there’s a, there’s a really big difference, um… [The] Thing’s what they do is the same, but it’s, um, it’s a lot different. Years later I decided to talk to him about it, um… And because I felt after that something really died in our relationship, you know, that, um, and, um… I thought, well, perhaps he wouldn’t remember? Or, you know, because of the alcohol? And, what astounded me was when he said, um,… he laughed, and he said, “Wait till they hear this one.” And, um, and then, um, I really felt like I didn’t really want to have relations with him anymore at that point in time, because I felt like, well, um, he’s just really using me, um. I really felt like, well, um, this is abuse, it’s not love. 19 PYSCHOTHERAPIST But, but, with the capacity to be violent, one also needs to have the experience of early abuse in childhood. So, the way we abuse others will reflect that and it’ll reflect that pattern—whether that’s physical, ah, physical violence, emotional coercion, ah, ah, erm, the use of silence, which was, would’ve been my favourite way of controlling the people around one… (inaudible laughter) The use of silence? Of, of, ah, of, ah, creating a kind of brooding, silent atmosphere, of not speaking, not communicating, is an enormously powerful way of getting something from somebody. (Brief pause) It plays out with one’s children feeling frightened of one, ahhh, um, with people trying to figure out what you’re thinking, and ah, ah, trying to give you what you need without you ever having to really ask for it.

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It’s an enormously powerful tactic. The long-term effects are disastrous, absolutely disastrous. That’s probably the—that sort of behaviour and the occasional outburst of anger along with it would’ve been the main reason why I entered therapy to begin with. Which I’ve, ah, I did for many years. I still do. (Pause) Ah, I, I’m bec—, I’m becoming less comfortable now because this is a personal area and, and up to this point I’ve been talking about things that I know, ah, from my work and that area that I’m excited about. So, now we’re talking about my life, this is a little different. That’s all right. That’s good. 20 DOUG

My brother came back one night… and… Dad got the shotgun down off the gun-rack. My brother was standing in the front doorstep. This is after Arrowtown; this is when we came back to Dunedin. An’ he turned around and said to my brother, “You put a foot over that step, I’m gunna shoot you.” An’ he had the shotgun… on the side, pointed straight at my brother. And I know, and I know right to this day, that he would’ve, he would’ve actually shot ’im, cos the gun was loaded. And… I said it to you, and I’ll still say it, I st—, I still say it to anybody I know, that if he’d shot my brother he would’ve shot all of us. He wouldn’t have stopped just at him. He would’ve done that and he wouldn’t have had the balls to kill himself.

21 ROSE

(Sigh) I guess what, what I figured out in the finish as a little girl—well, it must have been something about the way I loved, because… um, there were supposed to be these different types of love. And so, one was sexual and one wasn’t. And I thought, “Well, (whispering) how do I know the difference?” And you know if I, if I get it wrong, they are going to abuse me or get the wrong idea, and it was, ah, realising it was to do with them, not me. And they just told me it was to do with me.

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Some of the way in which, my father had abused me had, um, triggered things to do with back—with my ex and his father and certain things that happened in his own life. And so, when I told him, that actually meant that the abuse got worse. Um, I suppose, I suppose I can say the things, because you know it’s not, not, um… but, but, but his father actually called him a homo, you see, and this was the thing. And then the way in which my father had abused me—he sodomised me, you see. And so, um, that sorta pushed a lot of buttons for him. 22 DOUG

But I… went up to Twizel one weekend. Dad’s jaw was wired shut. Nigel, my older brother—this is what had happened previously—broke his jaw. And, ah, I s—, I still—I said to him, “Why did you break his jaw?" An’ he says, “Well, because he stepped me out, Doug. And I jus’… laid into ’im and I broke ’is jaw.” And he said, “If they hadn’t pulled me off I probably woulda killed ’im.” Now that was—. Only a f—, ’bout a month ago my brother told me that he regretted doing that, an’ I just turned around an’ said, “Don’t. Don’t regret doin’ that. Don’t be stupid.” I said to ’im, even then, I said, “If you had walked in the front door, that day with the shotgun, he woulda killed you, he woulda shot us. You saved our lives, Bro’. It was coming, it was stupid, an’ it’s not right, but it happened.” An’ then la- [later], about—oh, must’ve been a month later—I came home an’ Mum’s eye was black. He’d smacked ’er, an’ he was sittin’ there an’ I thought, “Hmm.” Mum tried to tell me she’d walked into a cupboard. I said, “No, Mum, no, no, no.” I thought, OK, he smacked ’er, and that time I was—I didn’t know what to do. I was gunna go over an’ I thought, “Should I go over an’ just give ’im a hiding, or I just left it alone?” Cos I thought, “No, I’ll leave it. It may be a –.” I mean it wasn’t acceptable, “but it may be only a oncer.”

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Two weeks later I came home again. Mum’s eye was black again. And Dad had hit ’er, but this time I went up to, I w—, I stepped up. I’s gunna—. I walked over to—, an’ mum said, “You don’t have to,” cos his cheek was out to here. My little brother was sitting on the couch—Ryan—and he had smacked him after he had smacked Mum. And I can remember walking out the room, going an’ saying, “Well, it’s obvious everything’s back to normal.” 23 ROSE

Um, my husband would say, ah, um, “There’s just something to do with you, that I can’t help but do it, and other men would be, like, the same.” You know, that they would be like that too? And I’d think, “Well, what is it about me, then?” You know? And, one night, when he’d been drinking with a friend, and the friend had gone home, and he was angry that the friend had gone home, he wanted to go out drinking. And it was the early hours of the morning—’bout one o’clock in the morning—and I said, “No, I’m not taking you out somewhere else.” And he got really angry, and he, he punched the window and broke it. Then he punched the dog. And then he came inside, and I was sitting on the sofa, and he went round behind me and put his hands around my neck, and he just said, “I just need to squeeze just a little bit more and you’d be gone.” And I, I was sitting thinking, “Well, God, if this is going to be it, then, please, then take me.” And I was thinking, “Now—.” And I knew that I had to stay really, really calm, because, as I said, you know, always it would kinda be like I’d know, that I had to calm him down, because if I didn’t calm him down, you know, it would get worse. And, um, you hear people say, “Well, why didn’t I hit back?” I wouldn’t be here. I’d be dead.

24 NEIGHBOUR

I’ve had two [next-door neighbours who] were abused. I still have issues where I find it very difficult to understand how intelligent women can get

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to the state where they allow the abuse to continue. And I find it very difficult to, um, empathise because I can’t get myself into that position. I can sympathise. I can offer support, but I—. In Cher’s situation, ah, I… and in my sister—I mean all the situations—I, I, I couldn’t truly have an empathetic response, because I could not put myself in their shoes. 25 ROSE

The Catholic Church was actually—had a, um, a speaker come over from America, and she, um, knew about domestic violence and things. And so, um, I just heard about it, and I thought, so, OK, I was at the refuge, so I’ll go along to it. And it was really good because I felt like, well, there’s somebody that actually understands about things. And she had this really good analogy of—. She got this lady to sit down in this chair, and for every abusive thing that happened in her life, um, ranging from when she was little right up, they put a sheet over her. And so she— this lady—was sitting in this chair with all these huge lots of sheets over her. And people said—you know, at the end of all the things that had happened to her— they said, “Why doesn’t she just get up and leave?” And he, she, the lady said, “Well, look at her. How can she leave? She’s weighed down with all sh— these things, on top of her, and she can’t see her way out. She’s inside in the dark, and she cannot see how to get out of this.”

26 AGENCY WORKER Um, why, why don’t women leave? That’s quite clear. Um, when you work in Family Violence for a long time we know why they don’t leave: fear. Fear is the biggie. Fear of the violence that he’s already done in the relationship, and it’s going beyond that physical. It might be that he stops her from having a job. Finance is a big one, obviously. We see that all the time. Um, he’ll say to her, “There’s no way you’ll survive without me.” So that finance is a huge one for people when they try to weigh up, y’know, is this

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going to be survivable, basically? Will, will I survive? Um, fatigue is a big one. You see women coming in who are absolutely exhausted from living in those situations, and, if you think about family violence, it is an incredibly tiring situation; it’s like permanently walking on egg-shells. (Beat) Family is another big one—why women don’t leave. It might be that she has no contact with her family whatsoever and so his family’s been a really good support—like his mum might look after the kids…—or, y’know, she might have some sort of fantasy about this relationship’s going to get better. (Beat) Um, father—the children need their father. I can’t do that. And if he’s the dad of the children, it becomes even more difficult. Or, it might be that she never knew her father; he might have walked out on them when she was three years old and she’ll be dammed if she is gonna, y’know, not have a father for her children. Um, faith. It might be that she… has a religion or a church-based background that says to her to submit and forgive his violence. She may believe it is her God-given role as a woman to keep the family together. It’s not a religious issue; it’s a safety issue. (Beat) The, the big F, the big F—that sounds good, doesn’t it?—is fear. That’s the big one. If you’re looking for the core reason why a woman doesn’t leave, it’s because sh—, of fear. 27 AMANDA

My husband—I mean, you know, got a husband, got an…—and, you know, and he… he was… he, he didn’t know what to do. You know, he really was at a loss an’, and he… he’s a, he’s a, he’s a hard arse… And Jessie probably knew that he couldn’t push her—she couldn’t push him as far… She used to be very verbally abusive to him, and when he did come in to support me, um, he was, he was, he was really,

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really good at it, um, but I think he was frightened… Nobody could fix it, but me. 28 LE

So, don’t for one minute think that my mother didn’t have a go back, because my mother did. She did not take anything lying down; she fought and gave what she got—as good as. But she, she was doing what, you know, she was doing; she was trying to survive. You know what I mean? She was doing what she could. I mean, she’s five foot and he’s like this; and he’s like this and she’s like that, so what can she do?

29 PYSCHOTHERAPIST If the world is chaotic and dangerous, ah, I can—I’ve got a number of options. One of them is to try and control it. The, the, the, the, the controlling, demanding partner, who, ah, ah, who uses fear and, and, ah, personal power and violence to control the, the behaviour of the other is trying to control an uncontrollable, dangerous world. 30 LE

So, I’m thinking of the cycle whereby there’s a, a build-up of tension in the relationship, and there’s a restless, irritable, discontent personality in there. And there’s a structure in the relationship that’s got to be maintained at all times—up and down, up and down, top and bottom, black and white. So, there’s a rigidity in the structure. Of course, that rigidity doesn’t hold because the man will be the iron fist, controlling, but the woman will be sabotaging effect, y’know? During the periods of sabotage—where she won’t cook his dinner or she won’t talk to him or she won’t have sex with him or, or whatever she does to quietly undermine him—the wer— [worse], the more tight the control, the more subtle will be the undermining. So, he will become, nn, keen to establish his dominance again, and the pattern of tension’ll build up and there’ll be a blow, which is where the imp—, the incidence of violence will happen: the argument, or the smashing of the house, or the hitting of each other, cuttin’ up clothes, whatever it is.

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And then there’ll be a honeymoon, making up— there’ll be a, a making-up phase, which is protestations: “Please, don’t leave me. I’ll be good. I’ll change. I’ll go and do that programme”; flowers; and, and, and sex—yeah—making… up, making love, yeah? And so everything’s good again, and sometimes women will, um, engineer a fight to get from the period of tension into the honeymoon. So, they won’t wait ’n’ wait ’n’ wait. We’ll, we’ll do it, we’ll—; let’s, let’s make the fight happen and get it over with so we can get over the other side. 31 COUNSELLOR The recipient is often struggling with this notion of kindness in response to this exertion of power. And I think in the context of domestic violence, then, we could see that, how this interplay of power and kindness can, can get in the mix and actually create the problem or actually be part of the dynamic. And the kindness comes in, then, when the person who’s the victim of the violence will usually look for and remember all the good aspects of the person and the relationship and want to hold onto that with, with a sense of fairness and of being absolutely, um, generous, I suppose, and kind in terms of—this isn’t the only way this person behaves. He or she is also able to behave in extremely generous ways and good ways and loving ways, and therefore there’s that tendency, which, I guess, again we’re all taught, to be fair and to be kind and to take into account all aspects of a person and not target the faults. 32 ROSE

Every now and again you see that person that you love, that you married, because you loved that person. And you hold onto the good times, and you think, “Ah, well.” You try so hard to make things better, thinking it’s within your power to do that, but, realising that it’s not, because it’s to do with them, not you.

33 AGE CONCERN SOCIAL WORKER I guess… I, I… What I probably told ya and, an’ was talking about was I’m

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forever saying to people, “Don’t forget the older people.” Because, every meeting I go to, everything I do, they’re talking about violence against women and children and families, but they forget about the older people in the families… and… yeah, I just feel like elder abuse is a small part that’s hidden. One, one lady, her son abuses her, and the police—. We had a trespass order on him, and he went against it and came to the home and threatened her and smashed things, and she actually rung the police… and that was huge. She rung the police. They came. She said two huge, big policemen came into her wee house and they carted her son out, but, as they were leaving with him, he looked over his shoulder and he said, “’bye, Mum, you’re the only friend I’ve got.” And she felt so guilty she immediately lifted that trespass order. 34 ROSE

Ah, the one time that I think that he was threatening toward me when they were around was when he got a screwdriver and I—, threatening me with a screwdriver, and I stood between the children and him so they couldn’t see, and I said, “Go ’way and get changed for bed now. Go on, quick quick, ’way you go, ’way you go.” And, you know, and get him calmed down so that they didn’t see that. I knew it was getting really dangerous, that, um… if something didn’t happen, that, you know, he would either kill me or—. He kept saying, “Oh, why don’t you do yourself—, do us all a favour and go do yourself in?”

35 LE

And there’s, there’s violence in the house. Like my grandfather and grandmother, mm, fight like cat and dog, swear at each other: “Ya fuckin’ bastard.” And you’re sittin’ eatin’ your dinner with your Nan and ya Grandad throws a chair through the window and the glass just goes wwshheewww… and you’re—. I remember the glass, almost like slow motion, coming… like that, and landing on the food, so there

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was broken glass in our food. And I’m sitting with Nan like this and, and I go… (a look) and she goes, “Ya fuckin’ idiot,” out the window, and it starts up again. So it’s, like, that’s, that’s at their house, and then you go back to your own house. 36 AMANDA

… which was easy at that age; her violence was very, very easy—. All I would do was, um, hold her down, and she would lash out, and she would bite and everything like that, but I could hold her down. And I remember once I held her down by the fire place, and she lashed out and she cut her elbow, and I felt so bad that she had re—, she had really cut it quite bad. And all I could think in my mind is that everybody’s going to think I abuse my daughter because I was holding her down. When she got older—probably from the age of twelve—I could no longer sit on her and hold her down, so she used to actually beat me up as such. She used to kick me and punch me and bite me and, and things like that, and it got to the point where I would, um, I would sw—. We had a safety plan at home, with the little children, and my son as well, and the plan was that when Jessie got the way she did—we all knew what that was—that they were to go and lock themselves in their brother’s room, and they knew, cos I put a lock on Cam’s door so that they could do that. And they would all run, and they would lock themselves in the room, and they weren’t to come out until it was quiet.

37 JESSIE

It’s kinda shocking, cos I would never ever hurt my little sisters. I love them so much and it just hurts me that they would be so scared of me.

38 AMANDA

Um, we ended up having to hide all our knives, because there was an incident where Jessie went for the knives, and, um, and was—. That was more for her safety in the beginning—was because she went for the knives, and told us that she was going to kill

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herself and everything like that, so we, we, we took all the knives out of the house and we hid them away. There was one particular time when she was at home and she got, um, really, really angry, and we thought all the knives were hidden, and she found a knife— 39 JESSIE

I’ve forgotten things like with the knife. Um, I can, er, I can remember getting taken away, but I can’t remember anything that happened with the knife.

40 AMANDA

No, first she went to her little sister, who was in my room, and she turned around and said to her, “How does it feel to be a four-year-old and know you’re gonna die?” And, of course, I was just absolutely petrified, and I physically grabbed her and just pulled her out of the room, and Lizzie locked herself in the room. That’s right, the other kids must have been at school, and Jessie went running upstairs and, before I could catch her, she grabbed a knife out of the drawer and she was ‘proaching me into another room, and she was sorta holding the knife up to my throat like this, and she—“I’m gonna kill you, I’m gonna kill you.” And I just turned around and I said, “Do it.” I said, “You gotta do it, because I’ve just had enough, and I can’t do this anymore, and if people won’t listen to me—to what I’m going through—you’re going to have to kill me in order for them to listen.” But she didn’t, she didn’t k—. Well, obviously, hello! But she didn’t, she didn’t do it. She actually, um, threw the knife down and she ran away.

41 FAMILY COURT CO-ORDINATOR I think the definition of domestic violence is not widely understood, and so I think a lot of people put up with psychological abuse not realising that there is a remedy through the family court, because they see it as the, y’know, Jake Heke, you know, battered-wife-syndrome thing, and the law is far more far-reaching than that.

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42 LAWYER FOR CHILD My view is that, um, um, especially in the higher economic, um, segment of society, that the domestic violence that comes out is far more of an emotional abuse, a controlling, than, than a straight out thumping. And it’s the hardest one to try and convince the court of. You can’t bring a, you can’t bring a doctor in to say, you know, to show x-rays or that. What you can do sometimes—and I have been able to show—is, ah, ah, a pattern of—. Thinking of one, in particular, a woman who said, “This has been going on, but I’ve never talked to my friends about it at all, and, um, except one, and I was able to talk to her. But I have regularly talked to my GP about it.” And I, um, with the person’s permission, accessed the medical records of the GP, and was able to show that this woman had, over a long period of time, agonised about it, but had raised it. If she had just gone in and saying, “This guy has just been an utter”—sorry, language; you’re editing anyway—but “an utter prick to me, a controlling bastard, for a long number of years, and I think if I even look at him sometimes I’m fearful I’m going to get smacked over, but he never does, he always stops short, just that short.” ... It’s, it’s… Ya just, the devil’s own job trying to prove it. 43 ROSE

Ah, and another thing that he had done, um—when I’d been getting changed—he’d taken some sneak photos of me, and, um, ah... You know, he would want me sometimes to go and pick different things up, and so he sent me down to the chemist to pick up these photos, and I didn’t realise they were the actual photos, um, that he’d taken, and, and so I felt really awful then, because I thought that the people in the shop probably saw those photos, and they might think I had posed for them or something, but I hadn’t. You get that you don’t want people to see how much it’s affected you. You know, you, you sort of, um, like, you know… If I got upset and cried about something, sometimes he’d be OK, but lots of times

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he’d, um, he’d laugh and make fun of me crying. So, I mean, I don’t find it easy particularly to let people see my vulnerabilities or, um, you know, I don’t sort of, don’t cry around people readily, you know, and, um, people kinda, I think they have this preconceived idea that you should be, you know, a certain way. Because you go out and people would think, well, you know, wouldn’t you be sorta screaming and yelling and falling apart, you know? But you’re not, because you’ve got to watch. And you think, well, who am I going to tell about what’s happening, and who’s going to believe me? And what are we going to do and how are they going to react? And what’s going to happen if I tell somebody else? 44 LE

An’ all you need is to go somewhere where someone shows you another way and you will be saved… from… the worst of it. But, if you don’t have anywhere or anyone who cares about you, and shows you there’s another way, you’re sunk. So, for me, my grandmother—my mother’s mother—was where I w—, I would go. So, when I’d get up ’n’ hear all the fighting, I’d run to her house. And I can’t tell you how many times I did that, but I ran across this school field, a, a, a field, not a school field, a field that was like a playing field, but it had… cars dumped on it ’n’ broken glass ’n’… It was, y’know, dumped on. I’m a child in her nightie running across this field in bare feet… and I never get cut. And I always wonder about that, cos I just think someone was lookin’ after me when I was runnin’ across there, cos how did I see in the dark?

45 PYSCHOTHERAPIST If, if you’re, if you’re the victim of a lot of violence when you’re young… Ah, if, if, yer, if, if people caring for you are, are unpredictable, erratic, sometimes meeting your needs, sometimes reading you correctly and looking after you, and sometimes, ah, er, neglecting you or being violent, ah, towards you—of which incidentally violence is preferable because it’s some kind of response; no response is

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much worse—ah, ah, then, ah, one grows up with the knowledge that relationships are unpredictable— OK?—with a way, a model, of controlling other people, or a model of, ah, getting what you want based on, on the behaviour of others. Suppose I come home from work and my tea’s not ready. It’s a common scenario. What, what does that mean? That, that would mean you’re, you been up to something; you’re betraying me. So, so, there’s a replay, a replay of an old movie gets switched on, yeah? Of course, there’s a, there’s a neurological substrate for that. There’s an old network, like a railway track in the brain, that once one goes down, it’s difficult to get out of, yeah? So, this person, then, this man will then wind himself up, ah, into a state where he believes he’s being betrayed, or his, ah, ah, his efforts to, ah, make his way in the world, or preserve the family, or have a good relationship—be a good husband—are being undermined in some way. And he will have to do something about that. 46 DOUG

But then... later on, as I got older, I started drinking an’ doing—I started realising I was going down the same road my father was at one stage. Um, I could be in a bar somewhere, just drinking, no worries, an’ all of a sudden I’d hit someone for no reason—just because they, you know, they looked at me something differently or what. And, um, I came close... I drove taxis for thirteen years, and I did... on average around 70, 72 hours a week, nightshift. So, in the end—towards the end of it—I was staring to get, get home at six in the morning. My partner Anna at the time would say, “The boys have done this, the boys have done that,” and naturally, I’m tired, I’m just gunna go in and let them have it. I’m just gunna go in and go “Raargh” and just let it all out, you know. I did tell you I picked Bevan up once, an’ I threw him on ’is bed. And… I did grab Anna and shake ’er, but

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I didn’t hit ’er. Um… and then, that time that we’re—I told you about Karitane, when I had my wee daughter Zoë… and, um, she got on the floor and started screaming, an’ she was in pain, an’ I tried to ring the mother, and Bevan was on the phone an’ he wouldn’t get off. So I grabbed the kids, I went back in, and then I walked in and I gave Bevan, I did give Bevan a hiding. That time I actually laid into him, I did. 47 LE

But I… started using, um, alcohol and drugs at 15, and by 18 I’m drinking two and a half bottles of wine… in a sitting. I’m 18, and I can down two and a half bottles of wine. So, I have the problem… as well. And I get to 37… years of age… I’m a binge drinker. So, I would drink once a week but I’d drink all the whole week’s supply in a night, and then I’d get over it, and never do it again till the week later. And I, um, really liked marijuana which really I— that was my favourite drug, and I, um, I’d smoke alone. So I… had… my own little outlets for my own stuff that was goin’ on underneath. And… I got… sober… at 37 and, um, joined a fellowship, a self-help group, that helped me… to talk about, um, my resentments—to clean them up— and to admit that I have genetic disposition. I’m a, I mean, I’m a royal pedigree. I have two lines comin’ in, and they’re all, they’re all in it, so I don’t, I don’t—. I’m, y’know, I’m a purebred in this matter. I…

48 AMANDA

She ran away for—. At that time it was really scary cos it was for over a week and I didn’t know where she was. And my neighbour and I—the partner of Gary the policeman—decided that we were going to try and track her down by, through her friends, by names. We went through the phonebook on last names of her friends till we found one of her friends and we would ring them and we eventually found a friend’s mother who said, “No, she’s staying out at, um, Port Chalmers.” So, mm, my next door

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neighbour, Gary, and myself got in the car and went to Port Chalmers and, lo and behold, here’s Jessie walking across the road to the portaloo. 49 JESSIE

Yeah, so I was at the, um, pub(lic) toilets and I was walking back to the house and I just came out and Mum, Gary, which was the police officer who lived next door, and Prue were, um, sitting in the car right outside. They didn’t know where to look for me, but it was just coinc— a coincidence that I was coming out of the toilet when they were pulling up.

