Theatre For A Change.

I mentioned this amazing organization in my last post. Starting in Ghana, they developed a highly effective model for behaviour change that uses theatre and drama techniques to intervene in (mostly) youths’ lives. Today I went to special presentation for their new pilot project working with sex workers. This group of sex workers has been meeting for only two months, and using the same model of dramatics to tell the stories of their work and lives, have already made significant changes in their lives. They have come together so quickly to learn from each other and teach the community about the challenges that they face. The group has already noted the power that comes with organizing and working together and now plan to use their strength in numbers to advocate on behalf of sex workers throughout Malawi.
Today’s presentation was a series of sketches written by the group about situations that occur in their lives. It was performed for their friends, as well as for the chiefs of their communities. Unfortunately, the performance was in Chichewa, so I was unable to understand what they were saying. But it was quite entertaining even with the language barrier, and I was occupied trying to understand what they might be talking about based on their facial expressions and hand gestures. At the end of each sketch, the TFOC staff lead the whole audience in an interactive breakdown of the sketch. They discussed what had taken place, got feedback from the audience about what might have been done differently had the scenario been in real life, and then redid the scene where people from the audience were encouraged to come in and ‘tag’ one of the actors when they thought they knew what that character should do. It was fantastic. So concrete and useful. One of the scenes was about a husband who was HIV+ and having extra-marital relations. He would not discuss his status with his wife, and in the end, she contracted the virus, and then killed herself. Like I said – these scenes were written by the women and were very raw.
The audience was able to weigh in on how the wife might have better protected herself, and then was able to practice those strategies by acting them out. Having the opportunity to see the words and strategies used to negotiate for safe sex in a marriage and how to encourage communication with one’s husband is a very effective tool, as sadly, this is a situation that many women in Malawi face.

The group had wonderful energy, and in between each sketch the women would break into song and get up and dance. I did some dancing myself, and got my first lesson in the ‘kwassa kwassa’ – a Malawian dance where you shake and undulate your hips – fun and complicated all at the same time.

Towards the end of the event something very interesting happened. A group of men pulled up to the British Council (where the event was taking place) and all got out singing in a line and came to sit in the circle where the play was going on. I did not really understand what was happening as there was a lot of talking and ‘speech making’ about something. Then one of the TFOC staff suggested that everyone move outside. At that point, the men all got up, started singing again, and went outside. I asked the other white girl there what was happening (no one else really spoke English). She explained that one of the male trainees from the TFOC teacher training program had thought that it would be a great idea to round up twenty of his friends, get drunk, and then come over here. Sadly, there are idiots in every community. What was especially unfortunate about this situation was that in coming over to this group, thus guy not only lost his chances of being part of an amazing organization, but he also violated the trust and confidentiality of the sex worker group. The women will now no longer be able to use the British Council for their practice site, as the safe space they had created was destroyed. It was very unfortunate.
Luckily, the women were not discouraged and picked right up dancing where they left off.