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Tuesday 2 December 2008

Changing behaviour

Toby Jones on how theatre is being used in Malawi to help stop the spread of Aids

The interior designer charged with decorating the IT suite probably didn’t have theatre in mind. I am staring at the pastel carpeting, Venetian blinds and the useless plug dangling from the overhead projector: we could be anywhere. The sex worker casually hands me her baby and takes to the carpet. As I rock the baby to sleep, I watch the mother and several of her sex co-workers acting out the moment a colleague of theirs declared herself HIV-positive.

We are sitting in the British Council offices in Lilongwe, Malawi, where we have spent the afternoon singing and improvising with these 15 extraordinary women. As they tell their stories, the offices transform into the bottle shops, streets and slums in which they live and work. At one unforgettable moment even the dangling plug is woven into a noose as the mother is driven to suicide.

Natasha Freedman, director of education for the British theatre company Complicite, and I are the guests of Patrick Young. Natasha is keen to explore the potential for a collaboration between Complicite and Patrick’s theatre company Theatre for a Change (or TfaC as it is affectionately abbreviated). The afternoon we spend with the sex workers at the British Council is our introduction to their remarkable work.

Our aim is to spend the week sharing ideas and technique. In practice I will lead a workshop with 20 current TfaC trainees. At the same time Patrick and his two Ghanaian colleagues, Eric and Samuel, will introduce us to their methods as they continue their first year here in Malawi.

Theatre for a Change makes theatre that works directly to help audiences change their own lives. In particular it aims to boost HIV/Aids prevention through a process of storytelling and open debate. The process owes much to the forum theatre developed by Augusto Boal where the audience is encouraged to act out their own solutions to crises that the story throws up.

The move to Malawi follows five highly successful years in Ghana, where strong roots have been laid and where their theatre continues to thrive. With the generous and imaginative support of the British Council TfaC has now relaunched in Lilongwe. It is an ambitious project: 18 to 20 trainees (chosen from 450 applicants) will go through a year-long course as they learn to become facilitators in the Theatre for a Change process.

More articles from: Toby Jones | this section

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