50 AMANDA

And I remember we chased Jessie. We chased—. Oh no, sorry—. Yeah, we both, we all chased her to start with and then, and then, she disappeared into this, this house. So Gary was standing outside the house and he was calling for backup with the police.

51 JESSIE

And so I ran, and I ran into this house, and I went and hid in a cupboard, and everyone was tryna hide me and then—. Cos that house had a lotta, um, weed in it, so I decided I didn’t wanna get everybody else in trouble just cos of me. So I ran out the door and was just running down all these bushes—

52 AMANDA

And then Jessie come running out of the bushes and Gary, being the policeman he is, ran after her and managed to tackle her beside a pub and hold her down, and she was screaming, “Bloody murder,” you know, “Help me, he’s attacking me.” mean, he wasn’t in uniform, he was off-duty—

53 JESSIE

And I was just going psycho, throwing my arms everywhere and, um, he was holding me down on the ground and this lady came up and she’s like, “Let her go! Let her go!” And he’s like, “It’s OK, I’m a police officer.” And she’s just screaming at him to let me go, and then another police car turned up.

54 AMANDA

This was, nn, us challenging her, not giving her an ounce of, you know, choice. So he was holding her

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down. He called the police. The police came. She kicked in the side of my neighbour’s car. That was the wilful gamag, damage charge. [They] put her in the police car in handcuffs. Gary sat in the back with her. We were traveling back to Dunedin at full speed because she was just raging in the back. She manages to get her handcuffs off and the door flies open of the police car as we were driving along the road… 55 JESSIE

Gary and the other police officer were tryna carry me to the police car and, um, Gary and Prue’s car was right there and I just booted a big dint in their car. And then they got me in and I said to them—; I settled down. I was like—cos I was really good at manipulating. So I settled myself down and I was like, “Oh, the handcuffs are too tight. Can I please get them loosened?” And so they loosened my handcuffs for me. And I was like, “It’s really hot. Can I please get my window down?” So they rolled my window down and I took off, I slid off one of the handcuffs, and I tried to jump out the window while they were driving. So I, I really didn’t care if I was hurting myself. I just didn’t wanna be told what to do.

56 AMANDA

And so when they took her into the cells, they took me in with her, and they put her in a holding cell, and she was screaming abuse and kicking and raving and everything like that and, um,… The police were determined that she was going to be, you know, be held accountable for everything that she’d done. So they held her in the cells overnight at the age of— would she’ve been fourteen or fifteen? Fifteen. They held her in the cells overnight and she was to appear before the judge on the wilful damage, assault, and all those charges the next day. I turned up at court the next day and, um, she stood before the judge. She looked terrible; she absolutely looked terrible. And for five days I went to court and begged the judge not to let her out.

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And when she saw her mother come into court every day, and say, “Don’t let my daughter out. I want her locked up. I want her in a secure unit. She’s not safe,” um, she started to really see that she was not just gonna be able to smile her way out of it. She was no longer going to be able to come out and say, “What’s for tea? I’m thirsty,” and pretend nothing had happened. And that was the beginning of her turning point. 57 ROSE

And I, I sorta thought, “Well, things can’t keep going on the way that they are.” So, um, I got him to, ahh,... I stood up to him and I said, “Something’s got to be done,” you know, “We can’t keep on going like this,” and “I don’t like the way you are treating me.” And he said, um, so he said, “Oh well.” He, he wanted me to back down, and I wouldn’t back down. So he said, “Well, if you don’t back down, um, I’m leaving.” And I said, “Well, I don’t want you to leave,” but I said, um, “I’d like you to stay and work things out”. But he said, no, he was going to leave. I think he thought that it would force me to back down, and then he realised that it wouldn’t. And I wasn’t going to back down, that, you know, I wasn’t going to just fall into this heap and sorta say, “Oh please, please, please stay.” Because I really knew that I had had enough, that I had got to the stage where I could not stand it anymore, that something had to happen… I hadn’t realised that the most dangerous part in the relationship is when they’re leaving, you know, and when it’s…—so that’s when the danger is at its maximum then. So, um, he injured me, and… he shifted out, and he shifted back to his mother’s place. And, um, so he was there, and he did a short Anger Management course, and he cut down on his drinking, and he said, “Right, I’ve done that now, so I can come back home.” And he said, “It was only for three months.”

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And I said, “I will—, didn’t say it was for only three months.” And you see he expected to just shift right back in again, and I said, “Well, no, that’s not happening.” It took me a really long time to feel safe in my own home. Um, I was supposed to be terrible that I changed the locks, um. But he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t give me a key back that he had to the house, and, um, because he wouldn’t give it back to me, I had to change the locks. And then they, they said, “Oh, weren’t you terrible, locking him out of his own home?” Well, um, he told me that he could come there and do anything he liked, any time he wanted to. 58 DOUG

So in the end Anna and I split up. She ended up being with a Russian fisherman, and she had a baby with this Russian fisherman. And… when her and I split up, I said, “I don’t care what happens, as long as the kids are safe.” So, in the end I got custody of the kids, but t—, in order for me to get custody I had to do the Anger Management programme. So, I was driving full-time, doing the hours that I was doing; I was boarding; I was going for custody of my children; and I was doing Anger Management, all at the same time… And they say men aren’t multi-tasking mate. OK, so, all those things combined, I had—. I was lucky, I had a friend—a very good friend at the time—because I can remember pulling up to this lady’s place—it’s all she was, just a friend. And I had this cuppa tea in my hand and the hand was going like this, cos I’d just about got right to the end man, I was right, right down. I said I can’t take this any more, I can’t, you know, I jus’—. In the end I couldn’t… because I was so tired, because I was doing everything else. I just… In the end… But she said, “you gotta go for it, Doug. You gotta keep going. You gotta push for it, mate.” An’ if it hadn’t been for her I probably wouldn’t of, but I did; I pushed all the way.

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59 AMANDA

So I simply gave her a choice: you either obey by our rules in this house, which are reasonable, and you come from a good home and it’s not that bad, or you leave. And you don’t come back. And she decided ta, to make her own choice of going and doing what she wanted, and the night she did that I packed up every single thing of hers in bags and put it at the bottom of the stairs, and she came back a few days later and saw the bags there, and I had to tell her that she had to go.

60 JESSIE

My bags were all beside the door and, um, I can’t remember what she said, but basically that I had to get out, that she couldn’t do it anymore and that the best option for me was to move out. So I went.

61 AMANDA

And she wasn’t coming back. And it was the most hardest thing out of everything that I’ve done was telling her that she—. I said to her, “I love you more than anything and I will always be here for you, but you’re no longer welcome to live here.” And, um, we cried and, and, um, she took some of her stuff, but I said to myself that I will never, ever have her back. She will never be w-, welcome to live in our home again, and my main motivator for that was my other four children: you know, they deserved to, to, um, have their mother without her having to be with Jessie, or looking for Jessie, or arguing with Jessie, or in court for Jessie, or, you know, it was always about Jessie. Those kids missed out on so much and I s—, I made a choice: that she makes that choice, then she can’t come back. And she left… and she hasn’t been back.

62 AMANDA & JESSIE JESSIE It was jus’, it was different. It wasn’t my Mum. It was like somebody told her to do it and she was doing it. AMANDA Nobody told me.

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JESSIE AMANDA JESSIE AMANDA JESSIE AMANDA JESSIE AMANDA JESSIE AMANDA JESSIE 63 DOUG

64 POLICE 2 POLICEMAN

No. She’d, she’d had enough, which was good… that she’d had enough… She didn’t even need to take that much, so— Yeah… Oh, you’re a good girl. But it was probably the best decision ever, ever made. It could have gone terribly wrong, though. Yeah. It was a gamble, wasn’t it? Yeah… but – Cos you were only fifteen. Yeah… Was I fifteen? Yeah. Yeah, I was too. And that’s the best thing in my life I’ve ever done— was doing that six-month programme. It was fantastic. It’s the best thing that I’ve ever done. It changed my whole… outlook on things: the way I see things, the way I perceive things, the way I handle my anger. Like I told… you: you know, I build a chair every house I moved into. I’d build a seat outside. Someone would ask me, “Why?” I said, “Well, very simple: I built that seat so that when I get angry I can go out there, sit on that seat for ten minutes, and look at the view. And just sit there peaceful for ten minutes, and let it go…” My whole reason for joining the job is because you want to help people. And I don’t, I can’t, I can’t think of a police officer who’s joined the job for the money or the pay or the conditions, um,/

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No, haha…

because really and truthfully it’s just, um… If you look at it from outside, it’s a crap job. We deal with the worst. So everybody wants to help. Um, the issue is, is what we see as police officers, is what help is.

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Um, and being a very male, um, dominated, ah, department/ POLICEWOMAN POLICEMAN

Mmhmm (nods in agreement)

um, we want to fix things. Right? And fix them now. There is no later on, there is… So, we go to a domestic situation, and we front up with the offender, the victim, and we think right-y-oh, whatever we do now, we will be fixing this issue. Right. Um, and as Anne said, over the years we’ve realised that we can’t fix it. Um, it takes more than us, the police, turning up on their doorstep at three in the morning when they’re drunk and they’re having an argument and the kids are crying, um, and us arresting somebody. We’ve got to take a much more holistic rep—, ah, ah, ah, approach, ah ’t saying, “Well, OK, to fix something you’ve got to understand it.” .

POLICEWOMAN That’s, that’s why I like domestic violence, because I think it’s an area that we can make a difference in, um, as police. And it’s not going to happen like—, I don’t believe that I’ll see it in the time that I’m in the police. Um, its gonna be, you know, thirty years down the track when, when there starts being some more changes. 65 GP

I can’t change someone’s life in making them aware of how hard or awful it is, y’know. Reflecting that back to them, when they’re not ready to change it, is not always helpful, y’know. So, I think… being, being available, and letting them know that, I think, they’re in a difficult position—they’re in a difficult place—that, that, um, helping them see for themselves, helping them acknowledge it, is really important. But, but to, to force it on them is not right either, you know. Picking green apples is… pointless, y’know. People are not ready… to change, and I mean they’re not ready to change. Gi—, making them more uncomfortable with the painful place they are isn’t always the right thing to do, I

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think, but, but supporting them, and knowing— letting them know – that you’re there to listen to them is… OK. 66 ROSE

Find somebody, somewhere, that you can talk to. Um, particularly, you know, it’s like a really big thing to tell friends, because you are risking relationships, and they might not understand, um. But, it’s probably easier sometimes to tell people from agencies, particularly like Women’s Refuge, Rape Crisis, because they are people that really understand [—that really, um, know these things. Some of the women have been through similar situations, and they have come out the other side, and they can help support you.] My friend, who was the priest that helped me from the initial things of my childhood abuse, um, helped me to understand about those processes of healing—and, and my relationship with God—actually, um, deciding and choosing that I was, I was going to choose love over abuse; I was going to choose love. And I, um, was going to choose to still care about—. Part of getting the protection order was actually about caring about my children and my ex-husband. For me, um, it’s knowing that through all of the things, that I was being loved, um, by the love that is God; that I had intrinsic value and worth and dignity despite what people were doing to me, or saying to me or about me; that nothing could actually change that.

67 JESSIE

And now I feel sorry for her, cos now I have my own baby, my own baby, and I have to go through it myself, so… She keeps on saying she hopes it’s a little shit just like I was, so I know what it feels like, which is fair enough.

68 AMANDA

(As it turns out) I love that girl to bits. And when she became pregnant, um, I almost felt like saying, “What took you so long?” Cos we expected it to

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happen many many years ago. But it was the making of her. She’s the most beautifulest mother, you know. She is… she’s just everything that I could wish for in a child, she really is… She’s still stroppy, and she’s still extremely opinionated, but we always end conversations with “I love you.” We always kiss each other goodbye. You know, for what we’ve been through, you know, it would have been a lot easier to just disown her, but it’s not what I wanted. I wanted my little girl. 69 DOUG

And Zoë… just went off the rails. I mean, she did; she went right off the rails, mate. And there was any, any time that I wanted to, you know… that, that I should’ve, that anger would’ve been a problem, it woulda been then, because, man, I couldn’t get her to do a damn thing. She was waggin’ school; she was… you know, she was being truant. The teachers would see her in town, try to grab ’er an’ she’d run away from them. The CYFS officer that was looking after her—she’d run away from her. In the end I basically lost ’er because I couldn’t control ’er. Prime example: I was full-time bus-driving there for a while, an’ I was doing night-shift, and I was driving down the main street and Zoë didn’t know— my youngest didn’t know, eh. And here she is, sitting on the bench outside McDonalds. So I’m chugging up with the bus—. I stopped the bus in the main street an’ I opened the door an’ went, “What the bloody hell are you’re doing?” And she shat herself! I said, "Right! When I come back through, you better be at home!”

70 LE

Normal life seems very pedan—, peda—, eh, pedestrian sometimes when you’ve had… the sort of dramas… I’ve seen, y’know. So, the whole thing was just crazy… and I, I, I think, if I wrote… a play, you know, it would make a great series… on tv. (Beat) But I’ve done… so many years of work that, that I could say the, the worst effects of it are not going on to, to the next lot. OK? So they’re not going on to my

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children… the same, and, and… So, I’ve picked up my part in it, and taken responsibility. 71 JESSIE

Basically, just push them away, I reckon. If you don’t, if, if you keep holding them close, then they’re just gonna keep doing it. For me I needed to be pushed away, cos then it real—. It makes me realise what I—. They, they say you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, and that’s true. I didn’t know what, what I, I had till it was gone, so…

72 AMANDA & JESSIE AMANDA But you’ve always got to have hope, regardless of how down you are, how hard the position is, that you have that hope that things will get better. And if I didn’t have that… If I didn’t have love, you know, I don’t… I don’t really know where we would’ve gone, you know. I could have killed Jessie. You know, you just don’t know. And it’s because we truly did love each other that we came out the other side. 73 ROSE

Even now, you know, at times, he’ll have—. You know, he said, “Oh well, look, you know, I’ve got things written down at home, so,” he said, “the kids can read it later on, and they’ll know.” And I think, well, yeah… and it—. While he’s improved, and drastically—it’s like he had a personality transplant just about. But, um, and he does revert back to things, ahhm. I don’t know whether it’s because he genuinely has changed or he feels more smug because he’s managed to get more people to side with him, to sway with him. I don’t know, or just, um, they see him and they just think, oh he’s really a nice guy.

74 DOUG

I can remember being up on the hill with ’im, an’ I— , ah, thinking, I was thinking about all the abuse that he gave me. And I’s standing behind ’im. I had a shot-gun in my hand... and he was in-head of me. Now I’s about thirteen, fourteen at the time, and I

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thought, if I’d shot ’im—and this is exactly what’s going through my mind—if I shot ’im, they couldn’t charge me because I’m too young and it would be classed as an accidental death. That’s what went through my mind. This, that was when I was up on the hill with him. This is in the Rabbit Board days, um,… It’s –. I didn’t. Just as well I didn’t, but it was there... 75 SARAH

(Light up on Sarah’s letter; a voice – or voices – from the dark) My name is Sarah. I have been a victim of domestic abuse and violence, but now I am a survivor of domestic abuse and violence. This is written from the perspective of memories where I was the victim. However, let it be noted that the survivor allows me to try and remember so others can learn, and this is flourished with language that prevents me from feeling sorry for myself. Otherwise I would not share this with you at all.

CHAPTER SEVEN TRAUMA AND THEATRE MAKING WITH REFERENCE TO THE LINE GINA SHMUKLER

How do we make theatre from trauma? How do we put trauma on the stage and do justice to the magnitude of the event? How do we make this a felt experience, as that is surely the aim of live theatre? Every theatremaker creating a new work wants the play to impact its audience in some way. Why is it that many theatrical works based on traumatic events don”t achieve this and have left me unmoved? A series of events, however, really did have an impact on me as far as this question around theatremaking and trauma is concerned. I went to see Anthony Sher on Broadway in a play called Primo Time, (2004) based on Holocaust survivor Primo Levi’s story. It was a skillful production with a fine actor and yet I was unmoved. Later, I read Antony Sher’s book about the making of the play Primo Time (2005) and I was fully engaged and deeply moved by the process the creative team went through whilst creating this play. It left me wondering how the book about the making of the play could impact me more than the play itself. The New York Observer theatre critic, John Heilpern, titled his review of Primo Time “Can The Holocaust Be Staged?” (Heilpern 2005). This speaks directly to the complexities involved in staging trauma and supports the debate around fictionalizing trauma. From the outset, I knew that the subject matter that was “calling” me was the refugee experience. Inspired by Patricia Schonstein Pinnock’s book Skyline1 (2000) and horrified by the South African xenophobic attacks of May 2008, I had a strong sense of what the narrative content of this work would be; I did not yet know it would be a play. Cathy Caruth in Trauma: Explorations In Memory (1995) presents a selection of essays about trauma, written by experts in the fields of psychoanalysis,

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psychiatry, sociology and literature. Caruth draws attention to the “surprising impact trauma has on existing theories and practices as well as our notions of experience” (1995, 4). It was through these selected essays that I learnt about the dynamics of trauma and particularly the structures thereof. The aim of the book was to examine the impact of the experience and the notion that trauma also impacts on psychoanalytic practice and theory as well as on other aspects of culture such as literature and pedagogy, writing, film and activism. Felman asks, “Can trauma instruct pedagogy, and can pedagogy shed light on the mystery of trauma?”(in Caruth 1995,13), which led me to the enquiry of this research—can trauma shed light on theatre making about traumatic subjects? If the psychoanalytic structures of trauma, as outlined in Caruth’s book, are applied to the theatre-making process, would the play inherently carry the essence of trauma and therefore help to overcome the challenges around theatre-making about traumatic subjects. Would the audience have a visceral reaction to the play because the psychoanalytic structures of trauma have indeed created the dramatic structure? Can this ultimately lead to a shift or awakening of the audience? Shoshana Felman sights the following “procedures” in relation to psychoanalysis and Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah. She references the nine and a half hour film as a means of bringing our attention to the ways in which Claude Lanzmann, through the medium of film, speaks to psychoanalysis, and vice-versa .Can these “procedures” (in Caruth 1995, 202) shed light on theatre-making? Were these “procedures” the very thing that gave the film Shoah its authenticity? Using the “procedures” of trauma, as coined by Felman, I began to engage in the theatre-making process. The “procedures” (Felman in Caruth 1995, 202-302) are: a) “A quest, a search for truth” b) “A quest of Memory” c) Temporality d) Details and Specifics e) Limit of Understanding

I have engaged with Felman’s “ procedures” in the creation of The Line but refer to them below as the “structures of trauma” in as much as they have served the theatre-making process, which is the focus of my research. Psychoanalyst Dori Laub (in Caruth 1995, 204) proposes “some reflections on the relation of witnessing to the truth” with regards to the Holocaust. As far as giving testimony is concerned, Laub states:

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There is, in each survivor, an imperative need to tell and thus to come to know one’s story…but the imperative to tell the story of the Holocaust is inhabited by the impossibility of telling, and therefore, silence about the truth commonly prevails. (in Caruth 1995:64)

Can the above principles be applied to the theatre-making process? This was the challenge of my research as I set out to apply these “structures of trauma” (as I term them) to the theatre-making process. The collection of data for the narrative component of the play was framed by an ethnographic research approach “through participant observation” (O”Toole 2006, 401). Over a five-month period I conducted interviews in Soweto, Johannesburg with both victims and perpetrators of the South African xenophobic attacks of 2008 including a photojournalist and a senior African National Congress (ANC) councillor. Whilst I had collected hours of shattering, provocative, complex and deeply moving interviews, the challenge of theatre-making was still to come. I had a structural idea provided by the structures of trauma yet new questions emerged. How do I tell these stories and I mean literally tell them? Applying the principles of practice as research as described by Conquergood (2004), I created a half hour presentation called Nobody’s Baby, an earlier nickname for Alexandra Township. The piece was structured around an interview I had done with Elisa, a Mozambican victim of the attacks. Though Elisa has been in South Africa since 1985, she only speaks Zulu. I took the hour-long interview to a professional transcriber who translated the text from Zulu to English and omitted the idiosyncratic ways in which we express ourselves. There in lay my greatest gift. Sitting in the darkened theatre watching the work, I knew something was missing. I was moved-the audience wasn”t. I was moved because I knew the interviewee. On reflection of this practice, it became clear to me that the words of the interviewees were paramount to the authenticity of this work. We are almost numb to both the victim and the perpetrator’s story in South Africa and I would need to re-humanize this telling and what better way than through the most human means of expression—language. The interviewee’s every utterance, cough and splutter needed to be in the penning. This led me to the textual construct of the play, “verbatim” which acknowledges “its roots in real life” (Hammond and Steward 2008, 9). “The term verbatim refers to the origins of the text spoken in the play.” (Hammond and Steward 2008, 9).Verbatim theatre is a style of theatre-making that:

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Chapter Seven Instead of adapting or repackaging experiences or observations within a fictional dramatic situation, a verbatim play acknowledges, and often draws attention to, its roots in real life. Verbatim is not a form, it is a technique; it is a means rather than an end. (Hammond and Steward 2008, 9)

The so-called “means” involves a process of interviewing in which the words of the interviewee are transcribed or are “appropriated from existing records...” (Hammond and Steward 2008, 9). The material is then juxtaposed and edited to create a dramatic narrative through a process of “selection, editing, organization and presentation” (Martin 2010, 18). It is the responsibility of the playwright and or theatre-maker to remain true to the content of the interview, as the expectation of the audience is one of truth. To quote verbatim theatre-maker Nicolas Kent, “The strength of verbatim theatre is that it’s absolutely truthful, it’s exactly what someone said” (Hammond and Steward 2008,152). It is also the responsibility of the verbatim theatre-maker to present the characters in their essence honoring their authenticity and giving fair weight to their respective arguments and experiences without one’s own personal bias. Several challenges come up when working with verbatim theatre. The bulk of the text involves direct address to the audience, which poses the difficulty of creating conflict amongst the characters, and in the play itself. The challenge is to create the drama of the play because the bulk of the text is usually based on interviews that have been expressed in the past tense. Verbatim theatre-maker Alecky Blythe says, “There is a danger that you only ever get the character’s thoughts and opinions, which lack emotional color…” (Hammond and Steward 2008, 92). Whilst the language is entirely real, offering enormous possibility, one still needs to locate it in such a way that a narrative and indeed a drama are formed. There is debate amongst verbatim theatre-makers as to whether an overarching metaphor solves some of the above-mentioned challenges. Nicolas Kent states that he “wouldn”t ever claim to have an overarching metaphor in one of my plays…” (Hammond and Steward 2008, 165). For Kent, verbatim theatre is “a response to a moment. I”m not looking at them as art, I”m looking at them as a journalistic response to what is happening” (Hammond and Steward 2008, 165). Other verbatim theatremakers state that one has to have a metaphor. I will return to the question of metaphor at a later stage but at this point what verbatim theatre offered me was the penning of the play, the actual words, but I would only discover the enormous power and advantages of verbatim theatre in practice.

