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Joseph
Kallanchira, SVD Introduction Last night as our parish youth belonging to the Jeunes Ouvriers Chrétiens (Young Christian Workers) movement ended staging their ‘play’ in the open air under the starry, moonlit sky, the audience gave them a standing ovation for the ‘simplicity’ of their performance and for the quality of the message that was communicated. This SVD parish is on the suburbs of Parakou, a typical West African town in the Republic of Benin, teeming with tens of thousands of young people. Theatre, our young workers knew, was one of the best means to attract a large crowd mostly comprising young people, and to communicate the message they wanted to put across. They were proved right, once again. What is interesting in all this is the way the whole performance took place. A couple of youth leaders came up with the basic story outline for the play and the members of the group started straight away rehearsing the scenes, during their evening gatherings at the parish meeting room. As they rehearsed the lines came to say and the direction for the story to take — all that they wanted was to inform themselves, first of all, how important it was for them to be able to do their job of work honestly and well, and as a consequence, to be able to manage their personal, family and social life equally well. They had debated on these matters before and after the performance and they had come up with concrete proposals for themselves and for the movement in the light of this process. The story and the medium acted as channels for them to express themselves. There was a young man, an entrepreneur, so the story goes, who was doing quite well in his personal and professional life. But then the proverbial bad company, boobs, bottles et al, brought him to the brink of self-destruction. Soon, however, thanks to his good friends and family, reason prevailed over him and he lived happily ever after with his wife and children. Our young workers practiced the whole episode just for five days; everyday there was something new to add here, a few modifications to make there and another new sub-plot to the main theme came by easily. They had the right song to sing; humorous lines and actions came to them so spontaneously. Finally they were able to stretch the play to a hilarious two-hour performance. That the message went home well was evident: from the way many from the audience were adding dialogue lines that the actors could have used as the play was in progress; from the way friends gathered in small circles after the show to discuss the ideas and to congratulate the performers of the evening. I knew that they would continue to talk about the piece, thus assimilating the message in slow doses, until the young workers will come up with their next title. As the night wore on and we fixed the dates for similar performances in other neigbhouring villages, we said to ourselves, for the umpteenth time, that here is a popular, traditional way of communicating — cheap, neat, swift and for a large audience. As members of the young workers movement, we know that we are using this medium to communicate human values and to proclaim the Gospel. We know that while preparing to perform for an audience, we are challenging ourselves, we are using theatre to express our protest, question dominant and often oppressive social assumptions and structures, and suggest alternatives in our own little ways. We know that our aim is not to become great theatrical stars but we are at the same time performers and participants using this medium to understand, question and to come to terms with our everyday life situations. We are discovering ourselves and our society, we are strengthening our ties as members of a movement and a community, and above all, we are sharing hope among friends, we are looking forward to a better future. We know that we are using the stage to communicate the Word of life that promotes the integral development of the human person and the community. We know that we are very much in line with the pastoral policy of the Archdiocese of Parakou, which, after its diocesan synod recently, has reaffirmed its stand on the use of all kinds of group as well as mass media, especially the traditional African media, to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ to bring about inculturation of the Christian faith, social justice, peace and development.1 Our efforts are in line with and are sustained, we know as well, by the recent Church teachings. As Christians we are called upon to communicate the life-giving Word in the society we are living in today. Communication leading to Development Communication is at the heart of human life and development. It creates meaningful human relationships; it creates community. Whereas history boasts of traditional as well as modern means of communication, riding on the information superhighway has neither been the privilege nor the experience of a vast majority of people, especially those living in developing nations. When communication is considered only in terms of the transmission of messages from "the information rich" to "the information poor", community is reduced to a socio-demographic description and the dominant techno-cybernetic version of communication becomes "no more than a product of the dominant world of commerce".2 This gives rise to what is called a "mass media mentality" and people tend to think that it is the way mass media have to work. But this is neither the way African traditional culture understands the concept nor the way it practices the art of communication. To the extent the communication systems are controlled by and are representative of the economically powerful, externally or internally based, a meaningful social transformation leading to integral human development remains blocked. There is a constant struggle among people of the developing nations to overcome both internal and external domination and it can be said that "all basic issues in communications today relate to this fundamental and increasingly intense confrontation".3 One can therefore ask, ‘Is there no way out of this struggle? Can we not perceive communication and development from another angle?’ One can also ask for a solution to the struggle, for example, by promoting traditional media. The indigenous media seem to be free of cultural hegemony and exogenous control. What is more, they seem to be well placed also to bring about social awareness, change, justice and development. Popular theatre is one of such media and it seems to be a very useful and practical missionary method to communicate the values of the Gospel, too. Understanding Popular Theatre and Social Change Learning from the use of the open-air stage to communicate the Word, we thought it was worth sharing our experience with you. But first, let us clarify the concept of popular theatre and what we really mean by social change: A) Popular Theatre: The word popular means ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’. Understandably, the word ‘people’ has undergone certain semantic changes in the recent decades, starting in Latin America where the noun pueblo and the adjective popular meant a movement of emancipation. The ordinary people in many parts of the world struggle to free themselves from all the constraints of power structures. For example, in many African countries, the media are heavily controlled by the all-powerful governments or the powerful élite. As an alternative, some authors point out that a decentralised decision-making process, where ordinary people participate, would reflect control of that system by the people.4 In fact the whole new concept of "education to critical consciousness" came from the Brazilian thinker Paulo Freire5 who called the people to liberate themselves from "the culture of silence" and to enter into a process of two-way communication system, allowing praxis, a process of reflection that will eventually lead to action. The MacBride Report6 from UNESCO enthusiastically supported this kind of thinking. It exhorted governments to seek solutions to local problems in a decentralised way and encouraged people to participate in the decision-making and communication process, using available local media. How far certain governments were able to initiate such programmes is anyone’s guess. One of the indigenous resources is theatre, which indeed is an age-old medium of communication. It is interesting to note that people’s theatre in its variety of forms is a worldwide phenomenon, including, curiously, many developed nations. The late 1960s saw, however, some development in theatre as a medium when Augusto Boal, a dramatist working with Freire’s literacy campaigns in Brazil gave a new lease of life to this approach. Boal critically examined both the Aristotelian and Brechtian poetics of theatre and proposed a new form of creative drama in his "poetics of the oppressed". According to him, "the spectator delegates no power to the character either to act or to think in his place; on the contrary, he himself assumes the protagonist’s role, changes the dramatic action, tries out solutions, discusses plans for change".7 In the Aristotelian understanding of theatre, the aesthetic and emotional aspects of the performance viz., the techniques of artistic combination of poetic expression, music, dance, elaborate costuming, stage setting, the suspense of the plot and cathartic relaxation constitute the essence of classical drama. On the other hand, popular theatre is enacted in such a way that all members of the audience take part in the play as it unfolds, thus deeply identifying themselves with the symbolic world of the play itself. No other structured form of communication depends so directly on the participation of the people for its success as popular theatre. It is collective action, it requires team spirit and the very notion includes the active participation of the spectators. Aside from that, popular theatre is a live experience, it is indigenous to the rural masses, it has an indigenous form, it is an educational tool, and above all, it can help initiate an action-reflection-action process which can bring about change. Thus popular theatre appears to offer an unprecedented potential for communication, for community building and for action leading to social change and integral human development.8 B) Social Change: The intention here is to understand social change in the context of integral human development. Under the influence of the modernization theory of Lerner and Schramm,9 development has been understood only in terms of economic growth and productivity. Development is initiated by those who know and those who have, on behalf of those who do not know and who do not have. This overemphasis, however, exemplified the ethnocentrism involved in the imposition of the western model of development on the third world, and "was at the root of many of the failures which characterized development communication projects in the third world".10 On the other hand, according to the Freirean philosophy, development is an integrated process involving "psychological and material development which is not imposed, but comes about through the involvement of people in the process of collective reflection and action".11 Participatory-communication-for-change is the slogan of the day. The index of measuring development in such cases is not just economic progress. What is of prime importance is people’s