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After painstakingly transcribing the interviews, capturing the sub-text and nuances as well as identifying themes, the challenges of theatre making emerged yet again. I had ideas towards structure and storytelling offered by the “structures of trauma” and verbatim theatre respectively but what was it exactly that I wanted to say? What was propelling me to create a piece of theatre about the 2008 xenophobic attacks? For me, the xenophobic attacks were a warning- a seemingly unheard warning -and that was certainly an impetus for me in the creation of this work but there was more. Initially, the victim was my point of departure until I read the work of psychiatrist Dr Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam (1994) and Odysseus in America (2002). Shay’s work allowed me access to questioning and understanding my primary interest which was how did the attacks come to take place and more so how does neighbor turn to foe, enacting violence against them? I wanted to warn the audience of the “fragility of goodness” (Shay 1994, 211) and the extent to which “our own good character is vulnerable to destruction by bad moral luck” (Shay 1994, 193). Shay’s theories shifted my focus to the perpetrator without whom the xenophobic attacks of 2008, and those that came before and after, would not have happened.

The Practice The setting of The Line is post-apartheid South Africa: a young democracy filled with promise and hope of jobs and a better life for all. In a democratic process “the trustworthiness of words” (Shay 1994, 181) is presupposed. “social trust is the expectation that power will be used in accordance with “what’s right”“(Shay 2002, 151). In 1994, with the vote in hand, the majority of South Africans put their trust in the African National Congress. Shay asserts that “there is the invisible, unstated assumption that those who hold power in society exhibit loyalty and care in their fulfillment of themis” (1994, 32). “Normal adults wrap themis around themselves as a mantle of safety in the world” (1994, 37). The insight Shay’s work offered me with regards to the violent acts of ordinary people is in relation to what happens when themis is disrupted. Shay’s studies indicate that the betrayal of themis, “what’s right”, “obliterates the capacity for trust” (1994, 181) and disproves the “ assertion that good character is a firm wall between a good person and evil acts, regardless of the betrayals of “what’s right…” (1994, 32). He says: “when social trust is

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destroyed, it is not replaced by a vacuum, but rather by a perpetual mobilization to fend off attack, humiliation, or exploitation, and to figure out other people’s trickery” (2002, 151). Millions of Black South Africans who have long suffered Apartheid South Africa enter the new democracy with ideals and ambitions only to find themselves still struggling seventeen years later. “Thumos,character, is a living thing that flourishes or wilts according to the ways that those who hold power use power” (Shay 2002, 227). When injury invades character and the capacity for social trust is destroyed, all possibility of a flourishing human life is lost. Photojournalist and artist Nadine Hutton, whose character is one of the protagonists in The Line supports the above as she reflects on the violence she witnessed during the xenophobic attacks of May 2008. NADINE:

Those East Rand townships-uh those East Rand squatter camps—are fucking dreadful. You know it’s like the worst of the worst. A lot of them are on like old mine-lands so it’s incredibly dangerous to live there—because there’s sink holes. There are shafts that just suddenly open up. You know, you”re living on poisoned land—like old mine dumps you know so, it’s just like the kind of like-the basic kind of human rights violations-you know. You can see how it can happen-– there- because people no longer think, BELIEVE that they are human. (Shmukler 2012, 22)

Shay states: High-stakes threat of destruction to thumos—to attachments, ideals and ambitions-triggers killing rage against the human source of this threat. It’s in our species nature. (Shay 2002, 251)

In the case of the xenophobic attacks of May 2008, the “human source of this threat” was foreigners and it is worth noting that it was the poor pitted against the poor as no rich foreigners were attacked during this time. During the interview process, which would become the backbone of the script of The Line, I was on a “quest, a search for truth” (Lanzmann in Caruth 1995, 202). There are “two levels of witnessing: the one who provides testimony and the one who bears witness to that testimony” (Cole

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2012, 92). Armed with my Ipad, ethics forms granting me permission to both record and use dialogue, embedded in the research I had done on trauma and well-versed in the psycho-analytic structures, I began interviewing—witnessing. While I wanted to understand the process from neighbour to violent foe, I also wanted to understand how the attacks happened. I would employ “…the interest in details and the interest in specifics” (Lanzmann in Caruth 1995, 203) in an attempt to gain insight into the attacks from the point of view of the victim, the perpetrator and the witness. In the interviews with perpetrators David, Nomsa and Bheki I employed Lanzmann’s “here there is no why” (Lanzmann in Caruth 1995, 204) and questioned the interviewees at the “limit of understanding” (Lanzmann in Caruth 1995, 203). This was indeed fascinating as the ever deepening “here there is no why” offered me a tool to keep digging deeper and deeper in my “quest …for truth” (Lanzmann in Caruth 1995, 202) as researcher. At an Arts and Trauma conference in Johannesburg (Goethe Institute 2011), videographer Nadine Hutton, briefly spoke of her experience as a photojournalist during the attacks. I immediately became interested in her role as “witness” and approached her. Nadine worked as Chief Photographer at the Mail and Guardian for nine years and has since continued her work as a freelance photographer and artist dealing with issues of poverty and migration amongst other things. In the play Nadine offers us a lens into the complexities of the country as well as her intensely personal response to the attacks. “Traumatic memory is not narrative” (Shay 1994, 172). The idea that “an event takes place in a temporal context, with other events happening before, during and after it is an Ancient cultural construction…” (190). “The trauma world knows only is” (191). This was evident in my first interview with Mocambican victim Elisa. She had never spoken of her experience during the attacks and one could sense the great effort she was making to sift through the four years of suppressing this event in her life; moving between her “imperative to tell” (Laub in Caruth 1995, 62) and the “impossibility of telling” (Laub in Caruth 1995, 64). Elisa spoke of her nightmares, of the brutality of the women that she knew from the neighbourhood, of the mob that entered her home and the mercy of the man who saved her from being raped.

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Fig. 7-1 Gabi Harris as Nadine Hutton, The Line, Market Theatre, Johannesburg. Photographer: Ruphin Coudyzer

At the second interview, Elisa looked much happier as she shared that her nightmares, from which she would wake screaming, had ceased after our first interview. She had also been home for the first time in twenty-five years and had told her parents of her ordeal. With her parents, she had decided to take her two children home for Christmas where she would be amongst the community and would be able to process their experience of the attacks. Our third interview took place after their return in January of 2012. In Mowambe, with her parents support, she discussed the attacks with her children as well as the death of their father. She also did a cleansing ritual to mourn the death of her husband. Though the third interview was hard for her, she was able to give a factual and linear account of the attacks. “Severe trauma explodes the cohesion of consciousness” (Shay 1994, 188)…and it is through constructing a cohesive narrative that healing takes place enabling the “survivor to rebuild the ruins of character”(Shay 1994,188). Elisa’s personal journey through the interview process was extraordinary and gave me hope regarding the power of telling one’s story and the healing that may follow.

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Fig. 7-2 Khutjo Green As Elisa, The Line, Baxter Theatre, Cape Town. Photographer: Pat Bromilow-Downing

I had established through my research that the language of trauma is one of dreams, intrusive and repetitive hallucinations, numbing, increased arousal or avoidance. In the interview process, I asked all the interviewees, victim and perpetrator whether they had dreamed post the attacks. With the exception of the ANC councillor, Bheki, who was not physically in the thick of things and perpetrator David, all the interviewees spoke about the nightmares they had experienced. Shay states that traumatic memory is: …experience that reoccurs, either as full sensory replay of traumatic events in dreams and flashbacks, with all things seen, heard, smelled, and felt intact, or as disconnected fragments. These fragments may be inexplicable rage, terror, uncontrollable crying, or disconnected body states and sensations… (Shay 1994, 172)

Nadine spoke of the trigger of burning tyres whilst Elisa spoke of a somatic response when someone touches her neck from behind. Alfred, the Mozambican victim’s trigger is fire while perpetrator Nomsa spoke of the pain in her chest that she still has to this day as she walks toward the Pakistani owned spaza shop. She also spoke of the foreigners “screaming”.

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Fig. 7-3 Khutjo Green as Nomsa, The Line, Market Theatre, Johannesburg. Photographer: Ruphin Coudyzer

“Certain happenings leave indelible and distressing memories— memories to which the sufferer continually returns, and by which he is tormented by day and by night” (Van der Kolk, 1994, npn) There are three sections in The Line of approximately thirty seconds each, referred to as flashbacks. Each flashback is accompanied by music and a pool of white light. “Speechless terror” as referred to by Bessel van der Kolk in the article “The Body Keeps The Score: Memory & the Evolving Psychobiology of Post Traumatic Stress” is the emotional texture I was aiming to create theatrically in the flashback sections. The theatrical tools of lighting, sound and imagery would support “the impossibility of telling” (Caruth 1995, 64). Dori Laub notes, “There are never enough words or the right words …to articulate the story that cannot be fully captured in thought, memory and speech” (in Caruth 1995, 63). The character, struck by the memory triggered is immobilized, whilst the audiences’ imagination is

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activated through lights and sound. While the silence that followed offered the audience a pause in the action of the play, the flashback offered me both a structural tool in the writing and a dramatic tool in performance. As far as the structures of trauma are concerned the repeated flashback device is reflective of the structure of “temporality” (Caruth 2008, 202). With regards to the film Shoah, Felman states, “…the temporality of the film, which disrupts chronology, disrupts a certain kind of linear temporality, even though it deals with history, is reflective of trauma” (in Caruth 1995, 202). Like psychoanalysis, it works “through repetition and through ever deepening circles…” (202). In addition to the three flashbacks sections, there are three attack sections in The Line, which are a result of Felman’s reference to the workings of psychoanalysis as that of “repetition and ever deepening circles” (202). Each of the attack sections structurally break the rhythm the verbatim establishes in the play and dramatically captures the trauma of the attacks. There is a growing intensity in the trauma of the three attack sections which are accompanied by lights and sounds such as: screams, knocking, the sung strains of a female, glass jars knocking against each other, a heartbeat, a camera shutter rapidly opening and closing. The lighting of the three attack sections is a repeated general red state. While red may seem an obvious choice, it felt like the right one as the sight and smell of fire was mentioned in all of the interviews, be it burning tyres, burning homes or the burning of people. The final attack section contains my personal voice as playwright. As previously mentioned, for me, the attacks were a warning. In the soundscape of the final attack of The Line, Nadine’s voice is heard saying, “it’s, it’s, it’s gonna happen again!” This statement would not have felt appropriately placed had it not been inserted in a structural device that the audience was already twice familiar with. The structure of “temporality” (Caruth 2008, 202) impacted the overall structure of The Line. “When a survivor creates a fully realized narrative that brings together the shattered knowledge of what happened… the survivor pieces back together the fragmentation of consciousness that trauma has caused” (Shay 1994, 188). Applied to scriptwriting, I understood that in order for trauma to speak to theatre-making, the storytelling would need to be non-linear and non-chronological, reflecting the fragmentation and shattering trauma causes for the individual.

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Fig. 7-4 Khutjo Green as Alfred, The Line, Market Theatre, Johannesburg. Photographer: Ruphin Coudyzer

My research further revealed that neither victim nor perpetrator was spared during the attacks. Verbatim theatre-maker Robyn Soans states, “If there is one thing I try to nurture in my plays, it is the idea of the degree to which we are all vulnerable. There but for the Grace of G-D go you or I” (Hammond and Steward 2008, 44).While it occurred to me that Elisa’s would be a story of healing as she shifted from victim to survivor, it struck me that a metaphor had indeed emerged. The perpetrator Nomsafinds herself a victim of the nightmares that haunt her sleep, while Nadine speaks of the deep depression she fell into after documenting the attacks for seven days. Victim, perpetrator and witness are crossing “the line” from witness to victim, perpetrator to victim and victim to survivor. The metaphor of “the line” is embodied in both the staging and the scenic design with the positions of witness, victim and perpetrator clearly demarcated. I chose to structure the play around the narratives of Nadine and Elisa that not only have an emotional arc but also a strong beginning, middle and end. ”Traumatic memories”, according to van der Kolk and van der Hart “are unassimilated scraps of overwhelming experiences, which need to be integrated… and be transformed into narrative language” (in Caruth 1995, 176) While Nadine moves from witness to victim and Elisa moves

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from victim to survivor, the play is peppered with argument, discussion, discovery and conflict that intercept these two journeys that ultimately resolve at the end of the play.

Fig. 7-5 The Line Baxter Theatre, Cape Town. Photographer: Pat BromilowDowning

In conclusion, my point of departure in the creation of The Line was not theatre but trauma. My research on trauma structured the making of the play. While the narrative of The Line deconstructs what happened during the attacks and why, the play itself is braced by the structures of trauma. The compelling personal stories are told unchronologically, interrupted by flashbacks and framed with repeated sequences reflective of the structures discussed in Caruth’s Trauma: Explorations In Memory (1995). The “structures of trauma” offered me strong parameters and indeed, freedom, within which to carve the story of The Line. The complexity of the characters in The Line combined with its pedestrian language resulted in a profound humanity in the play. “The word ‘theatre’ is derived from the Greek, theatron, meaning ‘place of seeing’”Cole 2010, 6). I believe the humanity of the play connected the audience to the work allowing them not only a deep engagement with the play itself but with themselves, as South Africans contemplating their own “fragility of goodness” (Shay 1994, 211).

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Fig.7-6 Khutjo Green as Elisa, Gabi Harris as Translator, The Line, Market Theatre, Johannesburg. Photographer: Ruphin Coudyzer

References Brook, Peter. The Empty Space. England: McGibbon and Kee, 1968. Caruth, Cathy. Trauma: Explorations In Memory. Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins University, 1995. Cole, Catherine M. Performing South Africa’s Truth Commission: Stages of Transition. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2010. Conquergood, Dwight. “Interventions and Radical Research.” In The Performance Studies Reader, edited by Bial, 145-156. Henry. New York: Routledge, 2004. Felman, Shoshana. “Education and Crisis, or the Vicissitudes of Teaching.” In TRAUMA: Exploration in Memory, edited by Caruth, C, 13-60. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins, 1991. Flockemann, Miki. Traumas and Transformations: Fictions which play with what "they say.” 2004. Accessed May 10, 2011. Available from: http://www.thefreelibrary.com. Hammond, Will and Dan Steward. Verbatim: Contemporary Documentary Theatre. London: Oberon, 2008.

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Heilpern, John. Review of Antony Sher’s Primo Levi: Can the Holocaust Be Staged? July 25, 2005. Accessed May 9, 2011. Avaiable from: http://www.observer.com/node/37349. Lanzmann, Claude. “The Obscenity Of Understanding: An evening with Claude Lanzmann.” In TRAUMA: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, 200-220. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Laub, Dori. “Truth and Testimony: The Process And The Struggle.” In TRAUMA: Exploration in Memory edited by Cathy Caruth, 61-75. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Lifton, Rober J. “An Interview with Robert Jay Lifton.” In TRAUMA: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, 128–147. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Martin, Carol. Dramaturgy of the Real on the World Stage. England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Pinnock, Patrica S. Skyline. Cape Town: David Philip Publishers, 2000. Shay, Jonathan. Achilles In Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York: Scribner, 1994. —. “Killing Rage: Physis or Nomos-Or Both?” In War and Violence in Ancient Greece, edited by Hans van Wees, 31-56 London: Duckworth and the Classical Press of Wales, 2000. —. Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. New York: Scribner, 2002. Sher, Antony. Primo Time. London: Nick Hern Publishers, 2005. Shmukler, Gina. The Line. Unpublished manuscript, 2003. Van Der Kolk, Bessel and Onno Van Der Hart, “The Intrusive Past.” In TRAUMA: Explorations in Memory edited by Cathy Caruth, 158- 182. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Van Der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps The Score: Memory & the evolving pshycobiology of post traumatic stress. 1994. Accessed May, 2010. Available from: http://www.traumapages.com/a/vanderk4.php.

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The Cardinal Archbishop of Paris in conversation with Elie Wiesel said: The real question is not the question of the crimes against mankind,against humanity.The real question is that these crimes are crimes of mankind, crimes of humanity. (Caruth 1995, 207)

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Author’s Note I am Jewish, South African and grew up under Apartheid. I have always had a fascination with the Holocaust and have been intrigued by the capacity man has to commit evil. My Zaida (grandfather) fortunately arrived in Johannesburg just before the Nazi’s took control of Poland. However, the Nazi’s in a roundup of his village, Ivye, killed his mother and five siblings. I am scared that we seem not to have learnt from the past and Genocides continue. For me, the xenophobic attacks that took place throughout South Africa in May 2008 were a warning—a seemingly unheard warning—and that was an impetus for me in the creation of this work. The Line is the culmination of research on trauma and theatre-making. Over a five-month period I conducted interviews in Soweto, Johannesburg. Set against the backdrop of the South African xenophobic attacks of May 2008, The Line explores the “fragility of goodness”1 and engages with both victim and perpetrator. The Line explores the process of perpetration from neighbor to violent foe and attempts to re-humanize both perpetrator and victim whilst investigating what makes good people do bad things and how one crosses ‘the line’ so to speak. The Line was first presented at The Wits Arts and Literature Experience in May 2012 and shortly thereafter was invited to the Market Theatre Johannesburg, South Africa. It has subsequently been performed at The Baxter Theatre Centre, Harare International Festival of Arts (HIFA), Thusong Community Centre (Alexandra Township), Grahamstown National Arts Festival, The Biko Center , Hilton Arts Festival and Sasol School’s Festival. (Copyright: July 2012) See endnote2 for acknowledgements.

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THE LINE CREATIVE TEAM Director: Gina Shmukler Production Design: Niall Griffin Music: Charl-Johan Lingenfelder

CAST Actor One: Gabi Harris Actor Two: Khutjo Green

CHARACTERS Elisa

A Black Mozambican woman in her fourties

Nadine Hutton

A White South African Female photojournalist in her thirties

Bheki

A South African Black Male in his thirties, a senior councillor in the ANC (African National Congress) on the ground

David

A South African Black male in his thirties

Nomsa

A young Black South African woman

Alfred

A Black Mozambican man in his late thirties

Researcher

A White South African woman in her late thirties

Translator

A young South African White woman

Actor 1 plays all White characters Actor 2 plays all Black characters

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TIME: 2011 PLACE: Johannesburg, South Africa

About the Text The Line is created from interviews with victims and perpetrators of the xenophobic attacks that took place in South Africa in May 2008. The text is quoted verbatim. The language is punctuated in the script so as best to indicate the rhythm and speech patterns. Where punctuation is missing, the phrase is continuous. All names except Nadine Hutton and places (where necessary) have been changed to protect the identity of those concerned

About the Staging Two actresses perform the various roles. They move seamlessly from character to character. The set consists of: a wooden bench, a Morris chair, a wooden chair with steel legs, a hessian floor cloth, a backdrop of hanging glass bottles with enclosed photographs, several found objects hanging above the furniture. The props are an Ipad and one large glass jar containing loose photographs. The metaphor of “crossing the line” is reflected in the design and staging of the play. The wooden chair with steel structure is the witness and researcher position placed upstage at the tip of a triangle. The wooden bench is the victim’s position stage right. The Morris chair is the perpetrators’ while the arms of the Morris chair is the politicians. The characters respective journey’s from witness to victim, perpetrator to victim and victim to survivor is reflected in the staging. However this spatial delineation does not apply in the attack and flashback sections. A musical soundscape accompanies each of the flashback and attack sections. The music for the three attacks was inspired by Frans Bak’s compositions for the Danish television series, The Killing. Attack One is linked to Elisa’s story, Attack Two to Nadine and Attack Three to both

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Alfred and the warning of revolution. The sound in each of the attacks reflects experiences specific to the above. The soundscape for the flashbacks is directly related to the character’s experiences and their respective triggers, be it emotional, somatic or sensory and contains sounds as such. The lighting is simple guiding the audience through the emotional and textural landscape of the play. While most of the play is a general natural light used simply to guide the audience’s focus, the flashbacks are a sudden shift into an isolated pool of white light illuminating the actor only while the attacks are a general red. Duration: Sixty Minutes

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THE LINE Voice-over of Gina Shmukler as Researcher I am starting interviewing tomorrow. In Soweto. I met with Patty. She has done a lot of work with refugees and I am meeting her to give me advice regarding the interview process. We meet at Scusi in Parkview—we both drink Freezoccinos. We talk about the project in general and her work—she is an American living in South Africa—she loves it here. It struck me later that I had never questioned her “foreignness” cos she was White—she told me later she was recently fired from her job—they don’t want foreigners in government institutions she said. The interview—she suggested I thank them for their time, ask how they would like to be known—their name or pseudonym etc, set up limits for the interview—always make them feel they have control in the interview and Actor One as Researcher enters overlapping with Voice-over She begins typing on Ipad, which is pre-set on chair …are not pressured to answer anything they are not comfortable with…and to take some food with me—a chicken and some rolls she suggested—eat and talk! I drove home trying to figure out when I was going to buy the chickens and how I was going to keep the other chicken fresh whilst conducting the first interview… I had two that day and was assuming they would be at least an hour each so how would the chicken do in the heat of my car and on and on… My husband responded: you’re taking chickens…and rolls…buy the big boxes of biscuits. Voice-over fades out

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RESEARCHER: Brilliant—problem solved! Nadine Hutton. Photojournalist and artist. Actor One places Ipad on floor. It becomes the recording device as used in the interview process. Actor One as Nadine NADINE: Ja well, Essentially Mozambique borders on Zululand— you know—its—you know like these are artificial borders you know so ja its—you know xenophobia doesn’t make sense, (laughs) you know—the idea of the foreigner doesn’t make sense—you know um ja— essentially its all down to the Berlin Conference you know—scramble for Africa ja… Into Ipad Hello hi … so what do you wanna know? (laughs) NADINE:

I was with the Mail and Guardian for nine years. I started there in 97 as an intern. I eventually got hired and then— kind of—became chief photographer by default. (laughs) All my friends were essentially teenage boys and they all had uh SCOPE magazine and SCOPE actually had THE best photojournalism. Uhm they like they ran, the editor photographers at large were Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva—um they they ran the work of um Ken Oosterbrook and Kevin Carter—all that like kind of Bang Bang3 stuff…so you know I was really a depressed teenager so I really thought it would be an interesting way to die (laugh) essentially, essentially. Being a photojournalist in this country is something extraordinary especially if you—want to listen to people—if you if you want to be a part of people—to kind of like—embed yourself in communities—of course like the embedded language only started like in early 2000—but embedding yourself with communities, its just so amazing—like the experiences that I’ve had—I’ve been like EVERYWHERE in this country like

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EVERYWHERE—probably the only place that I haven’t really been is Pongola so like I’ve been everywhere—like Northern Cape, Eastern Cape—um—like I’ve spent time with the Bushmen, like you know the King of the Bushmen like like bummed R10 off me to photograph him—(chuckles) that kind of thing. Um like I got pushed by um Mbeki’s bodyguards into this shelving thing and Mbeki picked me up you know—kind of—and and shat out his bodyguards for doing that—just like weird things like that—like just meeting incredible people—being welcomed into peoples homes—I guess like just realizing how much—(sigh) how incredible it is to become part of something—even if its just for a while? Actor Two enters as David RESEARCHER: David. Thirty year old South African male. The missing fourth finger was due to an accident he had on a seesaw. Voice-over of Gina Shmukler and David from original interview So firstly thank you very much for talking to me. Um… (she clears throat pause) Researcher with Voice-over Do you have a family? DAVID:

Ja, I do have a family (Reasercher: uhu) ja at Alexandra (Researcher: kay)—eh 14th Avenue—ja—you know that place—14th Avenue Alexandra?

RESEARCHER: Um do you have a wife? DAVID:

No

RESEARCHER: Girlfriend—do you have kids? DAVID:

No

RESEARCHER: No kids and um what do you do?

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DAVID:

Ay I do nothing—just sit at home

RESEARCHER: Why DAVID:

(sigh) ay… there’s no job.

RESEARCHER: Hey? DAVID:

Thats why I sit at home—there’s no job mm. I did go to school but I didn’t I didn’t finish up my matric ne— money.

RESEARCHER: Okay RESEARCHER: Are you close to your family? Silence RESEARCHER: Do you see them? DAVID:

Sometimes I ja.

RESEARCHER: (overlapping) Sometimes. RESEARCHER: So…you’re not close to your family—brothers? DAVID:

Ja I do have a brother eh in Alexandra. He’s younger than me.

RESEARCHER: What does he do? DAVID:

He’s a tsotsi. (laughs)

RESEARCHER: A tsotsi. (laughs) RESEARCHER: So just your normal day to day you wake up—what? DAVID:

Yesterday um I was with my friends and then… actually yesterday, we did discuss that that we—we wanna go to um go “hafile Orange Grove”, go Balfour ne—because

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actually, we want to make a plan tomorrow to go to Balfour to hijack some cars. DAVID:

Like you know what we do ne…

Researcher interrupts RESEARCHER: So today I’m saving somebody from being hijacked because you have to do an interview. They laugh DAVID:

You know what we do exactly ne—like lets say for instance you have a VW Polo ne and then you want to RENEW that car and then you just call us and order that car and then we will organize the car and bring it to you—you’ll see by yourself—and then you give me 4000 and I share with my friends. Citi Golf, Polo, GTIs …uh—BMWs ja ja—those are them— ja Polo, Citi Golf, GTIs, BMWs—that’s it.

RESEARCHER: Mercedes? DAVID:

No

RESEARHER:

(under breath) Good

DAVID:

Oh you are driving a Mercedes?

RESEARCHER: No! Yes, I am. DAVID:

Okay, ay, we don’t—we only—from VWs and BMWs mm—that’s all. Ja BMW 325 IS—we call it Isaac Satan.

RESEARCHER: What do you call it? DAVID:

Isaac Satan the BMW 325 IS—Isaac Satan…

RESEARCHER: Isaac?

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DAVID:

It’s Isaac Devil—325 IS ja— we call it that there in Gomorrah, Alexandra. Isaac Satan.

Pause RESEARCHER: Were you involved in the attacks and are you okay to talk about it? DAVID:

Ja I was involved in ish uh uh uh at uh Gomorrah. I was there actually, ja I was there.

RESEARCHER: Let’s start at the beginning—did you grow up amongst foreign people? DAVID:

Yes I grew up there with foreigners.

RESEARCHER: And where do they mostly come from? DAVID:

Maputo, Zimbabwe.

RESEARCHER: Do you have any foreign friends? like… DAVID:

Did you grow up

Aish aish aish no no no no no no no—my friends are from Alexandra—that’s all—my friends are from Alexandra.

RESEARCHER: Why? DAVID:

Ay (with sigh) eh I don’t know—I don’t know because eh (pause/sigh) ay it’s hard.

RESEARCHER: It’s hard sure—you can… take your time. DAVID:

At Alex ne—I grew up in Alex-from a young age—I grew up knowing all the people from Alex you understand and one thing I know for sure is that crime is very high-mm. Eh Pen from uh 1st to 4th avenue—ja from 1st to 4th— it’s full of amma foreigners you understand—so they do a

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lot of things—some of them have shops in 4th, they’ve got taverns in 4th avenue. They take our jobs. They go out with our girlfriends. The Zulu girlfriends, Sotho girlfriends—those are grow up in Alexandra and then— what makes me angry(in Zulu)—is that they’re always in the streets—in 4th—mm—so I just don’t like them. They commit crime. Voice-over of Gina Shmukler and Bheki from original interview RESEARCHER: Okay. So firstly thank you for shh—giving me of your time. Um I just want to ask you, you’re obviously South African (Bheik:yes) and where did you grow up? BHEKI:

I,Um I was, I was born in Soweto—grew up in Soweto Johannesburg and you know…

Actor Two as Bheki BHEKI:

(clears throat) Just to put it like straight-line, I was born here. Yes this is where I was born. Right in Soweto.Right in the heart of Soweto. I’ll tell you that I’m I’m one of the senior leaders in the ANC (uhu)—in the councils. What happens is we’ve got—what you call blocks. We divide ourselves into blocks so in each block it has ITS leaders. With the blocks say you have six blocks you take two leaders from each block and we become the executive, yes. The executive GOES to the branches and that’s where you mobilize people to say how do you view this—how do you view a situation? You put that thinking into peoples mind. The attacks (pause) yes—we were involved. I’ll tell that I was involved not from the negative side of it but from the positive side of it …to say that those who are not born from this country—they need to go back to their own countries. We just came out of the same situation as them and they had their own independence before us so WHY are we supposed to carry the burden. We need to

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to to do things for ourselves FIRST so that we can be able to do for others. You will see that in Africa—there is a challenge in Africa—and this challenge its making these people to come down to South Africa and when we just allow people to just come in, it’s it’s gonna be a boomerang. There’ll be nobody in Africa—everybody will want to come and belong in South Africa. So, my position was to say let’s make these people to go back to their countries-we must take away what makes them to stay here. RESEARCHER: Elisa. Mozambican, Zulu speaking, spaza shop owner. She came to South Africa with her brother in 1985. Voice-over of Gina Shmukler and Elisa from original interview Actor One as Translator Pause as translator receives question from researcher Actor One translates TRANSL:

Ubukeka ujabule kakhulu namhlanje.

Actor Two as Elisa ELISA:

Okay—Ukuza kwenu lana, umenze akhululeke ngal ezi zinto ezenzeka, ngoba akaze akhulume ngaphambilini.

TRANSL:

When the last time you came, you made her relieved about these things that happened- because she had never spoken before.

ELISA:

Ngenkathi ngifika ekhaya—e-Mowambe—ngatshela umndeni wonke ngakho. Konke okwenzeka kim, nomake bahleze bakhathazekile.

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TRANSL:

When she arrived home to Mowambe, she told the entire family what had happened to her because they had been worried about her brother.

ELISA:

Umndenzi wonke usakhathazekile, kodwa ngoba mina ngisaphila, ngasinda lokhu kubanika ithemba lokuthi umfowethu naye usezobuya emndenini wethu. Ukuba tshela konke lokhu bekubuhlungu, kodwa lokhu kungisezile ekukhululeni umoya wami.

TRANSL:

The whole family is still worried, but because she is still alive, it gave them the hope that her brother is going to return to their home. Telling them this, it was painful but it helped in calming her spirit.

ELISA:

Beku okokuqala—eminyakeni eyi—25. Beku kade emva kwempi eyenzeka,ngaleso sikhathi besi lapha eSouth Africa. Bengi cabanga ukuthi nomndeni le ekhaya nawo washona, kodwa ke basaphila.Ngiineminyaka eyi— 25ngingawuboni umndeni wami.

TRANSL:

It had been twenty-five years. It was as if, after all the bad things that had happened—he was still in South Africa at the time-she had thought that her family at home had passed away, but they are still alive. It had been twenty-five years since she last saw them.

ELISA:

Uma wakhala izinyembezi ngekathi engibona, nobaba naye wakhala, nawo wonke umndeni wa jabula ukungi bona, nami ngakhala.

TRANSL:

Her mother cried when she saw her—so did her father— and the whole entire family was happy when they saw her—and then she cried.

BHEKI:

You’ve got, you’ve got your Kathlehong, you’ve got Thembisa, you’ve got your Pretoria, you’ve got your township. What we did was we needed to intimidate them—take what they have like I’ve said—if you’ve got a, a house or a shack or a spaza shop we, understand— we make sure we take that away from you so that you

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can be able to go back and come with that mind of a spaza shop in your own area—in where you were born so that you can uplift your own area. That’s what we needed to do—to say—you you can’t just do as you please here. This is ours. We on our own we are not okay yet. We just came out of this situation of the Apartheid and here we are now—we have to share with you—we are still not okay. We’ve been telling these employees not to hire these people. Now, when when you look at the entire Gauteng province, you will see that you’ve got more of these people working here, and I can tell that they are working illegally which is not okay—I can tell you again that the goods they sell, it’s not GOOD for people—their things are Fong Kongs if you know the term. DAVID:

I was involved in ish Gomorrah. I was there actually—I was there. There was a meeting neh at San Kopano—ja, about the foreigners. The council—the Alex council called the meeting. Then we decided to hold a meeting—with them—and then (laughs) whoo. (The questions are becoming more difficult to answer) Alright so okay—we have decided to catch this meeting at the San Kopano with our councilor. They ask questions—what are we doing (laughs) so we wanted to address the issues of the foreigner— Yo yo yo ja almost everyone in Alexandra was at the meeting(sigh)—ja May 2008. After we have decided to to—after the meeting—we decide to to go and attack the foreigners after THREE days—Thursday Friday Saturday—and then we went there to attack on Saturday NIGHT (laughs).

Voice-over of Bheki from original interview

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BHEKI:

You see—Have you been to Alexandra? Do you think people are supposed to stay there? When you put your picture into Alexandra—do you think its—do you think you can you can stay there? Can you stay there?

DAVID:

On Saturday ne eh—from the morning after just waking up—I went to visit my friends. I ask my friends what’s going to happen—ja ja ja—the friends I work with, we are together all the time. So I went to them just to ask them what is happening and if they’ve got any plans they must put them into action. Then we went to the men’s hostel to organize guns. Amapangao.From there we went back to San Kopano. Aish eh eh eh eh eh eh (chuckle)—ja ne—ey… I— (whistle)—am not comfortable discussing—aish. Okay okay—some of the weapons they they come from the police. We take the guns—actually we steal the guns—some of the guns we shoot the cops—take the guns from them.

D: Alexandra ne—most people in Alex—its mostly men and then the woman are not as many as the men—okay so— mostly their aim is to find weapons-guns ja. There are not so many people that go to schools in Alexandra. The people that go to schools are from the East Bank—ama snob—so we don’t deal with those—we don’t deal with those—we don’t care anyway with the people who stay in East Bank. The point is at Alexandra—EVERYONE in Alex has a gun (chuckles). The gun EH—if you have a gun, I will know how to make money—point it, aim at someone and take whatever you want. NADINE:

I was aware that that there were incidences happening, um, but I get called on the Sunday—I’m trying to think what the date was—but it was (sigh) pretty much the Sunday before Ernesto—the Mozambican4 was burnt. Um my brother-in-law called me like very,very disturbed saying that he’d driven on the street past my house—

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which is Commissioner—and he’d seen um about 5 five men attacking one man and like jumping on his head in the—in the—on the pavement— like against the pavement—um—and I realized it had come like three blocks—you know. I called Paul, who um I worked with at the M& G and I said this is, this this is, not just an isolated incident—it looks like its happening everywhere—and then it was weird cos I actually hadn’t slept the previous night cos I’d been out on a date (laugh)—we ended up talking the entire night—and I had just gotten into bed at about like seven o’ clock eight o’ clock in the morning when I got this phone call. I,I,I understood the historical importance of it immediately but also just like the need to be there—to witness you know. I don’t know, I hate the word—like witness but there is something within that ja. DAVID:

We went to San Kopano to meet other people. We waited for other people to come because because we already agreed we are going there on Saturday NIGHT—so we DID wait there and then people come—woo—close to (pause)—too many—three four hundred, four to five hundred (hand action description of numbers) so its till seven o’ clock late. We singing ANC song and everything-we doing the sloganning-come guerilla…things like that—we’re busy shooting our guns…

NADINE:

There’s this weird kind of like almost like bravado machismo of like boys—all the boy photographers were like, you know, like HARD ON central—for like all the blood and the guts and the guns and all of that all. I’d say 90% of them were like oh my G-D it’s like The Bang Bang Club.

Attack One: Dramatic lighting shift accompanied by soundscape DAVID:

We didn’t give a warning—we just go there. Around a ten o’clock. We went to Pen first ne—where these

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foreigners were staying. We decided to go there—to FOUR hostel (clicks fingers) and took them out—(clicks fingers) took them out of their rooms and beat them—hit them .We threw water at them and hit them with sjamboks. So that you know ne—if you wanna- its not just water—it’s water with salt you pour. Ja if we hit you they will become a cut ne-so that salt will enter the wound—you’ll feel a pain there, you’ll feel a pain. And then men’s hostel—the very same things-mm- and then hit them – take them out of their rooms and then…(pause) some of them burnt (his voice lowers) but I didn’t burn them I was there… ELISA:

Ya bengibazi, abasestradeni…

bengibajwayele,

beku’abantu

TRANSL:

Ja, she was used to them—she knew them—as people from around there—the neighbourhood

ELISA:

Ya bengibabuza abanye ngamagama-—u Lindiwe, Thembigile.ukuthi, ‘Ubani, ungayenza kanjani into efana nale’.

TRANSL:

She asked them by name—why they’re doing this today?

ELISA:

Ayi… bebathi: ‘namhlanje asazani.’

TRANSL:

They say today, no we don’t know each other today.

ELISA:

Bengibabuza, nje, njengabantu engibajwayele ukuthi bangang’jikela kanjani, bayenze into efana nalena.

TRANSL:

She asked them because she was used to seeing them. She was familiar with them, she knew them.

ELISA:

Eya… nokuthi noma… njengoba bekusebusuku, ukuthi babone ukuthi nami ngibabonile… ngiyabazi.

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TRANSL:

She asked them because she recognised them. The reason why she used their names is to show them that she recognised them.

ELISA:

Bengibona bashintshile vele.

TRANSL:

Their eyes had changed.

ELISA:

Bebenobuso vele obokulwa, bebengezangangenjabulo, vele, bebeze ngokuzongihlasela.

TRANSL:

They had a face of fighting. They had one purpose—to fight. They came to attack them.

ELISA:

Labafana laba abangenile baqale bashaya lendoda beyinga phakathi. Ubaba.

TRANSL:

These boys that came in—they first beat the man who was inside. The father.

ELISA:

Yebo, izingane zami, zibone yonke into e’nzekele. Lapha emkhukwini. Ba bone yonki’into

TRANSL:

The kids, they saw everything that happened, there in the shack, they saw everything.

ELISA:

Amadoda naBafazi

TRANSL:

It was both men and women.

ELISA:

Babone umtana bem’dlengula. Labafazi bambonile bemdlengula

TRANSL:

They saw the child being raped. The woman saw the child being raped.

ELISA:

Hhayi, bake batshela legenge le ukuthi: ‘kudala sibatshelile ukuthi bahambe vele, yenzani noma yini ukuthi baze bahambe.’ Abazange bazame ukusiza ingane, bathathe izinto e-shop bahamba.

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189

It was them that actually told these rapists…

Overlapping …that it’s been a long time we warned them they should go—do as you please so they can go. They just took the stock and left. ELISA:

Bekumele vele siphume ngoba, besebezo shisa umkhuku

TRANSL:

They had to escape because they were about to burn the shack.

ELISA:

Ubaba naye, ngoba bebam’limazile kakhulu kwamele ahlale

TRANSL:

The father so badly beaten stayed. She prayed.

ELISA:

Mangiphuma la, huwe ozongihambela phambili la engiya khona, yonke indawo , ngoba bengingakazazi ukuthi mangiphuma la ngiyaphi or, ya .

ELISA:

Bengibabambile, Petunia.

ngapha

nangapha—Sibusiso

no

End of Attack One leads into Elisa’s Flashback, accompanied by lighting shift and sound ELISA:

Hey’ nami angazi ukuthi yini eyenze lobaba angisize ngenkathi bafuna ukungidlengula;

TRANSL:

She has no idea why he saved her from the rape.

ELISA:

Bengimazi njenge khastama.

TRANSL:

He was one of her customers

ELISA:

Eya… uye wathi ‘muyekeni, anikwazi ukubulala ubaba, nabantwana, nomama’

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ELISA:

She says he yelled ‘no leave her—you can’t kill the father, the children and then the mother.’

BHEKI:

When you say the attacks (pause)—they had to do with murder, with rape, with all that—same as as power, same as change. They all come like that. You know, to make an omelette you need to break few eggs. And that’s what happened—like any war that ever happened—it happened because wrong was done and right had to happen. I’ll tell you one, I’ll tell you that, (cough), when people are angry and moreover where we come from -from the Apartheid regime—you see, it had so much effect on us. We, we got affected and we still in a position of having this and glorifying this and we had to share it at that time. I think people are not accepting that very well. Like I say, half of this country as we speak right now, it’s the youth and they are not employed—they can’t get jobs—they can’t even drive a taxi—they’re not educated. What options do we give them? It’s it’s a question of South Africans not having options.

Voice-over of Gina Shmukler from original interview RESEARCHER: So thank you very much for participating, so we’ll just start…Nomsa. RESEARCHER: South African female. Mom of two. Thirty-five years old. Lives in Slovo Park. She wants to be a businesswoman. Actor Two as Nomsa NOMSA:

Yes I buy, every day. Every day—I buy bread there—I buy milk. There’s no place that I can buy—because if I buy here, I don’t take a taxi to go to Shoprite or to mall—ja.Pakistan—the shop owners, the shop owners are Pakistan, yes. Plenty plenty.

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Africans, they have a spaza shop but they never buy anything. If you go and want a 12 mil—you won’t find it—woo—they don’t have money. They don’t have money to buy the good stuff. You want a maybe Stoney cooldrink—just a simple thing—they don’t have .So the Pakistan, they have everything. Yes they offer, they offer a service—that’s that’s true. NADINE:

You know I I I once um—over a few years I was doing quite a bit of photography in Yeoville, and there was this one guy that I had always met—we were like quite friendly. Like when I first met him, he was selling shoes, and then when I next met him he was selling Chappies and little sweets cos he got robbed, so he was um—he changed his thing cos he didn’t have money to buy stock of shoes. Then he was like building up his capital till he can sell this and sell that and sell that. Then he got very lucky and met some like Norwegian woman (laugh), and then he moved with her to Norway (laugh).He was a bright guy, he was a bright guy. Ja. You know I’ve met doctors that are car guards in Durban—there’s a Congolese doctor doing car guarding at the Bat Centre. The people make their way.

RESEARCHER: Alfred. Mozambican male. Lives in Slovo Park. Fixes cars. Actor Two as Alfred ALFRED:

People from that side eh—South Africans—not working and when you see us working—they got a jealous. Aw, you aw, got to work for that guy—I don’t want to work for that guy cos that guy is going to give you three hundred bucks—I want a thousand rand. I said for me three hundred bucks is better. I can eat today, tomorrow and all the week. Is bad. He said, no it’s why we have to beat you guys to go back to your homes cos you are cepting the small money. Ja.

BHEKI:

I’m trying to say to you, the fact of the matter is, it’s the money. If you as an employer, you see that ,if I employ

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this one—I’ll part with so much money—and if I employ this one, I’m going to have to give this person this much—and this person is okay with it—you’ll settle for that. So hence I’m saying this was something that has been pushed into this corner where it came to, and the result of it were not good—were very bad—but something had to be done to show the one on top, our bosses and even the CEO of the country to say—if you are in your office and wearing your Armani suit, don’t think that that is what is happening down here—because down here it’s it’s a disaster. NADINE:

Those East Rand townships—uh those East Rand squatter camps—are fucking dreadful .You know it’s like the worst of the worst. A lot of them are on like old mine-lands so it’s incredibly dangerous to live there— because there’s sink holes. There’s shafts that just suddenly open up. You know you’re living on poisoned land — like old mine dumps you know so, it’s just like the kind of like—the basic kind of human rights violations—you know, You can see how it can happen— there—because people no longer think, BELIEVE that they are human. It’s, it’s,it’s completely inhumane you know—there’s like NO services. Like Germiston itself, like Ekurhuleni, I lived there. I lived there for a while—there’s nothing. Like the whole of Germiston is failing—it’s all, it’s all about the gold—the gold isn’t there anymore. No wonders it’s so bad there— it was so bad in Alex as well—in the poorest places you know…

Nadine looks at the original photographs on the Ipad. They are not visible to the audience. NADINE:

This is a Basotho woman whose shack was…There was a whole bunch of Basotho woman, Basotho people living in this one section and they got accused of being foreigners but they’re Basotho from South Africa not Basotho from Lesotho...you know. The only thing that survived were like small bits of metal.