own participation in their development, beginning with the idea through its implementation. As Shirley White suggests: when the development bureaucracy, the local élite, and the people are working cooperatively throughout the decision-making process and when the people are empowered to control the action to be taken, only then can there be genuine participation.12 In this context the democratic-participant media approach of McQuail13 made a valuable contribution in that it promotes a participatory model of communication, offering opportunities for access and participation by the media users on terms set by themselves. In many countries, however, it largely remains only at the concept level; what is really needed is participation, which begins with people rather than with projects and policies which are often initiated and controlled by government bodies in a top-to-bottom approach.14 Popular Theatre is really Popular Popular theatre has evolved to be a truly empowering medium in many developing nations. This is particularly understandable from the point of view of the two broad objectives of the medium: to give the oppressed people a forum to express themselves and thus create more confidence in themselves, and to give them access to a wider social and political analysis and participation. Various authors testify to how widespread popular theatre, in its diverse forms and styles, is around the globe. Some examples would suffice here: Case studies from Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay,15 the story of the Arena Theatre of Brazil,16 several initiatives in street plays and people’s theatre in India,17 the development of the West Bank El-Hakawati Theatre Group in Palestine,18 the so-called "student theatre" of Poland,19 and "Marks on Paper", a type of popular theatre developed in British Columbia.20 These illustrate the growing interest in and impact of people’s theatre outside the African continent. Within the African continent itself the use of popular theatre as a medium proliferated in recent decades. Morrison studied the performances of Atelier Theatre Burkinabé which used forum theatre as a means to educate village people in Burkina Faso on contraceptive options.21 Another study showed how the Freirian approach was used in Botswana using theatre for non-formal education.22 There is also the glowing example of the community theatre in Sierra Leone which used participatory research in the developmental process.23 The Kalankuwa of the Hausa in northern Nigeria and the Egungun of the Yoruba in western Nigeria have altogether different stories to tell. They are more into affirming their cultural identity through harvest and other religious festival theatres. The Samuru Street Theatre Project is seen as an extension of the same concept in that it addresses social problems such as alcoholism and prostitution.24 The 1960s saw the travelling theatre projects of the Universities of Ibadan in Nigeria, Lesotho, Makerere in Uganda, Nairobi in Kenya, Zomba in Malawi, Yaoundé in Cameroun and of Zambia. One major criticism, though, against these university groups is that they still remain a theatre for the people. Another major trend in the development of popular theatre in Africa is that there is a lot of goal-oriented education going on in the field. Epskamp describes how a 13-day workshop was conducted in Nigeria to train 60 community development workers in the educational use of popular theatre.25 Malamah-Thomas writes about another two-week first-ever workshop organised by the University of Sierra Leone in 1986.26 The objective of these workshops was to initiate theatre workers and activists, to teach participants to respect villagers, to listen to them, to learn about their problems and to conduct practical sessions on theatre with the participation of the villagers. Epskamp and Swart conducted a study on the inclusion of popular theatre in the process of development communication as part of adult education programmes. From the study they established that from those initiatives grew a special type of popular theatre called theatre for development.27 What has been described above gives a bird’s eye view of how concerted efforts are being made in different parts of the African continent to use this medium for social awareness leading to change and human promotion. Authors including Robert White28 agree that such movements have made a major contribution to the concept of participatory, democratic communication. The workshops for training leaders in this art form and the initiatives being taken by several universities across the continent are clear signs of the importance this form of grass-roots media enjoys there. In a society where the oral tradition29 is so pivotal to its cultural identity, where "oramedia" define and maintain social relationships and a world view,30 the significant role of the popular theatre is only too evident. What the Academics are saying about Popular Theatre Human beings are not born with all the behavioural mechanisms, although they are with the innate capacity to learn values, attitudes and responses to cope with the external world. Studies abound in explaining how people learn to respond to external stimuli, thus interacting with their environments. Traditional as well as modern media have become a great influence in people’s lives and from that perspective, understanding how popular theatre as a medium influences the participants of a performance in creating, shaping and reinforcing their cultural symbolic world also has a missiological import. Let us therefore have a quick look at two communication theories that will help us understand the whole dynamics of the socializing process which leads to integral human development. The