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ALFRED:

193

I don’t trust. There can be again, it can repeat again this thing. Ay I don’t trust no more. I can’t trust on that because I saw it on my eyes. No, the people bleeding, foreigners bleeding, burning the shacks there—little woman, little shacks. I just came out from there, go to that house I talking about. From there until today I never put my leg there. Nah—I, I can’t. I can’t go back there. I don’t trust that place. It was very bad on that day.

NADINE:

I remember there’s this one photograph of this guy wearing…like a blue cloth around his head. I’m not sure if it was like a sweater—that he’s just—kind of like to anonymise himself. He had been spotted at several of the East Rand townships—um by photographers—always edging on the, um the violence—so photographers identified him as one of the ringleaders. He wasn’t just at Ramaphosaville—he was at Primrose—he was um at in Boksburg. He was, he was all around so he was definitely and like (sigh) rumour whatever—was that he was um Zulu—but not Inkatha Zulu, ANC Zulu. He had this, um like, m- machete you know, panga jaum. I remember, I remember I remember—I forgot who actually got a photograph of him—he’s like kind of standing up there on top of a hill—like edging people on.

NOMSA:

We were happy when it was coming coming ‘94 because they are promising us that everything is going to be okay. Every people are going—their suffering is going out now—we are going to get houses—we are going to get jobs, they are going to create job—but there is no job! Look at this houses—only one bedroom with how many children? These RDP houses—but they said—when that time—there were uh Apartheid, they said they will build us a matches boxes houses you’ll see—but now this is worse. Electricity is what? We are buying electricity we are using cards—now I buy twenty-three rands—it takes

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me two days—we are suffering—really suffering my sister. Nadine looks at the original photographs on the Ipad. They are not visible to the audience. NADINE:

This is outside in Primrose. You know it’s like I spent my whole teenage years. This is Rietfontein road. It’s really long. It’s a kilometer wide-full of people lying, like this, because there wasn’t anymore space in the police station. So this entire road—this like main road through—was just like people—and colored blankets ja—it was it was just like (pause) it was …(her voicetrails) it really freaked me out because I spent most of my teenage years there—it’s where I went to school. All of these places are really close to here—Primrose is fifteen minutes, Jeppe police station is two minutes drive from here—that is the thing that affected me mostly— it’s—it’s home, it’s here!

Attack Two: Dramatic lighting shift accompanied by soundscape NOMSA:

It just happen. You know it just happened, cos we are angry. Ja we forming, maybe a, a…we just make a company so we talk. Today we are going there, we are going there today to take these thing off these people. They will never do shop in our place, we are suffering because of them, we don’t get because of them, we don’t know even to make a spaza shop because of these people—because the people—they’re don’t coming to you to buy they coming to these people so (click) later— we go there. Ja I was singing ‘ma bahambe they must go they must go yeah they must go. This is not their place, this is not their place they must go!

NADINE:

We came here to the police station and there were like thousands of people streaming in—and we started driving around town—and people were just like—one of

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the saddest things like really—I was—you know like the blind Zimbabwean beggars—just like carrying what they could but also trying to navigate the streets and kind of also having lost their eyes. We’d find groups of people and they’d be travelling on their own. It was just like… it fucking did my head in! Ja …ja he’s like looking right back at me (pause). Well you feel a bit sick as well—you kind of like get the feeling like maybe what I’m doing is wrong? As much as he is a victim, he also like he’s one of the few that— the reason why the picture’s so strong is because he’s looking back at you. A lot of people asked, ‘why are you doing this to us—why are you doing this to us?’ Not why are you taking pictures of us—but why are YOU and YOUR people doing this to us?’ DAVID:

Eh I had a sjambok and a panga this side. So ja …ay…a panga, its a big knife. After burning, we left them there—after burning them and then—f rom San Kopano to hostel eh—you know the London Road ja—you know Tsutsumane—you don’t know Tsutsumane... the RDP houses ja ja—we went to Tsutsumane—there also the foreigners who stays there—and then we went there breaking windows and doors and then uh some of them-some of the group members wanted to take their children—um they almost did that—the foreigners children—and then we had a leader he actually said to them, ‘don’t even think about hitting the children ja because the children don’t know anything—they are still young’. I agree with that. I don’t hit any children. I only went for the adults ja—mothers and fathers ja-and then we kick them out—but they don’t go out to the Far East or London Road—they have to go to Pen where they will find taxis to leave.

NADINE:

He was posing. He was posing I wasn’t far away from him at all. Um I did shoot this with an 80-200—um so maybe, maybe he was like—I’m here and maybe there by the window there—maybe a little bit further.

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Oh ja of course—well you’re obviously more afraid when you’re shooting perpetrators—cos you never know if they’re going to turn on you because what makes you know—a Mozambican a foreigner and a white person not? You know, its like—nothing. NOMSA:

They must go, vele, they must go. This is not their place they must go. They take our jobs they take our jobs. The boys beating this man—this man but run away so us we take things there—even me—I DID take –there in Slovo. I take polish, juice, sweets, chocolates—I did take these things—it was really big shop there in Slovo Park. This, this of Pakistan—yes we did hit Pakistan in 2008 so that we want them to go back to his home so that we can run this shop of them.

End Attack Two Actor Two walks upstage and collects a glass jar containing loose photographs. Actor Two as Elisa looks at the photographs during this next scene TRANSL:

In Ramaphosa, she told her brother what happened and what she saw and her brother told her that he thought she was not alive. He said:

ELISA:

‘Bengibona engathi awusaphili, awusaphili? So la oya khona noma ungathola indawo yokuhlala, uziyenzele into bo’uyenza ukuz’uphile, uchubeke ngakho’

TRANSL:

‘Wherever you’re going and you find a place to stay— just do what you have been doing to survive and keep doing it’. She prays for him. She still thinks he’s alive.

ELISA:

Cha, angizange ngikwate ngoba ungisindisile kakhulu, ngikengambonga, ngisambonga namanje.

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TRANSL:

She never got angry at G-D—in fact she thanked him cos he saved her and she still thanks him.

NOMSA:

To beat them—to see them crying. Ja, it’s so…eish its a bad thing cos ay it’s a bad thing. They’re crying, shame, ‘yo what’s wrong-what did I do to you? Leave me’. Yes in English, they try to talk English. They talk English. Ja.(She makes sound of their screaming) Yooohhh. Their screaming.

TRANSL:

Ubakwatele?

ELISA:

Ya, Ngibakwatele ngokungafani, ngoba umama huye okumele abe nozwelo kakhulu, but bona abazange babe nozwelo. So ngingasho ukuthi bangone ngokufanayo,kodwa ngikwatele bona kakhulu abafazi.

TRANSL:

She’s angry at the woman cos they’re the ones that are supposed to um have um grace and try and calm the situation down but instead it was the opposite.

ELISA:

Hayi eh-eh, umfazi?!Angazi ukuthi kungayenzekalani. (laughs) Ngizombamba!

TRANSL:

She says with the women…

ELISA:

Okay, ukuthi naye, ubekangangihluli ngamandla. Ukuthi ubekahamba nabantu.So mangingahlangana naye faceto-face angeke azayenze leyanto ayenzile, angeke ayenze.

TRANSL:

With the woman, she wouldn’t be able to defeat her—its just that she was with a crowd. If she was to confront her face to face she would never do those things she did, she would never do it.

ELISA:

Ya, mhlambe—mangim’bambe ngimshaya- ngingasho ukuthi: ‘wabulala umntanasekhaya, wabulala umntanami.’

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TRANSL:

She would grab her, probably beat her, but in the process she would vent out and say ‘you killed my brother, you killed my husband, you killed my niece.’

Actor Two, as Elisa,collects the photographs and places them back in the bottle, tightly closing the lid. She walks upstage and places the large jar containing family photographs on the ground. As Nomsa, she walks diagonally downstage left gently pounding her heart. NOMSA:

Their screaming- their screaming—their screaming— yes—sometimes …when I get near the shop I get there—I feel—I feel a pain—I feel pain—just to hear those sounds—their screaming, their screaming…

This leads into Nomsa’s flashback. Accompanied by lighting shift and sound. DAVID:

Ja, (pause) a person doesn’t stink like anything else eish. It’s a different smell. It’s different when you burn a person compared to when you beat them. When you beat them, at least you know you’re punishing them for something. When you burn them, you won’t say that you teach them something. If you a burn a person ne, if you burn a person. The time we burn those people—uh— those foreigners at Alexander ne – umm. Our actual plan was to go and kick them out and beat them you understand—but like within our group—there also one of those people like who were very evil—mm mm mm—they’ve got evil hearts JA—evil hearts. They can burn you, they don’t mind—they can even kill you rrright now—they don’t mind. One thing I know is that anger is actually started by a small thing—mm—e specially, especially if you are a person who has never been raised by a family, you understand? Most people that stay in Alex— um—they don’t have family—have never been raised by family mm mm—ja—so whatever happened in Alexander WE stand up for it. Ja!

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I’m very glad that um—when—Ernesto was burnt I wasn’t there. I was—I was in the township next door. I’m very glad that I wasn’t there. I don’t know cos my first instinct is that I wouldn’t be able to shoot it. So many photographers got that image. He burnt for a while before somebody helped him. Ja, I just—I think it’s important to use his first name—he’s not just a burning man. As soon as things get like, get like a little stressful in this country, people start being burnt you know—m—I really do. I really do think it’s something around the Braai culture. Braaing is very as much—as much a part of black South African culture as white South African culture—as much. You know braaing is South African. It’s just, it’s like—you know, people sitting next to a fire—its PRE Voortrekker. Frankly, people choose their path. There were people in every township-there were people in Diepsloot that said we are not—this is not happening—this is not happening in our—in our township—and they went out and protected foreigners—you know. But ja, it didn’t happen everywhere (voice trails). People are scared of other people because there’s, there’s no value to life—you know. We don’t have pickpockets really in this country because people will just hit you to take what you have.

NOMSA:

I did once. Me after that I run. I see this thing is not right. I see this thing is not good thing because it was stressing me when I think about this thing. Aish I feel shame. I feel stress. Yes I did dream—seeing this picture—maybe to beat those peoples head-take those things. I see the police maybe catching me and taking me to the jail. Yo, I feel bad in my dreams. Eish, I scream. This thing it’s after me you know, it’s after me—but I keep on praying,

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praying go to church—praying praying. I talk with my G-D. Forgive me for my sins cos I will never do it again. I did wrong to do these things. It’s coming out little but little bit. BHEKI:

It was something that we never anticipated. We never anticipated that because it got VIOLENTLY. Ours was just to make sure that these people move out of the township. The um—you must know that this is happening not with the protocol of the organization—its certain individuals who want this—so you can’t go there because you’d be known there—you’d be seen—as a ANC councilor—so you can’t. Of course Mam, like I said, it won’t just happen from no-where. It has to be orchestrated so that it has to exist—and once it exists it’s then that it will take its own direction.

NADINE:

…the women are always on the edges egging them on ja. As a woman you, assume that…

BHEKI:

I’ll tell you one thing (clears throat)—Jan Van Riebeeck came here when—1652, Christopher Columbus got here what – 1405 and…and (sigh)…and in that Africa was under WHITE people for more than 300 years—they’ve been taking for all these years—it’s seventeen years and then you complain.

ALFRED:

Sometimes when I remember I getting angry. When I remember—that day—ja, aish, because uh, last it was a war on my country remember? In Mozambique. I know about the war but this is not my country. I have to ‘cept everything is done here. I know the people who are died—was dying—people here on my front, the time it was a war on my country but I forgot about that—and when I saw this, I remember gain for my country. The people was dying there, you see. Now I getting angry. I

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remember my brothers that died last it was the war from there. Now I have to die here also about these things— you see. NADINE:

BHEKI:

It was just like ordinary people, you know, like ordinary people—you know that that I’ve worked with like like as a photographer my entire life. Like especially people in squatter camps—you know that—like those kind of stories that I’ve told—like on poverty, and then to see people perpetrate. Killing people is not going to help. Um raping women is not going to help—but how do we empower people so that they make something out of that power? So, if young people are able to have power to say ‘YES, we need the land issue to be revisited’. If we can put pressure to the ANC and say—we the ANC are saying this to the ANC’. If they can’t deal with us directly it’s then that maybe this country will have a revolution. A revolution that (clears throat) will able people.

Attack Three: Dramatic lighting shift accompanied by soundscape ALFRED:

I,I,I if I can—I don’t know how I can show you the flames. Me? It was with a two piece. I was coming to the work—eh eh blue two piece. Ja my wife she was preparing to sleep. That sleeping dress—the pink one. The kids he got some gowns to sleep. The the childrens was with the socks on. Me and the wife, it was with, with the shoeses. I was angry. Crazy with a red eyes—just running there to come out on there—just to come out from that place. I was red, all the day, my face. I’m not alright-shaking shaking. I can’t forget about the flames. The smell of the fire, seeing smoke there (pause).It was only the flames—the

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flames of fire. People crying, men and woman—and child. It, it was a starting on the the same street. They’re burning the shacks. Just leave it like that—everythingpick up the child—the mother take one child—I take my one child and going to that place. Anyting else—nutting, because there was a fire now there. You can’t wait for the fire. It was someone neighbour’s there. It was South Africans. They helped us—that ones helped us. It’s only that mother. She is gate is getting open and and we just go there to push—we never knockit—we just pushit the gate. ‘Whats happening?’ she said, ‘ohh’ when she saw outside is burning—she said, ‘ohh come in here the people can’t come here’. They took us to put us in the garage until early in the morning. It was heavy what is what going on. The noise. The people was talking about the people from outside. It was a SHOUT—talking about the foreigners. Ja they’re talking Zulu Zulu. On that day I pray it until early in the morning with my wife. ‘G-D help me on this night. As long as my life, I will get that thing that’s burning—that is nutting’. Eish. I was praying. “Gracias Adeus…”. Just to thanks G-D to be out on that people. Ja. End of attack three leads into Nadine’s flashback accompanied by sound and lighting shift. ALFRED:

It was a war. That was a fight. A real fight.

NADINE:

Shooting it made me—it, it completely destroyed my sense of South Africa—ja, ja. Because you know, I’m of the, you know generation that just like—was a teenager during the early 90’s—that kind of thing—and this whole kind of um rainbow nation thing was very much

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still part of me and the attacks broke that irrevocably. You get the kind of image in your head that like—that even though people don’t have much, they have their humanity and that destroyed that sense of—for the most part—you know that kind of idealism around humanity. It was really ugly. It was really horrifying. They’ve got no fucking idea! Government have completely lost touch with what it is like to live in this country cos they don’t live in this country anymore— you know—they have no idea—they don’t listen to the anger you know—and essentially everything is about um access to resources you know its… BHEKI:

I’m saying once the black race can be able to read and learn then we’ll have a different black race. Look what Fidel did—the only thing that he did that gave the country the power that is has today—he gave them freedom—he gave them education. I’ll tell you that within the ANC, we still have people who are in key positions that they know nothing about. I’ll tell you that within the very same ANC, people just go to to the offices, watch TV or maybe watch porno material on their uh uh PC’s and go home and drive Mercedes Benz and BMW’s. People who are equipped to be in the offices are not there—people are making wrong decisions. People have no IDEA what is happening- literally no idea—hence I’m saying we need to equip ourself and I’m definitely sure—I’m positive that one day it will happen where you’ve got someone who will talk of H2O and knows exactly what is H2O.

NADINE:

Well I didn’t… with the with the xenophobia stuff I didn’t cope. I was massively, massively depressed. I picked up so much weight, you know, I picked up so much weight you know. I like hid from the world (laugh)—it was ja um.

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I dreamt about it. I think it was the worst thing was that it was South African. BHEKI:

We need… Have you read the Freedom Charter? Ok—is it fair that—for me it’s not fair that it’s the seventeenth year and the ANC has not fulfilled the Freedom Charter and the question is WHY? Yes! I’m bitter (clears throat) about the very same ANC—that it has failed its people. It has failed to lead it’s people—whatever that is happening in this government, we the ANC members are not happy with the ANC.

NADINE:

I just like kind of—I didn’t, I didn’t do, I didn’t do photojournalism pretty much for a year. I got into a toxic relationship (laughs) because I kinda like put everything into this one person that I saw as the good amongst all the very, very bad-you know, um like ja. I just stopped engaging as myself or as a South African or as a journalist.

Epilogue ELISA:

Ya, bebacala ukuya eMowambe.Ya bekuright, bebajabulile ngoba nefemili bebacala ukuyibona; bebangabazi.

TRANSL:

It was the first time her kids were in Mowambe. It was alright for them—the family was happy because they were seeing them for the first time.

ELISA:

Sihambe nge’train / eJohannesburg, ePark-Station. / Ugibela la kora pas’6, uzokwehla laphya—ngabo kora pas’7 ngak’sasa——11 hours, size sifike eMaputo

TRANSL:

They used the train from Johannesburg, Park station— eleven hours to Maputo.

ELISA:

Ike yangithinta kakhulu, kodwa bengingacali ukukhuluma ngayo azange kufane njengase bantwaneni, ngoba abantwana bebacala. Nami ingithintile kakhulu,

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kodwa isheshe yandlula. Eya, ike yangihlukumeza kabusha, ngoba bengiyazi ukuthi vele ebantwaneni izocala ukuba buhlungu. TRANSL:

It hurt her but it wasn’t the first time she was talking about this—unlike the children—it was the first time for them. Yes it hurt her a lot—but it passed. It hurt her afresh because she knew that with the kids it would affect them.

ELISA:

Sibusiso, uyam’khumbula loyasisi loya obelokhe eza laph’endlini?

TRANSL:

Sibusiso, do you remember that woman that came by the house the other time?

ELISA:

Uyakhumbula ukuthi siyesakhuluma ngani naye, ngoba ngalesiya sikhathi eza, uye wakhuluma ngayo iXenophobia kancane. Then nganitshela ukuthi miphume.

TRANSL:

Do you remember what we were speaking about? She spoke something about xenophobia, then we sent you out.

ELISA:

Why, mama, aloke eza azokubuza ngalento?

TRANSL:

Mama why did she come to ask you about those things?

ELISA:

Kukhona into angisiza ngayo, ngam’tshela ukuthi: Ubezongisiza ngoku faka ubaba wakho, umalumewakho, umtwana ka malume wakho…

TRANSL:

She is helping me to speak about your father, your uncle and your uncle’s child.

ELISA:

So nawe namhlanje ngifun’ukun’chazela no sisi wakho, ngokuthi

TRANSL:

So, today I want to tell you and your sister what happened.

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Okay, mangicala Ngikengathi kubo: Angithi niyazi ukuthi lobaba esihlala naye asubab wenu na? Bathi: eya.

TRANSL:

You know that the man we stay with is not your father.

ELISA:

Okay, angithi nani niyathanda ukwazi ukuthi ubaba wenu ukuphi na. Ngathi.

TRANSL:

You would love to know where your father is.

ELISA:

Ngifuna ukunitshela ukuthi kubaba kwenzakalani.Ubaba wenu akasaphili, akekho.

TRANSL:

I want to tell you what happened to your father. Your father is not alive. He is not with us.

ELISA:

Ukuthi ixenophobia bebayizwa ukuthi… bayakhumbula ukuthi ikeyaba khona, but bebangazi ukuthi laba like omalume ngoba bebabazi babengabanoni… nobaba,

TRANSL:

The children—they had heard about xenophobia but they didn’t understand that that was IT—what they experienced at the time. They didn’t understand why those people like the uncle—they hadn’t seen him—and their father …

ELISA:

Ayi… Bengiloku ngithi ubaba ukhona, uyasebenza, uzobuya. Bathi usebenzaphi? Ngithi usemayini (mine), uzobuya…one day uzobuya…and then akabuyi.

TRANSL:

I just told them their father is around. He is at work—he will come back. They asked me where does he work? I told them at the mines. He’ll come back—one day he’ll come back and then he didn’t.

ELISA:

Abantwana ngoba vele sebakhulile, bakebamangala kakhulu… bangibuza ukuthi: ‘Mama angahlala nento engaka ungasitsheli na?’ Besengathi: ‘Benginilinde

wakho

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ukuthi nikhule kancane, ngizonitshela. Bakhala but bagcine babe’right.’ TRANSL:

The children, they were shocked. They asked me, ‘Mama how can you live with something so big and not tell us?’ She said ‘I was waiting for you to grow up— then I would tell you.’

ELISA:

‘Why ma, makufe ubaba nosisi lo, omunye mhlambe ushonile malume wakhe… mara wena usahleli la eSouth Africa; why uhleli la?’ Eya

TRANSL:

‘Why Ma after the death of our father, that girl, and our uncle—why did you stay in South Africa.Why did you stay?’

(pause as translator receives question from researcher) TRANSL:

Ukwezilele ukushona kwe ndoda yako? (Did you mourn the death of your husband?)

ELISA:

mm mm

TRANSL:

Indoddayakho?

ELISA:

Uye washa emkhukweni.

TRANSL:

Her husband was burnt in the shack

ELISA:

Ngekathi ngibuyel’ekhaya… ekhaya, kuno siko esikholela kulo eilithi uma ungayizilelanga indoda yakho, abazali bakho kumele bakugeze, ngenhloso yoku susa isinyama sokufa. So bahlinza imbuzi bese bakhuluma namadlozi eya… bathatha inyongo, say’emfuleni oseduzane nasekhya—akumele kube nabantu, kumele ibe—safe—bathela inyongo emzimbeni wami… bathandaza, baphinda bangithele ngamanzi kwaphela.

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Actor Two as Elisa walks upstage to a hanging glass jar that has a single photograph in it of a man. She takes the bottle off allowing the photograph to float. Symbolically, she releases her brother’s spirit. TRANSL:

When she went back home, there’s a custom that if you have not mourned the death of your husband, your parents must wash you so as to remove the spirit of death. They slaughtered a goat and spoke to the ancestors. They took out the pancreas—it’s called Inyongo. They went to the nearest river, there are not supposed to be other people there—just the family. They poured the pancreas fluid on her body. They prayed. Then they washed her clean with water.

ELISA:

Ya… Mangingabona ubhuti wami kukhona engingakusho. Ngingam’ tshela ukuthi zonke izinto angitshela zona,ngisazisebenzisa kanti futhi nezingane zise skoleni and futhi ngisaphila ngazo sonke isikhathi.

TRANSL:

If she were to see her brother, there’s something she would say. She would tell him that the advice he gave her, she is still using. The children are in school. And she’s surviving—all the time. The End

PART THREE: THERAPEUTIC INTERVENTIONS

CHAPTER EIGHT NARRATIVE/THERAPY AND AN APARTHEID STORY: AUDIENCES, ETHICAL WITNESSING AND POWER ALEXANDRA SUTHERLAND

Establishing the terrain: Ethics, testimony and witnessing This paper explores the notion of witnessing, as it manifests within narrative therapy, and in certain types of theatre. I wish to interrogate what being a witness means, and the ethical implications and expectations when framing an audience as witnesses. At what point does the witnessing of an/other’s story of pain become an ethical engagement with that story, person, and who we are, and at what point does power shift us into voyeurism? Who does the story help, or, as Cohen-Cruz asks “what does hearing a personal story ask of the witness”? (2006, 103). South Africa’s political post-apartheid notions of justice and healing are fundamentally linked to stories as testimony, and the witnessing that brings a visibility and acknowledgement of trauma. For example, Catherine Cole’s research explores “the public, embodied and performed dimensions” of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Cole, 2009, 170), and asks “how did the TRC’s performative conventions, modes of address and expressive embodiment shape the experience for both participants and spectators?” (Cole 2010, xv). I think of the recent testimonies during the hearings for the Marikana investigation, and the outcry at the perceived emotional neutrality and inappropriateness that the national police commissioner Riah Phiyega displayed, as widows broke down and wept about the pain and loss of their husbands and children’s fathers. It was reported by the South African Press Association (SAPA, 24th of October 2012) that she stared straight ahead, ignoring a widow’s screams about her

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husband’s death. As a leader, and, as a woman, she is expected to show empathy and sympathy as a witness to that pain, which she refuses. Laub argues that “for the testimonial process to take place there needs to be a bonding, the intimate and total presence of another—in the position of one who hears. Testimonies are not monologues; they cannot take place in solitude” (1992, cited in Cohen-Cruz 2006, 105). Yet this woman in a position of immense power and responsibility, makes the “other’s” testimony into a monologue by refusing a connection to the teller. The assumed bonding and presence, requires something particular of an audience, especially when we place story-telling, testimony and witnessing within a theatrical framework. Playwright Yael Farber, who titles a trilogy of her plays Theatre as Witness: Three testimonial plays from South Africa (2008) states that a testimonial theatre “creates intimacy and accountability with the audience” (cited in Stuart Fisher 2009, 113). This accountability moves the theatrical encounter into a political space of responsibility, and ethics. As Salverson reminds us “ethics and witnessing are about relationship” (2006, 147). The police commissioner’s rejection of this relationship is thus judged as unethical. This article questions when, and why we assume that an audience will be activated as witnesses, and what the implications might be. James Thompson has written about the ethical complexity of storytelling and vulnerable communities in conflict situations. For him, “the performance of stories, the act of asking people to perform, and the listening and retelling are caught up in a matrix of difficult and perhaps dangerous value assumptions and judgements” (2004, 150). One of the main assumptions he outlines, which is the basis of much applied theatre work, is the prescription that telling one’s story is a preferable method for “relief”, “liberation” and “healing”, which has taken on an a-historical and de-contextualised approach to all humans in all situations (Thompson 2009, 45). Thompson argues that there is a danger when dealing with situations of violence, conflict and pain that theatre can become reduced to “a testifier and witness model that reduces the multitude of forms of encounter that may be generated” (2009, 62). What I will examine is that the assumption that hearing and telling painful stories is helpful, can be perilous within the complexities of race and memory in South Africa and our diverse relationship to the horrors of our past. Who is it helpful for, and how power plays out within the encounter, needs scrutiny. To examine these debates, this paper focuses on an inter-disciplinary experiment which played with certain concepts in narrative therapy, and

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introduced deliberate theatrical and performance elements in the re-telling of a person’s story of apartheid era violence, by an “outsider witness”. Due to the inter-disciplinary nature of the event, which attempted to theatricalise a narrative therapy approach, competing understandings of what might be perceived as ethical across disciplinary fields were at play. These were: a particular branch of psychology practice which acknowledges that identities are performed in how we story our lives; a theatre event in the conventional sense of a separate, silent audience, a director, and performers; and an applied theatre layer on the event, as the primary story teller narrated a traumatic memory, which was then translated into a performance language, to be witnessed by the audience and followed by a discussion after the theatrical event. What I argue is that the way the event was framed, as a liminal space between these three approaches to performance, resulted in a framing of the audience as conventionally passive and separate, which had the effect of consuming the Other’s story and a “passive empathy” (Nicholson 2005; Dennis 2008), rather than as an active, ethical witnessing and encounter with the Other. Sheila Preston maintains that in an applied theatre praxis, practitioners and researchers need to consider ethics and representation as related discourses. She argues that As cultural workers, whether we are researchers writing about individuals, theatre makers constructing narratives and stories, or facilitators enabling people to write or perform their own stories, we have a responsibility towards ensuring that the representations that are made are produced through a climate of sensitivity, dialogue, respect and willingness for reciprocity (Preston 2009, 65).

While these values inform applied theatre work, a different set of values and approaches to ethical engagement, and witnessing, inform how a theatre director might work with performers and how s/he conceives of the role of the audience. For example, Nicholas Ridout’s short book Theatre & Ethics (2009) concerns how “the practice of theatre—be it as participant or spectator—might produce distinctive ways of thinking about ethics” (6, emphasis mine). The book does not overly concern itself with the politics of representation, or issues of power or reciprocity, but rather argues that “theatre inserts its ethical questions into the lives of its spectators in a situation in which those spectators are unusually conscious of their own status as spectators, and thus as people who may exercise ethical judgement” (Ridout 2009,15). As an applied theatre practitioner and researcher, I am concerned with how this ethical judgement is mediated and framed, and how power plays out in the encounter between

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audience and story teller, particularly in terms of how an audience engages with a story of an “Other”. For example, Gehan (2009) discusses Ariane Mnouchkine’s (of Théâtre du Soleil) epic six hour performance about the plight of refugees (Le Denier Caravansérail) and Mnouchkine’s decision to tell multiple stories of refugees “with as little interference as possible” because “to share these stories is so important that it outweighs any risk of voyeurism” (119-120). How can a performance facilitate a responsible and ethical witnessing of stories of trauma, and not slip into a voyeuristic, “passive empathy” which is consumptive? This tension between aesthetics and accountability, the performative transformation of the story and experience, versus possibly distorting and misrepresenting it (Dennis 2008), is central to the decisions that applied theatre practitioners, but not all theatre makers need to make, which will inform the extent to which the complexity of ethical witnessing is considered in a particular performance encounter. What follows is a brief description of the context and rationale for the project.

What is narrative therapy? Narrative therapy is a post-structuralist therapeutic approach which understands identity as performed and constructed by people who are the experts in their own lives. Michael White who developed the approach utilises a definitional ceremony structure called “outsider witnessing” (White 2007) to allow a person to tell their story to a selected group of outsider witnesses (friends, community, family, people who have been through something similar). The witness then retells his/her story based on questions from the therapist. The questions that guide and frame the outsider witness ceremony are broadly: x x x x

What struck you when listening to this story? What images of the story teller’s and your own life comes to mind when listening or watching? What in your own life accounts for these resonances? Why did particular moments resonate with you? Having been part of today’s experience what has it made possible for you going forward? (Meehan 2012, personal communication).

Within this process, a clear framework is established, where, to emphasise Salverson again “ethics and witnessing are about relationship”

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(2006, 147). The acts of witnessing and retelling are designed to make visible the ways in which our lives are interconnected. The individual’s story receives acknowledgement and respect and it is allowed to live-on in the interconnections between the individual and the witnesses.

The context of the case study (or why I am complicit) This event was part of a monthly “Interdisciplinary Event series” curated by a guest lecturer at Rhodes Drama department. The rationale for this series is articulated as follows: The focus of these events is on the body in performance. Taking the form of lecture demonstrations, the presentations are staged with little if no rehearsal and expose both process and display. They all take place in the theatrical formal space of the ‘black box” and each is followed by a discussion with the public. The invited disciplines are often dislocated from their natural arenas and relocated in the theatre in order to be looked at through an unfamiliar lens. We are seeking different ways in which the body is manifested as expressive instrument through meaningful encounters with other forms such as visual media, music, martial arts, rituals, “sub-cultural” practices, sports and action driven events (programme note, Interdisciplinary Event Series, Rhodes Drama Department, 2012).

This particular event, which took place in Rhodes University Box Theatre in May 2012, aimed to experiment with the performative intersections between psychology and drama. Entitled “Retellings” it was not framed as therapy, or applied theatre, but as a performance experiment within a lecture demonstration mode. The event was advertised on campus, and audience members, who were almost exclusively Rhodes drama and psychology staff and students (numbering approximately 50 in total), sat in a semi-circle of chairs looking onto the stage, as well as in rows on rostra overlooking the stage. The performance was conceived, and directed by an American theatre artist who had lived in South African for over a decade. I was invited to be part of the process as the “applied theatre person” although it became clear that there was not a rigorous thinking through of what that that might entail, or why. We worked with a narrative psychologist, who is also a Rhodes staff member, who performed her role as therapist by setting up the stage space, while a voice over of how she would prepare the room for the next client, accompanied her action. I had introduced the director to the story teller, Ace, and the outsider witness Push, an Honours drama student. Both are mother tongue Xhosa speakers from the Eastern Cape. Ace is a man I had worked with in

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prison. I suggested him, because he was very comfortable and open about his life stories and I felt that as I knew both of them, I could hold what unfolded in some way. Both participants knew each other and seemed to work together well. The rehearsal process, also driven by the director, involved the therapist, asking Ace to tell a story: of change; of success; of helping someone; of growing up in Grahamstown; of how he came be an artist; of how he came to be involved in drama. Push was asked to listen, and then to retell his story to him, using a theatricalised performance mode. The purpose was to explore a creative deviation of a narrative therapy process, by incorporating a more deliberate performance and theatrical story telling mode as part of the outsider witness process. As the process progressed, I began to question the director about what we were doing and why: why must Ace tell the story in English? How are you positioning the audience? If narrative therapy and this kind of performance are about participation, how are we inviting the audience to participate/become story tellers themselves? Is it ethical for the audience to be passive consumers of what is happening on stage? Who is this for? Why these stories? Regretfully, this last one I never actually spoke. We were very pushed for time, and before I knew it, the director had chosen the “dramatic” stories, because these made good theatre. This became important as several audience members decided that they were witnesses, rather than voyeurs, as they felt that Ace’s agency to tell this story, in this way, needed to be respected. For example, a psychologist talked about the power of her clinical gaze which led her to feel “uncomfortable, voyeuristic and questioned the ethics of bearing witness to his story in such an open and collective context…but I had to acknowledge that Ace chose this way in which to tell his story” (personal communication, October 2012). Ultimately however, it was the director who chose which stories to craft, and guided how Push retold them. My presence as a person who practiced applied theatre became submerged by a dominant production mode in which power over meaning, message and representation was with the director. What this article interrogates is how the one story positioned Ace as a victim and survivor of apartheid era violence, perhaps created “an aesthetic of injury that reproduces configurations of power necessary to the identity of ‘injured’” (Salverson 1999, n.p.). The two main stories concerned the night before Ace was released from prison, and a childhood memory of him, 8 years old, witnessing an arson attack on his neighbour’s house and watching children dying inside it. The

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next day, Ace and his brothers were arrested by the apartheid police and severely beaten as a way for the police to try to extract information about the attack. It is this story that I will discuss due to the brutality of the content, and how it brought the violence of apartheid, and issues of race and power, into the present.

The event: “Retellings” The audience watched three repetitions of the story: Ace, telling a story in Xhosa—for the benefit of the English speaking audience, Push would repeat certain key words, then summarise his story in English back to him for clarity, then re-tell it performatively. As an applied theatre practitioner, I was very concerned with how the event was framed—what was expected of the audience? Were they expected to be outsider witnesses too, and what did that mean? How do you invite an audience to participate, as a witness, given the double gaze that would operate? The dominant framework of rehearsing and putting on a performance resulted in these questions being largely ignored, and it seemed to me, an over concern with protecting the audience from feeling vulnerable, at the expense of the performers. Julie Salverson, uses Emmanuel Levinas’ argument that an alternative response to tragedy, is to open up an encounter with the Other. This, he says, is an ethical engagement with the Other, as we understand we can never really know the Other, rather “I can respond, attend, and remain willing to hear beyond my own conceptions” (Salverson 2006, 147). Salverson poses two difficulties that can prevent an audience from ethical witnessing: the first concerns the aesthetic of the sentimentally tragic, and the second, a kind of politically correct paralysis, in the name of ethics, a condition South Africans are familiar with. I reflect on my wish that the audience was activated into a relationship with the performers, and each other, in some way, and the director’s resistance to this. Salverson states that It is a curious irony if we find ourselves weaving a web of distance in the name of contact and engagement… There are questions to be asked about how we act and how we hesitate … Becoming a witness is a process, and sometimes we err not on the side of intrusion but of paralysis. The result is theatre, pedagogy, and scholarship that fails to risk the dangers of sitting together in practices of engagement. When does responsible listening become a monologue due to a listener’s silence or paralysis? (Salverson 2006, 151).

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In this event, the audience were positioned as silent, separated, passive consumers of what unfolded on stage, until the performance was over and a question answer panel was set up. The audience consisted of privileged, white university academics and some students. Although on stage with us (“the experts”) as part of the panel discussion, the two performers, Ace and Push, were rendered voiceless. For Push this was the most uncomfortable part of the whole event—everyone was talking about Ace and his story, while he was there, not too him, using an academic discourse that excluded him, and according to her, taking away the subjectivity they had both just demonstrated on stage. She said “it was sort of like having an academic book about Ace, and he was there, but people talked about the book, and not to him” (interview, November 2012). For Ace, he remembers how hard it was to tell the story in front of complete strangers. What was powerful for him, were the audience members who came up to him after the whole event to acknowledge his bravery in telling these stories, and what it had meant for them. It was in these, informal spontaneous interactions where a witness relationship was built, an encounter with “the other”, and what he remembers about making him “feel strong”. He said “I realised that I can tell anyone anything, and I can go inside anyone” (interview, November 2012). This comment resonates with the notion within a narrative therapy structure, that the individual’s story receives acknowledgement and respect and it is allowed to live-on in the interconnections between the individual and the witnesses. However, this relationship building through guiding reflective questions, was not structured into the format of the event. One of the last questions at the end of the discussion came from my colleague, Andrew Buckland, whose love of play and the power of laughter asked “where is the clown? Where is the fool in this?” Salverson argues that in order to ethically witness trauma, the fool is vital to avoid either paralysis or the aesthetics of injury (see Salverson 1999, 2006 and 2008). She asks that we approach the witnessing of trauma and pain from the position of the fool, not the tragic. This is because it is absurd, even ridiculous, to risk answering the call of another. It is absurd to think that my availability as a listener, a witness, might contribute anything in the face of another’s violation, another’s loss, yet I step forward all the same… Witnessing, I suggest, is about the absurd, yet honest offer. (Salverson 2006, 154).

Buckland asked this due to his perceived preciousness in the whole event. For Levinas, the problem with tragic representation is that “it is

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never tragic enough”. Salverson suggests that there is a danger in reducing how trauma can be represented to a preconception of how loss looks and sounds and by extension, how the witness must perceive strength and resilience in the survivor. It is this last point that perplexes me with the question, “who was this story for? Whom did it help?” The event involved two black performers framed and captured within a theatrical mode, demonstrating a witness and story-telling exchange, watched and separated from a predominantly white privileged, silent audience. What is the gaze? Of the ten audience members who responded to my call to write a reflection on the event, all named the bravery and courage of Ace’s story. All became part of recognising the resilience and strength of the survivor. Overall most audience members felt they did become witnesses, rather than voyeurs. Two respondents found the distinction between Push’s stylized retelling and the honesty of Ace’s storytelling a tension between the “real” and the “represented”, the authentic and discursive, the public and private, which complicated their gaze. They felt distanced by the re-telling which seemed inauthentic. For one respondent “what exemplified this distinction between the personal and public, making me feel like a voyeur, was the way in which it was staged and designed. Ace never told me his story—he told Push”. Another reflected on feeling like a witness when Ace told his story, which was then undermined by what was perceived as a fabricated theatrical response by Push. Her role as a translator of Ace’s story, giving it an aesthetic frame, “immediately draws attention to the ethical stance of the work and notions of accountability” (Dennis 2008, 213).

Race and witnessing: who does the story help? In closing I wish to reflect on three audience members who were profoundly moved by the event and Ace’s story. Their responses bring into question whether a dominant narrative which might position survivors of apartheid brutality as resilient and strong, may also result in the “healing” or “helpful” aspect of the telling, and retelling, lying with the audience, rather than the two performers. Did this event catch us in “an aesthetic of injury that reproduces configurations of power necessary to the identity of ‘injured’” (Salverson 1999, n.p.)? For Salverson, “issues of witnessing and testimony confront us with the relationship between loss, identification, and representation” (1999, n.p.). 1. I remember being moved by the piece, remember thinking that it was helpful for me as a way to deal with my own shame for having survived apartheid without, at least, being thrown in jail. The fact that

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this was a REAL story, then mediated through retelling and performing, while I watched, allowed me to face the brutality of my race very gently, and provided a way to recognise humanity; 2. My first response was impatience…And then, in an instant, my heart clutched and I began to hate myself. I cannot now say what the freight of that instant was but he said something that prompted me to suddenly realise we were listening to HIS story, a REAL story, and it was about to get worse, much worse, and we were about to descend into a pain that is peculiar to this land. So I spent a good deal of time castigating myself for my disrespect to Ace, to Ace's story, and to his courage. 3. This felt to me to be a most privileged space—especially in the light of the delicacy and courage of Ace to share a story that was so historical, so brutal and sad with absolute strangers. The trust required of him and Push (the translator-witness) to invite the audience into such a personal process seemed to me to be exceptionally courageous. The vulnerability of his position as adult recalling childhood memory and sharing that—through speaking and then doubly hearing his story back, was incredibly complex and filigreed. The layers of compassion and empathy that were activated for me in this process felt so powerful and I wished there more spaces for this type of healing and sharing to occur in South Africa.

Salverson (2006, 2009) asks us to become foolish witnesses in relation to stories and testimonies of trauma. Like the clown, we risk in the hope that we won’t fail. My need, as an applied theatre practitioner, was for the audience to be involved, to dialogue and participate, or be activated as story-tellers: to be invited to risk. Yet, these responses leave me wondering if perhaps silence, and listening, is indeed, enough. I am however, troubled that the performers were asked to take risks, and the audience’s empathy, awkwardness, or compassion, remained (mostly) individual, invisible, silent. It concerns me that two black performers became the medium for healing and reflection for some audience members, and I remain less convinced that telling their story, in this way, was ultimately helpful or empowering for either of them. For Botlanski (1999, 23) The fact remains that viewing suffering is especially problematic when the object of suffering is presumed to be real… when the spectacle of the unfortunate and his suffering is conveyed to a distant and sheltered spectator there is a greater likelihood of this spectacle being apprehended

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I yearned for a genuine encounter between the audience and the performers. I wanted the audience to be activated as story tellers too, the way that a narrative therapy structure enables this, by framing clear questions that can facilitate reflections and responses between the witnesses and the narrators, whose roles are then changed. If ethics and witnessing are indeed about relationship, a theatre that expects an audience to become witnesses, needs to carefully frame and think through how that relationship is build.

References Cohen-Cruz, Jan. “Redefining the Private: from personal storytelling to political act.” In A Boal Companio., Dialogues on Theatre and Cultural Politics, edited by Jan Cohen-Cruz and Mady Schutzman, 103-113. New York, London: Routledge, 2006. Cole, Catherine M. “Performance, Transitional Justice and the Law: South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” In Violence Performed: Local Roots and Global Routes of Conflict, edited by Patrick Anderson and Jisha Menon, 170-193. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. —. Performing South Africa’s Truth Commission: Stages of Transition. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2010. Dennis, Rea. “Refugee performance: aesthetic representation and accountability in playback theatre.” Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 13. 2. (2008), 211215. Farber, Yael. Theatre as Witness: Three Testimonial Plays from South Africa. London: Oberon Books, 2008. Grehan, Helena. Performance, ethics and spectatorship in a global age. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. “Marikana families horrified at Phiyega’s behaviour.” Mail & Guardian online, October 24, 2012. Accessed November 7, 2012. Available from: http://mg.co.za/article/2012-10-24-marikana-families-horrifiedat-phiyegas-behaviour Ridout, Nicholas. Theatre and Ethics. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Salverson, Julie. “Transgressive Storytelling or an Aesthetic of Injury: Performance, Pedagogy and Ethics.” Theatre Research in Canada 20. 1. (1999). Accessed November 9, 2012. Available from:

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http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/TRIC/article/view/7096/8155/. —. “Witnessing subjects. A fool’s help.” In A Boal Companion. Dialogues on theatre and cultural politics, edited by Jan Cohen-Cruz and Mady Schutzman, 146–157. New York, London: Routledge, 2006. —. “Taking Liberties: a theatre class of foolish witnesses.” Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 13. 2. (2008), 245-255. Stuart Fisher, Amanda. “Bearing witness. The position of theatre makers in the telling of trauma.” In The Applied Theatre Reader, edited by Tim Prentki and Sheila Preston, 108-115. London: Routledge, 2009. Thompson, James. “Digging up Stories. An Archaeology of Theatre in War.” The Drama Review 48. 3. (2004), 150-164. —. Performance Affects: Applied Theatre and the end of Affect. London: Palgrave, 2009. White, Michael. Maps of Narrative Practice. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.

CHAPTER NINE THERE’S A HOLE IN MY BUCKET PAULA KINGWILL

This is a story1 about being a white South African dramatherapist working in a context where history, race, economics and geography play a crucial role in defining, building (and restricting) relationships. My story takes place in Pienarsig, at Lettie de Klerk Primary School with a group of grade 6 & 7 learners. Pienarsig is the part of Nieu Bethesda, a village in the Eastern Cape, which was designated “Coloured” during Apartheid. Sonderwater (no water) is the township next door that was designated “Black”. Nieu Bethesda is a small village of about 1000 residents—90% of whom live in Pinearsig and Sonderwater. I started working here in 2011 as part of the Zakheni Arts Therapy Foundation Schools Project, in which a dramatherapist and a drama facilitator work together with a group of learners culminating in a public performance (http://zakheni.org.za/schools-dramatherapy-project.html). This story is about the second year of the project (2012). During the first two school terms we aim to create the play that can be ready for the Nieu Bethesda Festival, a small festival that attracts visitors from around the country. The closure process takes place in the third term. There are two adults in the group: one is a dramatherapist (the author) the other is a first time co-facilitator, mother of one of the group members and an active member of the Pienarsig community who loves singing and drama. This is her first experience of working with children in this way, so her role this year is to support the dramatherapist with containing the group as well as sharing her insights about the group members and community in post group discussions. I saw her performing at the Nieu Bethesda festival in 2011 and was amazed at her skill as a first time performer. She appeared to be an exception to the rule, in a community

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where unemployment and poverty lead into a cycle of depression, alcohol abuse and lethargy. She seemed like someone who could handle the challenge of this partnership and offer the support that I needed.

Some context… I am known as one of the “boere” which in local slang means both white and a farmer—I am both. Apartheid arrived late in Nieu Bethesda, local whites only woke up in the 1970s to the fact that they could claim spaces that did not belong to them as proclaimed by the group Areas Act. Likewise, apartheid is slow to leave. The divide is still very clearly demarcated by geography, economics and social interaction. The people of Pienaarsig and Sonderwater are very dependent on the white local farmers for their livelihood. This is an uncomfortable co-dependent relationship based on mutual mistrust, disappointment and frustration. I am a white farmer. I am also a dramatherapist. I am familiar with the therapist’s aspiration to become a blank slate onto which the feelings of my clients can be projected, processed and understood. This would mean, for the therapist, not sharing personal information so as to create a clear space for the client or group’s internal conflict to emerge and be resolved (Kahn 1997, 7). In this therapeutic relationship the therapist can be anything in her client’s mind, and can change from week to week to accommodate what the therapeutic process requires. As a white dramatherapist working in the community of Nieu Bethesda I am the opposite of that blank slate. I am very rigidly defined and known. While I am from the other side of the geographical, racial, economic and cultural divide, intimate details of my life are easily available should they be sought. My family has been an employer of the parents, aunts and uncles of my group members for generations. Should they be so inclined, these employees could tell stories about anything from how I decorate my bedroom to the conversations I have with my husband. The number of times in a week that I visit the village and what business I am on is tracked with interest. Wage negotiations and disciplinary action that I have taken with my staff is known in the community and could be known by group members. My mother’s work at the local school and my grandfather’s community development work are also stories that are retold back to me by the older members of this community.

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On the other hand, I have very little access to information or real knowing of the young people I am working with. This information is carefully guarded to maintain the required distance that allows for the survival of the established order. Like my mother and grandfather before me, I attempt to cross this divide, to undermine its power. And like them I discover that people on both sides of the divide carefully protect this separation. The local tennis club is still as white as it was when I used to attend with my family in the early 80s. If events are organised on the “white” side of town, even if they are free and broadly advertised, few members of the Pienarsig community will make the journey. There are advantages to be had for a powerful few that make the divide worth maintaining. There are complex community dynamics that revolve around access to resources and historical allegiances, which feel dangerously difficult to unravel. Funds granted to the community for development and upliftment rarely make their way to the intended beneficiaries. I come to this powerfully guarded split offering the possibility of writing a new story of who we are and what we can become. I am idealistic about the possibilities of finding new ways of defining ourselves. My idealism is reinforced by Lewis Mehl-Madrona, a psychiatrist and professor of family medicine, who’s book, Healing the Mind through the Power of Story (2010), talks about the fact that our power to choose which story we tell about ourselves can alter who we are right down to our genetic makeup (ibid, 162) This means that if we change the story we tell about ourselves we can change who we are and who we become. 2

Story Harvesting Approaching the work, I imagine that we can create a story for our performance at the end of the year that can enable this transformation to begin. Mehl-Madrona writes: “We act out the stories we have internalized about how we are supposed to be in any given situation” (47). This means that if we are able to discover new stories about who we are and can internalise these new stories we can increase the possibilities of who we can be in the world. Expansion of one’s role repertoire is an important dramatherapeutic goal. “An expanded role repertoire equips us to deal with a broader range of life situations, to cope with new tasks, and to respond in new and creative ways” (Emunah 1994, 32).

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However, what I discover when I embark on this creative process is how few stories are told. Or how few are told to me. The learners struggle to tell any story about themselves or their world. They look at each other desperately for answers to questions like: “What did you do on your holiday?” or, “What did you enjoy about that exercise?” or, “How do you feel today?” They coach each other from across the room as to the correct answers they should be giving. The dominant feeling in the room is the Fear of Getting it Wrong. There is a sense that I hold the correct answer and through a process of copying one another and following my subtle cues they will be able to guess what that answer is. The exception to this rule is the stories that involve conflicts. These stories are polished with use and are offered back to me enthusiastically with plenty of shouting and rather too real physical re-enactments. I wonder if there is a way around this silencing of stories. I imagine that there must be a huge resource of stories in this community that has weathered countless storms. I send them home to their families and I ask them to harvest stories. I ask them for the stories the old people told, the myths and legends they used to entertain each other. Instead, what I receive is rewritten versions of the story of “The Lion and the Mouse” (Rode & Moodie 2009) that I told to inspire them in their search. I send them out again and ask them to look for “Stories from before I was born” from their elders. They take a long time to come back. After weeks have passed and promises broken, I open the many times folded pieces of paper that stories have been written on. The stories of “Before I was born” are lists of struggles: Barefoot walks to school. Strict teachers. No electricity. No phones. Long drop toilets. One says: Hulle het ook nie baie sweets en chips gehad nie. Elkeen het maar net een pakkie chips gekry ook net as dit alpay is. They didn’t have lots of sweets and chips. Each one just got one packet of chips and only when it was Alpay (pension day).

Another: Voor ek geboor was die wereld baie anders. Die ou mense het gate toilete gehaad. Ons ouma’s en oupas het nie skoene gehaad nie hulle het kalvoet skool toe gegaan. Die mense se huise was nie dieselfde hulle huise was

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Chapter Nine verskil. Mense het parafien stoofe gebruik om hulle kose gaar te kan maak. Daardie dae het dit ook gesneeu en hulle het ver geloop om hout te soek Before I was born the world was very different. The old people had long drop toilets. The grannies and grandpas didn’t have shoes they walked to school barefoot. The people’s houses were different. People used paraffin stoves to cook their food. In those days if it snowed people had to walk far to get wood.

The interesting thing about this story, as with many of the others, is that it describes a current reality. Only today they walk further for wood. My guess is that many of the stories I received were not in fact gathered from the elders, but rather consolidated by mutual sharing before class. This is perhaps because the elders do not have the time or inclination to share stories with the young or because the young don’t feel like asking them. (I resist the conclusion that the elders have forgotten how to tell stories.) My hope that getting stories from the parents would by-pass the potential censure of my presence instead reveals the gaps in communication between parents and children. There is no evidence of parent’s engagement in their child’s research project, no excitement at sharing their histories, no urgency to pass these stories on to the next generation. Perhaps this is because of the same fear of getting it wrong, perhaps my presence is still silencing even at a distance. However, in the two years of working at the school only a handful of parents have come to watch their children perform, in 2012 only three mothers saw the play, and one was the co-facilitator. My story gathering process reveals that there are no hero’s stories that are told, no stories of overcoming obstacles or achieving success. The only story that is told confirms the rigidly defined roles that we seem to be stuck with in Nieu Bethesda: In this story the people of Pienarsig are not the heroes, the problem solvers or the leaders. In this story the hero comes from outside. Often the hero is a foreigner/tourist, occasionally a boer/local. This outsider provides money and opportunities. Then they will go away or give up and still nothing will have changed. The money will drain away and the opportunities will be carefully controlled by those who feed the story of Other for their own gain. I step easily into this role that has been prepared for me: of giver, helper, solver of problems (like my mother and grandfather before me). I begin to pour myself, my energy, my resources into the process. But in this story of the willing helper, the bucket must have a hole: the hero must

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fail. The hero cannot be trusted because before long he or she will go away and nothing will change, only an increased awareness of not having enough. The question is: How can I support the process of finding new stories without perpetuating this old one? How can I switch roles? Can I make the children be the hero in their own story? On the one hand I believe that by not conforming to the stereotype of who I am supposed to be I can subvert the old story so that it goes like this: “If I am not who you thought I was maybe you can be something different also”. But for this to happen the learners must be able to see me and connect with me as a person and then in this relationship it will matter that I really see them. But there is another twist in the tale. The family system has borne the brunt of the story of oppression and under its weight has cracked and twisted, causing serious damage to the connections between parents and children, mother and child as is revealed by their lack of attendance at the plays, their lack of engagement in their children’s school work. The family has been broken by mothers and fathers travelling to other cities to work; by unemployment and poverty leading to alcoholism and despair leaving little time for childcare. And so because attachments do not form early, trust is rarely granted 3 to friends and family, never mind teachers and certainly not “boere”. While it is true that information about me is easily accessible and I am no blank slate, I must remain tightly wrapped in my stereotype: I have power and money; I will give them things but then I will go away and it’s just a matter of time before I disappoint them. Some of you may well ask: how is it possible for me to do work in this context? Others may also ask: how is it possible for me not to do work in this context?

The Bucket The only way for me to work here and not burn out myself—or worse, do harm—is to create a safe container, a bucket without a hole. Once this container is built the learners can begin to hold onto good things for long enough to internalise them and allow transformation and growth to

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happen. I cannot be this container but I must initiate its creation. 4 As a dramatherapist, the container I use is the drama, the play, the story, and the stage. I am guided by Renee Emunah’s (1994) Five Phase Model 5, however I remain mostly within the first two phases, dramatic play and scenework, with plenty of phase five, dramatic ritual, thrown in. We start with the drama as the context for collaboration, spontaneity, a safe place to play. We play with the possibility that trust, safety and healthy relationships could exist in the room. We move towards exploring different roles and the permission to be something else. Here there is an opportunity to express a range of emotions, not just those that are expected or appropriate. We can play out the stories of conflict that are so familiar, except we can play the parts in the story normally reserved for adults or bullies and feel what that is like. We can also play characters that we find in books from worlds that bear no relation to our own. “In drama therapy, adolescent acting out is converted to acting, and the stage becomes a laboratory setting which real life can be explored with safety and distance” (Emunah in Jennings 1995, 154). We start with sensory play, exploring found objects and then transforming them into toys that can be animated. We make puppets, give them names and personalities and find stories for them to come alive inside. We enact stories found in books and created. Always we are working on the developing the imagination through improvisation games and exercises. Throughout the process we rely on dramatic rituals of opening and closure, reflection and containment. “Rituals serve as a container for the powerful and often untranslatable feelings, images and unconscious associations that emerge during the therapeutic process” (Emunah 1994, 22). In the opening ritual at the beginning of each session we all walk through an imaginary door into the world of imagination and drama. Each week the door is different. As the weeks progress new possibilities for the door emerge: it could be glass, it could be a sliding door, it could even slide upwards, or open with a remote control rather than a key. This may sound like the natural progression for any drama group, however for me it felt like a victory for the imagination, an indicator that the tyranny of “fear of getting it wrong”, which results in vigorous copying of each others ideas, has started to ease, allowing instead a space for originality and the possibility of thinking for yourself. When we can

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walk through this door to the imagination then can we also start telling new stories about ourselves?

The Play We are a few weeks from the festival and my story collecting process has taken much longer than expected. So, instead of the truly collaborative approach I idealise, I put the final structure of the play together myself using as much material from the learners as possible. This year we will be performing at the Church Hall next to the school. We perform on the Saturday and the Sunday. Each day about twenty festival goers who are staying in town make the journey up the hill to watch us. Many of the children from Pienarsig take up the other seats so the venue is at least half full, which is good enough for us. The festival attracts a mixed audience: locals from Nieu Bethesda who can afford the ticket prices (mostly white), the curious from near by towns, mostly drawn by a well known performer, and a handful of visitors from other parts of the country, some of them the performers at the festival and other more adventurous art lovers. This year the festival has a wonderful line up of musicians, a couple of plays and some movies and workshops. There are about six or eight events a day, which is a little more than the audience can keep up with! Our play, “Onse Nieu Bethesda”, begins with a song found and rewritten by my co-facilitator. The song is a lament about the state of affairs in Nieu Bethesda, a plea to change our ways and a request for help from on high. “God please Save Nieu Bethesda…” The song is followed by a series of stories that were brought by learners during the story harvesting process. The first story is told by one of the group members about the hardships suffered by her grandmother. This is a story of loss and struggle told as a monologue. The second story is playfully enacted showing the story of one learner’s relatives’ encounter with a baboon, complete with donkey cart and baboon chase. This story is followed by the traditional story of how the zebra got its stripes. I chose this story (copied perfectly from a book and handed to me in fulfilment of the assignment to collect stories from the elders) because it is a powerful metaphor of fighting for what is rightfully yours. It includes the wonderful symbol of integration of opposites as is held by the zebra

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stripes and also allows for the familiar story of conflict to have a positive resolution. In this story the zebra fights the baboon for access to the dam on behalf of all the animals, she is wounded in the fight but her wounds are a proud reminder of her bravery rather than a source of shame. Here we had an opportunity to showcase the skilful “telling off” of the baboon by the zebra—this particular style of “shouting at” was amusingly familiar to all in the village. Moving into the present, the learners were invited to tell “Stories of Kindness”. This is a new story to tell as it contradicts the usual mode of stories of conflict. In the creative process we used the form of playback theatre 6 to discover the stories. The fact that the learners were able to engage with this form was in itself a significant break-through, as it requires the capacity to both listen and improvise. The stories we found were very simple: lending of pens, remembering birthdays with gifts, small surprises offered. However, the fact of focusing on kindness rather than conflict felt like an important shift for the learners and one that they reflected on later in the process. We end with a story that I chose from Linda Rode and Fiona Moodie’s, In die Nimmer-Immer-Bos, called “So Lyk die Wereld” (207). In this story the animals, from the mole to the grasshopper, describe the way they see the world, each one restricted by their own perspective. This is followed by the bird’s view of the world that tells the animals that there is much more to the world than their limited perspective allows them to see. At night the moon drifts below among the stars and clouds, and the big yellow sun glides from east to west. Oh, the world is wide, wide and free. And believe me, early just before daybreak, the world is filled with music. (Rode & Moodie 2009, 207)

In this structure I describe what I hope will be perceived, perhaps on an unconscious level, of the possibility for a new way of seeing the world and thus the possibility for telling a new story. The learners travel from the tragedy and frustration of the past and present, through recognising the parts of the present that are in fact good and healthy and into the bird’s eye view of the world that celebrates the fact of the small details as well as the big picture. This final point of view is spoken by one of the learners who is exceptional in her grasp of creative expression and original thought. Through this process she has been given permission to develop this

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capacity and has learned that it has value and must be nurtured. There are other learners who have taken the space to enact a different part of themselves through this process: the deaf girl who at first kept silent to avoid the laughter of her peers, but by the time of the performance confidently requested extra lines; the boy, known for his truancy and rebelliousness who made a beautiful donkey mask complete with individually cut eyelashes; or the girl who masked her insecurity with bullying behaviour, who discovered she is physically very flexible and can transform her body and personality through movement. After the holidays, we come together a few more times and end with an outing to the farm, a picnic, a treasure hunt and a ritual to mark the ending of our journey together. The play has been performed, the closure enacted. I cannot know now which valuable lessons have been internalised and which have leaked out of the hole in the bucket. I cannot use this information to answer the questions I have been asking about whether someone like myself can really be part of a transformation process on the other side of the divide. This will be revealed over time and probably not to me. All I can be sure of is that, while the old story may not have shifted its dominance, new stories have been planted. And perhaps in the new stories that grow the hole in the bucket can be mended.

References Emunah, Renee. Acting for Real: Drama Therapy Process, Technique and Performance.New York: Brunner/Mazel Publishers, 1994. Gersie, Alida and Nancy, King. 1992. Storymaking in Education and Therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1992. Holmes, Jeremy. John Bowlby & Attachment Theory. London: Routledge, 1993. Jennings. Sue. ed. 1995. Dramatherapy with Children and Adolescents. London: Routledge, 2005. Lewis, Penny and David Read Johnson.Current Approaches in Drama Therrpy. Springfield Illinois: Charles Thomas Publisher Ltd, 2000. Kahn, Michael. Between Therapist and Client: The New Relationship. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1997.

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Mehl-Madrona, Lewis. Healing the Mind through the Power of Story. Rochester, Vermont: Bear & Co, 2010. Rode, Linda and Fiona Moodie. In die Nimmer-Immer-Bos. 205-208. Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2009. Salas, Jo. Improvising Real Life: Personal Story in Playback Theatre. New York: Tusitala Pub, 1999. Available from: http://zakheni.org.za/schools-dramatherapy-project.html.

EPILOGUE

Instruments We are light beings Some slumbering Some awakening To the truth of who we are Indestructible stars Housed only for a while In these temples of flesh Once our memories are refreshed We can see That this life This body Is simply a veil A vision A temporary reality That we are more That we hold perfection within Just beyond our imagining We are light beings Portals of love Makers of peace Creators of beauty We are healers We are believers inherently Rediscovering our way Homeward Inward Out of Earth-time Where free is our natural state Where love is the only way We are born to bring light To honour the blessing of each life —Malika Ndlovu ©1999, www.malika.co.za

NOTES

Chapter Two 1

The other form were billboards I am of course aware that any group/ community no matter how defined will have its own hierarchies which can be oppressive in themselves. Nevertheless community leadership is also pivotal in that it is often though these individuals that less confident members are able to speak and action is catalysed. 3 A public holiday in South Africa celebrated on 9 August. It commemorates the women’s march held on 9 August 1956 where over 20 000 women of all races marched against the apartheid Pass Laws. 4 International research conducted in Britain and America (Faith 2000, Carlen 1990) done on the correlation between criminality and abuse in woman has revealed that around 80% of incarcerated women have been victims of abuse. Discussions with women in prison and with social workers support the statistics but with South Africa’s rape statistics being amongst the highest in the world this statistic is clearly conservative. 5 ‘Natal’ which is the province where Westville Correctional Centre is situated has been renamed KwaZulu-Natal which means ‘Natal, home of the Zulu nation’. Besides being the home of the Zulu, the largest tribe in South Africa, it is also known for being the last outpost of the British Empire in South Africa. The whites are predominantly English speaking, unlike other parts of the country. 6 These programmes are linked with the University of KwaZulu-Natal Drama and Performance Studies programme as part of undergraduate and postgraduate courses and were devised with benefits to all parties: The University in the form of research, the Department of Correctional Services, to help fulfil the mandate of the government White paper on rehabilitation (1995). 7 Ntombi and Karen were the authors and scribes of the billboards. 8 Isikhondayi refers to same sex female relationships/lesbianism. The term, although describing the sexual encounter also implies the broader power play of the relationship. 9 Members is the term used for Correctional Services staff or warders. 10 Virgina (alias) and four other women form the core group of female offenders whose skills and willingness have lead them to becoming the offender facilitators for the Participatory Popular Theatre programme since its inception in 2000. Virginia was then identified by the prison as being an important role model (and powerful facilitator) and asked to host events such as these. She passed away of AIDS related illness in 2007. 2

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11

This is only significant in that the only women who openly declared themselves lesbians to me and the group were white or coloured. Although Zulu women are practicing homosexuals in prison, which one could gather from their ‘performance’ of themselves as ‘male’ this lack of declaration seems to indicate the Zulu cultural power of the space where Lesbianism is considered ‘un-Zulu’. 12 Admission into the PARTICIPATORY POPULAR THEATRE programmes is entirely voluntary although most women who join in return year after year until release. 13 Previously offenders who had died while in the prison hospital were left in the bed sometimes overnight while other ill and dying offenders looked on until the coroner was able to remove the body. 14 Part of the political and methodological ambition of the research conducted at the Westville Correctional Centres was to grow community skill and make the programmes self-sustaining. Due to the high level of skill amongst offenders it did not take long before this took place. I would then hold an initial facilitated discussion around an issue to be engaged (in conjunction with offender facilitators) and then the offender facilitators would take over in smaller groups which I would oversee. 15 In a recent conversation with the member (September 2009) she remarked that one of the ‘male’ offenders had been released and had been seen pregnant! She mentioned this to prove the point that these women are not really lesbians. I subsequently saw the woman working as a car guard and asked her. She said she was not pregnant but had been raped.

Chapter Three 1

A young black male who enjoys Hip Hop music and wears clothes typically worn by Hip Hop artists. He is often not considered to be particularly astute or intellectual in nature. 2 Young black males and females who are considered to be wealthy and who are deemed to consider themselves superior to some of their less wealthy peers. 3 Black people who, although brown on the outside, are ‘white’ on the inside. The inference is that they have denied their culture and have aspirations to adopt those of another group. 4 A derogatory term for Afrikaans men stemming from the Apartheid days when farmers were considered particularly racist. 5 A derogatory term for Afrikaans women stemming from the Apartheid days when farmers’ wives were considered to be overly conservative in terms of dress and behaviour.

Chapter Five 1

For further exposition and description of the FrontLines project, see Meskin and Van der Walt (2010a and 2010b).

236 2

Notes

In focusing on Freire, we do not disregard the many scholars, amongst others Henry Giroux and bell hooks, who have developed the idea of critical pedagogy since Freire’s 1970s’ publications. 3 According to Martinez (2006, 696), meta-cognition refers to “thinking about thinking” and exerting active monitoring and control over thought and the cognitive processes engaged in learning. Meta-cognition enables successful and deep learning and can foster critical thinking (Martinez 2006, 696). Conceptual/cognitive learning can occur in the somatic domain (Lawrence 2012, 8; Munro & Coetzee 2007) and thus “the body is never absent from thought” (Ignatow 2007, 128). 4 Deep learning is used here as it is conceptualised in theories of learning in higher education (Biggs 1999; Entwhistle 2009). Biggs suggests that in the process of deep learning “meaning is not imposed or transmitted by direct instruction, but is created by the student's learning activities. Learning is thus a way of interacting with the world. As we learn, our conceptions of phenomena change, and we see the world differently. The acquisition of information in itself does not bring about such a change, but the way we structure that information and think with it does. Thus, education is about conceptual change, not just the acquisition of information” (1999, 60). 5 Vygotsky defines the Zone of Proximal Development as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers” (1978, 86). While Vygotsky’s original notion is focussed around processes of learning for children, neo-Vygotskian thought has extended this notion to include a wide range of collaborative learning contexts, including those at university, and in the workplace. 6 Rehearsal photographs were taken by the technical director Luke O’Gorman, and are used with his permission. Production photographs were taken by Christina Reinecke, and are used with permission of the University of Pretoria. 7 A full description of each of these strategies falls outside the scope of this paper. 8 Vrot is an Afrikaans word meaning rotten. 9 This particular segment was discussed at length in Meskin & van der Walt (2010b). 10 All pieces of original text from the production are used by permission of the authors and referenced by their names rather than as the FrontLines script. 11 This is an extract from the poem presented here as an example; the full text was used in the production. 12 This particular segment was discussed at length in Meskin & van der Walt (2010b). The Hector Pieterson photograph was sourced from http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/soweto-riots/. 13 A detailed analysis of the nature of the actor-director relationship and how it is reconfigured in the FrontLines project is beyond the scope of this paper. What we want to foreground here is simply that the dialogic nature of the collaborative making does impact on the traditional style of performance-making. 14 While we are using notions derived from applied drama/theatre as tools of analysis and practice in this paper, FrontLines was not constructed as an applied

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drama/theatre project (where participatory and collaborative modes of creation are common). The actual performance project can more accurately be described as a formal theatrical production, thus the emphasis on disruption of the traditional actor-director hierarchy.

Chapter Six 1

Hush was created by Hilary Halba, Stuart Young, Cindy Diver, Erica Newlands, Simon O’Connor, and Danny Still, with guidance from dramaturg Fiona Graham, from interview testimonies. It was first performed at the Mary Hopewell Theatre, Dunedin, 12-22 March 2009. It was performed at the Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre, Auckland, 22-27 November 2010, and it toured Otago, Southland and South Canterbury, including a season at the Fortune, Dunedin, 14 February – 5 March 2011. The productions were directed by Stuart Young and designed by Martyn Roberts. In the first Dunedin season and in Auckland the cast comprised Cindy Diver, Hilary Halba, Erica Newlands, Simon O’Connor, Nadya Shaw Bennett, and Danny Still. For the southern tour Karen Elliot replaced Cindy Diver. 2 See also, for instance, Leask 2011. 3 First nation people of New Zealand.

Chapter Seven 1

Skyline is a contemporary South African novel that deals with the lives of African refugees. It is set in a block of flats at the top of Long Street, Cape Town called Skyline. 1

The Line – script

Shay, J. 1994. Achilles In Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York: Scribner. 2 A huge thank you to Warren Nebe, my supervisor and champion through this process. My creative team who dived in and said YES all the way- Niall Griffin, Charl-Johan Lingenfelder, Gabi Harris and Khutjo Green. Thank you to Muzi without whom I could not have done this project and to Professor Tawana Kupe who granted the seed funding as part of The Wits Arts and Literature Experience (WALE). Thank you to Lesley Lokko who introduced me to the work of Mona Hartoum as well as the many hours spent discussing the play. Thank you also to: Craig Higginson, Malcolm Purkey, Nic Meyer, Susan Roussouw, Tracey Webster, Adam Pelkowitz, Gerard Bester, Sylvaine Strike, Adrienne Sichel, Nolwazi Mthembu, Andrew Hofmeyr, Boitemelo Motsoatsoe, Pusetso Thibedi, Nji Alain, Tshiamo Mokgadi, Dr Kennedy Chinoywa, Professor Georges Pfruender, Mthokozi Khanyile, Victor Edwards and Drama For Life (DFL). Thank you to my husband Paul Choritz for his gracious and loving support. And lastly a huge thank you to everyone I interviewed who bravely and generously shared their stories with me.

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3

The Bang Bang Club (Silva L & G Marinovitch, 2008) records the lives and works of photojournalists during the 80’s, the worst years of Apartheid repression, who recorded the uprisings in Soweto and other Johannesburg townships. 4 Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave, a 35-year-old Mozambican who was burned alive during the xenophobic violence in South Africa in May 2008.

Chapter Nine 1

The use of story is a crucial tool for the dramatherapist. We use traditional myths and folktales as an inspiration for enactments, movement, art making and many other activities. We facilitate the process of finding personal stories, improvising stories in the moment, creating stories in groups, among many other variations. Alida Gersie and Nancy King write, “Stories, necessitating the use of imagination connect and express fantasy and reality. They are simultaneously plausible and unlikely. Whenever a story is told, teller and listener embark upon a journey of inner and outer exploration.” (Gersie & King 1992, 25) 2 Mehl-Madrona emphasizes the crucial importance of the patient’s own story in the healing process. Through case presentations he illustrates how through the use of the narrative process and by drawing on traditional stories patients are able to re-examine the story they tell about themselves and their illness and in so doing enable the healing process. 3 John Bowlby Attachment theory in Jeremy Holmes: A securely attached child will store an internal working model of a responsive, loving, reliable care-giver, and of a self that is worthy of love and attention and will bring these assumptions to bear on all other relationships. Conversely, an insecurely attached child may view the world as a dangerous place in which other people are to be treated with great caution, and see himself as ineffective and unworthy of love” (Holmes, 1993; 78) 4 Object Relations Theory: “If ‘good enough mothering’ was present then the individual will experience a whole, full realistic sense of self. They will also experience being held, supported and loved for who they are. They will be internally encouraged to feel pride in their productions, confidence in their doings and interest in exploring their creativity. All too often a negative parental object is introjected”. (Lewis 2000, 45). 5 Emunah’s Five phase model: Phase one—dramatic play; phase two—scene work; phase three—role play; phase four—culminating enactment; phase five—dramatic ritual (Emunah 1994). 6 In Playback Theatre, developed by Jonathan Fox and Jo Salas in 1975 and evolved into a theatre form that is practiced around the world, actors playback stories told by audience members using improvised forms. See Salas 1999.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Hazel Barnes is a retired Head of Drama and Performance Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where she is a Senior Research Associate. She has been a Mellon Visiting Scholar to the University of Cape Town and is a member of the Management Committee and Chair of the Research Committee of Drama for Life, School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand. She has supervised Masters and doctoral candidates in these contexts. Her research interests lie in the field of Applied Drama in which she has published a number of papers on drama and theatre applied to interculturalism and post traumatic stress in national and international journals. She has also published on South African playwrights, in particular Greig Coetzee and Mandla Mbothwe. She is the editor of two prior books on Applied Drama/Theatre and has acted as reviewer for a number of national and international journals. She is an actress and director whose work has been seen at South African arts festivals and in particular, in Kwa-Zulu-Natal. Kennedy Chinyowa is currently the Head of the Division of Dramatic Art and Senior Lecturer in Applied Drama and Theatre at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has taught at several universities including the University of Zimbabwe, Griffith University (Australia), University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) and Tshwane University of Technology (South Africa.He has won numerous research awards including the American Alliance for Theatre in Education’s Distinguished Thesis Finalist Award, Griffith University’s Postgraduate Research Scholarship, the International Postgraduate Research Scholarship and the University of Zimbabwe’s Staff Development Fellowship, to mention a few. Apart from presenting several papers and workshops at international conferences, he has published widely in books, refereed and accredited journals such as Research in Drama Education (UK), Studies in Theatre and Performance (UK), Drama Research (UK), Nadie Journal (Australia), Literary Criterion (India), South African Theatre Journal and Alternation (South Africa).

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Marié-Heleen Coetzee is Associate Professor and head of the Drama Department at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She was previously on the faculty of the University of Zululand. Her current research centres on drama/theatre-based pedagogies and performance praxis in the context of higher education, with a special interest in cross-cultural and crossdisciplinary areas. She has presented papers and workshops at various local and international conferences, contributed scholarly articles, and directed/choreographed productions on a variety of platforms. She recently co-edited the 2010 special edition on Physical Theatre in South Africa of the South African Theatre Journal. She was a juror for the Brock International prize in Education in 2013, served on the DFL research team and is currently on the Aardklop/Clover Arts Festival’s board of directors. Patrick Ebewo is Professor and Head of the Department of Drama and Film, Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa. He has taught at universities in Nigeria, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana. He is a Rated Researcher (National Research Foundation of South Africa) who has published extensively in the areas of African theatre, applied drama, culture and film studies. Hilary Halba is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Otago. She is also a director and actor. Her research focuses on documentary theatre, the theory and practice of acting, and bicultural theatre in Aotearoa /New Zealand. She has studied acting at the Neighbourhood Playhouse School of Theatre in New York City. Hilary and Stuart Young have been involved in creating and directing four verbatim theatre pieces, Gathered in Confidence: A Dunedin Documentary Play, Hush: A Documentary Play about Family Violence, Be | Longing, and Passages. Ofonime Inyang is a PhD candidate in Drama and Film at the Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa and maintains regular interest in applied and interventionist theatre pedagogy. He has devised and directed productions for development communication programmes in Nigeria and South Africa and was until his relocation for further studies, a lecturer in the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Uyo, Nigeria. He has attended conferences and workshops and his articles, poems, plays and short stories are published locally and internationally. He is a recipient of the New Direction in Humanities’ Graduate Scholar Award (2012).

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Paula Kingwill has a Masters in Drama Therapy from the California Institute of Integral Studies, USA. She worked for 10 years in Cape Town with a range of client populations in and around Cape Town and was a founding member of The Bonfire Theatre Company. She has made two documentary films on the subject of Drama Therapy: Tending the Saplings: Dramatherapy in South Africa (2005) and We don’t Fly Kites Here (2010). She is now a cattle farmer in the Eastern Cape. She continues her work as a drama therapist through Zakheni Arts Therapy Foundation. She is a Firemaker facilitator, working with caregivers to support them to integrate the arts in their care for children and she also facilitates at the local school, Lettie de Klerk Primary where she works with grade 7 learners towards creating a piece of theatre which is performed at the Nieu Bethesda Festival. Tamar Meskin is a Lecturer in the Drama and Performance Studies programme at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where her primary research areas are directing, acting, writing and multi/intercultural performance practices. She is currently pursuing doctoral research around performance making and pedagogy. Awarded the Emma Smith Overseas Scholarship, she completed her MFA in Acting at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since returning to South Africa, she has directed over 30 productions, many of which have been nominated for awards. She has co-written productions and also performs when she can. She has presented papers at several national and international conferences. Recent publications include papers in the International Journal of the Arts in Society and the South African Theatre Journal. Glynnis Moore has a doctorate in comparative education from the University of South Africa. She currently teaches at St Alban’s College, Pretoria where she is Head of English. She has a particular interest in Drama and its uses in education. Her doctoral thesis studied the use of drama for the development of cultural competency. Her findings were performed by the participants in the form of an ethnodrama. She has an avid interest in young people and their development. She is constantly looking for ways to improve learning opportunities for her students and to make learning innovative, fun and effective. Malika Ndlovu’s words and productions have appeared on pages and stages all over South Africa, as well as in Austria, Uganda, USA, UK, Holland, Ireland, Germany, Spain and the Philippines. Her publications include Born in Africa But, Womb to World: A Labour of Love, Truth is

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Contributors

both Spirit and Flesh, Invisible Earthquake: a Woman’s Journal through Stillbirth and two published plays: A Coloured Place and Sister Breyani. This mother of 3 sons believes life is ultimate poetry and that creativity is medicine inherent to us all – whether we access this to great art for the public or to heal and grow ourselves, to honour our humanity. A lover of all things “lunar and oceanic” this ‘cosmic’ poet and arts activist lives in Observatory, Cape Town. www.malika.co.za Gina Schmukler is an international award winning actress and director. Onstage Gina has directed iNje, Callback, Lost In The Stars, Killer Queen, (Overtone) Songs For A New World and the Market Theatre's Brer Rabbit .She recently directed the sold –out season of Beautiful Creatures and the critically acclaimed The Last Five Years. Internationally, Gina has toured both the USA and ASIA in Oscar Winner Sam Mendes’ revival of Cabaret. She played the role of Mary Magdalene on the World Tour of Paul Warrick Griffin’s Jesus Christ Superstar performing in both South Korea and Athens, Greece and recently Julie with Cape Town Opera’s Showboat in Malmo, Sweden. In New York, she has worked extensively with Tony Award nominee, Elizabeth Swados, on Judith, Missionaries, Yerma, Journey to Benares and The Violence Project. Other USA highlights include: Salt Chocolate (the Duke on 42nd), Murder (PS 122), Hidden Voices (Minetta Lane) directed by Tony Award winner Terence Mann, Anyone Can Whistle (Fay Apple), Secret Garden (Martha), Mame (Sally Cato) and On The Town (Madam Dilly). In New York, Gina most recently played the role of Amina in the Award winning independent film, Arranged. Her one-woman show Silk Ties was performed throughout South Africa as well as Namibia and Toronto earning nominations for Best Script and Best Director. Gina co-runs the Musical Theatre course at The University of The Witwatersrand. Alexandra Sutherland is an Associate Professor in Drama Studies at Rhodes University, South Africa. Her teaching, research, and community engagement activities focus broadly on Applied Theatre and the meaning of performance in diverse contexts. Her projects have included drama with and for youth at risk; the processes involved in teaching, learning and research through drama; and performance pedagogy in relation to identity. Her applied theatre work has included theatre and science projects, theatre by and for street children, theatre as a catalyst for heritage studies, and examining performative notions of gender in relation to HIV/AIDS. Her current practical and research focus involves the social and aesthetic meanings of performance for male prisoners in a South African context.

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James Thompson is Professor of Applied and Social Theatre at the University of Manchester, UK, Director of In Place of War, and Director of the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute. He is author of Drama Workshops for Anger Management and Offending Behaviour (1999), Applied Theatre: Bewilderment and Beyond (2003), Digging Up Stories: Applied Theatre, Performance and War (2005), Performance Affects (2009), Humanitarian Performance (2013) and with Jenny Hughes and Michael Balfour, Performance In Place of War (2009). He has worked as a theatre practitioner in DR Congo, Kosovo, Rwanda, and Sri Lanka. Tanya van der Walt’s primary research interests are in the areas of directing, acting, drama- and theatre-in-education. She is currently pursuing doctoral research using self-study methodologies to investigate collaborative enquiry through performance pedagogy. Her undergraduate studies were conducted at the University of Natal (Durban) and she holds an MA in Drama from Rhodes University. Her career in theatre has included such diverse activities as stage management, lighting design, arts administration, marketing/publicity, acting, directing, writing, and teaching. She also has extensive experience in formulating and facilitating Theatre-in-Education projects. She has presented papers at several national and international conferences. Recent publications include papers in the International Journal of the Arts in Society and the South African Theatre Journal. Miranda Young-Jahangeer is the current Academic co-ordinator (Admin) for Drama and Performance Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College Campus, Durban, South Africa. Her research has primarily been in the area of African popular performance, gender and identity, Theatre for Social change and Prison Theatre. She has been working and publishing in these areas for over 10 years. She has presented her work at National and International Conferences and conducted workshops locally and abroad. She has an on-going participatory theatre programme in Westville Female Correctional Centre which has been running since 2000 and is a continued sight of research and creative collaboration. She has edited a book on Contemporary African dance and was the Managing Editor of the Cultural Studies Journal Critical Arts: A journal of South-North Cultural and Media Studies (2002 – 2004). She is now an Editorial consultant for the journal. She sits on the board of the NPO’s Twist Theatre Development Projects and Dala: Art and architecture for social change.

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Contributors

Stuart Young is an Associate Professor and Head of the Theatre Studies programme at the University of Otago. His research focusses on documentary/verbatim theatre; Russian drama, in particular Chekhov, and its reception abroad; Translation Studies and translation for the theatre; modern British drama and theatre; New Zealand theatre; and gay and queer drama. He is also a director, translator, and performance reviewer. Hilary Halba and Stuart have been involved in creating and directing four verbatim theatre pieces, Gathered in Confidence: A Dunedin Documentary Play, Hush: A Documentary Play about Family Violence, Be | Longing, and Passages.

INDEX

abuse, 19, 20, 25, 57, 104, 106, 111, 112, 114, 120, 129, 130, 131, 133, 138, 139, 140, 151, 153, 154, 223, 234 acting, 8, 9, 44, 76, 81, 110, 111, 228 Acting Against Conflict, 8 Acting Against Conflict project,3 8, 12 aesthetic of injury, 215, 217, 218 aesthetic space, 9 African femininity, 29 Alecky Blythe, 108, 158 audience, 3, 7, 9, 14, 21, 23, 24, 35, 44, 63, 64, 75, 78, 89, 95, 109, 111, 112, 113, 156, 157, 158, 159, 165, 167, 210, 212, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 238 Boal, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 23, 31, 49, 68, 76, 99, 220, 221, 240, 241, 249 enhanced forum theatre, 3 forum theatre, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15, 34, 44, 64, 85 Joker, 12, 14 Legislative Theatre, 5, 16, 240 metaxis, 77, 95 poetics of the oppressed, 3, 6, 7, 14 Rainbow of Desire, 5, 15, 240 simultaneous dramaturgy, 14, 25 spectacting, 14 Theatre of the Oppressed, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 49 collaboration, 34, 81, 83, 84, 93, 97, 236, 237 collaborative creation, 83 conflict, 8, 9, 10, 12, 17, 28, 33, 36, 37, 39, 42, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 51,

52, 59, 60, 65, 66, 67, 68, 73, 76, 80, 81, 82, 86, 95, 97, 98, 100, 167, 211, 223, 228, 230, 240, 242, 247, 248, 251 creative collaboration, 73, 74, 75, 78 critical pedagogy, 8, 15, 16, 79, 236, 239, 242 critical thinking, 77, 79, 97, 236 cultural competency, 33, 34, 35, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 247, 250 culture, 2, 18, 19, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 31, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 43, 49, 60, 240 Deavere Smith, 109, 116, 249 deep learning, 77, 79, 80, 81, 90, 93, 94, 96, 236 deforestation, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 59, 60, 61, 65 directive facilitation, 26 Drama in Education, 77, 99, 240 dramaturgical, 105, 108 economic survival, 58, 59 embodied learning, 74, 78, 79, 93, 95 empathy, 34, 43, 45, 77, 97, 108, 110, 111, 124, 211, 212, 213, 219 environment, 18, 22, 27, 39, 40, 43, 44, 48, 50, 51, 56, 57, 58, 64, 66, 67, 105, 239 environmental resources, 50 ethics, 161, 210, 212, 213, 215, 216, 220, 243 ethnodrama, 33, 34, 35, 44, 46, 47 family violence, 103, 104, 105, 106, 113, 114, 117, 118, 120, 124, 134 Fanon, 4, 8, 10, 16, 242 fantasy, 13, 237

260 Five Phase Model, 228 fragility of goodness, 159, 167, 171 Freire, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 23, 29, 31, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79, 90, 97, 99, 100, 236, 239, 243, 246 conscientisation, 10, 29, 75 critical consciousness, 75, 90, 96 dialogical, 10, 75, 79, 83 dialogue, 75 domesticating, 14 internalised opression, 9 pedagogy of the oppressed, 14 praxis, 3, 25, 52, 55, 74, 75, 76, 80, 90, 94, 95, 96, 102, 212, 251 hetero-normative, 28 HIV/AIDS, 26, 67, 239 HIV+, 23 human rights, 8, 23, 160, 192 identity, 8, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 42, 45, 46, 99, 106, 173, 213, 215, 218, 239, 241, 244, 250 imaginative space, 73 improvisation, 34, 54, 58, 60, 85, 93, 228 journaling, 35, 55 language usage, 61 lesbianism, 28 Lesbianism, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 235 mediation, 48, 66, 107, 108, 109, 110 metaphor, 158, 166, 173, 229 Mocambique, 161 Mozambique, 176 multiculturalism, 33 narrative, 23, 73, 87, 98, 100, 105, 107, 155, 157, 158, 161, 162, 165, 166, 167, 218, 220, 238, 245 narrative therapy, 210, 211, 212, 213, 215, 217 narratives, 4, 13, 76, 80, 81, 82, 86, 90, 91, 95, 96, 98, 106, 166 New Zealand, 103, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 237, 242, 245

Index Nieto systematic oppression, 2, 6 Nieu Bethesda Festival, 222 outsider witness, 214, 216 outsider witnessing, 213 Participatory Popular Theatre, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 234 patriarchal, 19, 24, 28 Paulo Freire, 74 performance-making pedagogy, 72 poetics of the oppressor, 4, 6, 7 post-conflict, 12, 15, 16, 52, 73, 244 power, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 14, 18, 19, 23, 25, 29, 64, 73, 74, 76, 79, 99, 135, 136, 158, 159, 160, 162, 190, 201, 203, 210, 211, 212, 215, 216, 218, 224, 227, 234, 235, 243 prejudice, 12, 23, 33, 36, 37, 39, 42, 45, 47, 250 racial prejudice, 8, 42 racism, 15, 16, 33, 36, 42, 45, 246 reflection, 12, 29, 34, 65, 76, 77, 80, 90, 95, 96, 218, 219, 228 rehearsal, 2, 54, 61, 83, 84, 95, 111, 112, 215 repressive myths, 4, 10, 12, 14, 16, 242 role play, 34, 43, 76, 95, 96 role repertoire, 224 self-awareness, 33 sexuality, 3, 18, 22 social injustice, 2, 73 social justice, 7, 8, 73, 79, 90 social trust, 159, 160 stereotype, 33, 41, 120, 227 story, 9, 13, 18, 54, 60, 95, 96, 104, 106, 107, 111, 113, 114, 155, 157, 162, 164, 166, 167, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 222, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 237, 238 subjectivity, 107, 217 sustainable livelihood, 56

Applied Drama/Theatre as Social Intervention in Conflict and Post-Conflict Contexts testimony, 81, 87, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 156, 160, 210, 218 Theatre for Development, 49, 50, 54, 55, 59, 77 Theatre in Education, 77 Theatre of Humanity, 72, 73, 74, 75, 92, 96, 98 Theatre of the Oppressed, 5, 15, 17, 240, 249, 251 Theatre of the Oppressor, 2, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 251 theatre-making, 73, 75, 78, 79, 93, 107, 155, 156, 157, 165, 171 themis, 159 thumos, 160 trauma, 103, 104, 106, 110, 111, 112, 113, 155, 156, 157, 159,

261

161, 162, 163, 165, 167, 171, 210, 213, 217, 218, 219, 221 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 114, 210, 220, 241 verbatim theatre, 103, 107, 110, 157 158, 159, 166 Westville Female Correctional Centre, 18, 19 witness, 15, 81, 82, 87, 126, 160, 161, 166, 173, 186, 210, 211, 212, 213, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 221 xenophobic attacks, 40, 41, 43, 155, 157, 159, 160, 171, 173 xenophobic violence, 237 Zakheni Arts Therapy Foundation, 222