social learning theory of Albert Bandura is particularly relevant to mass communication because several of the types of behaviour we learn through modelling [imitation] are first seen in the mass media. Bandura explains: Social learning theory approaches the explanation of human behaviour in terms of a continuous reciprocal interaction between cognitive, behavioural, and environmental determinants. Within the process of reciprocal determinism lies the opportunity for people to influence their destiny as well as the limits of self-direction.... Both people and their environments are reciprocal determinants of each other.31 Accordingly people learn through a process. By observing others one forms an idea of how to imitate new types of behaviour (modelling), and this coded information serves as a guide for future action in real life. Exposure to such varied information will enable a person to choose freely from his own personal resources and more often than not that person will act out of a self reinforcement motivation. Another theorist who has tried to link mass media and society is Denis McQuail, through his democratic-participant media theory.32 As the name indicates and from a different perspective, this theory of grassroots media plainly promotes a participatory model of communication. He sets forth the basic elements of the theory as follows: the right to relevant information, the right to answer back, the right to use the means of communication for interaction in small-scale settings of community, interest group, sub-group…. The theory rejects the necessity of uniform, centralised, high-cost, highly professionalised, neutralised, state-controlled media. It favours multiplicity, smallness of scale, locality, de-institutionalization, interchange of sender-receiver roles, horizontality of communication links at all levels of society, interaction, commitment.33 This theory emerged as a reaction against the commercialisation and monopolisation of privately owned media as well as against the centralism and bureaucratisation of the public sector media. Evidently, this theory favours an environment wherein the participation of people, especially at the grassroots level is highly valued. Missionary Implications of Popular Theatre We have come this far with a view to using the open-air stage to proclaim human and Gospel values. "We are convinced that if evangelization is at the heart of the church’s mission, then communication is at the core of evangelisation",34 African bishops declared at the end of the Ninth plenary assembly of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences in Lomé, Togo, in July 1990. But decades earlier they had recognised the importance of the church’s need to encourage and concentrate on the grassroots communication, without neglecting of course, the mass media. Integrating more vigorous traditional means of communication, without pastoral worries, into the church’s activities in Africa was a clarion call given by church leaders already in the decade after the Council. Among other things, they stressed the need to develop theatre as a traditional means of communication: "the potential of the theatre ... should be explored particularly with a mind to the preservation and enrichment of the local cultures".35 In the first place, I think theatre is one of communication models, as simple and traditional as it might look, providing a very handy platform of awareness and consequent participatory decision-making to further the development and transformation of individuals, groups and why not even of a given culture. A group of Christian communicators representing 14 African countries met in Windhoek, Namibia, in September 1991 for a conference on communication and human rights. They asked the church in Africa to encourage "the evolution of a Christian understanding of development, which, as Christianity itself, is people-centred, and providing appropriate communication models and structures to support such development".36 Secondly, it is there to be used and use thereof promotes local culture and media. The Pastoral Instruction "Aetatis Novae", issued by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications in 1992, said clearly that "along with traditional means such as witness of life, catechetics, personal contact, popular piety, the liturgy and similar celebrations, the use of media is now essential in evangelization and catechesis" (n. 11). Paragraph numbers 122-126 of Ecclesia in Africa (1995) are a clear witness of John Paul II’s concern for communicating the Good News in Africa. Citing song and music, mime and theatre, proverbs and fables as traditional forms of social communication in Africa, the pope observes that they are "less costly and more accessible" and exhorts that "as vehicles of the wisdom and soul of the people, they are a precious source of material and of inspiration for the modern media"(n. 123). Third, is not springtime, figuratively speaking, the best time for theatre groups to come out with their performances to enchant their audiences with stories that evoke values that have been handed down to posterity by the ancestors? Is not it the best time and is not here a golden opportunity, the field all ready to sow the Word, to present the Gospel values, to present Jesus, the Elder Brother, the Ancestor, the Healer, the Teacher, to all-listening ears and all-willing heart, to receive the Word in great eagerness? I am not alluding here only to those first-time hearers of the Word to whom we are sent primarily as Divine Word Missionaries, but also to the opportunity that unfolds to proclaim the Gospel, to re-identify the seeds of the Word to the hearts of the hearers and viewers who may, overwhelmed by the pleasures and cares of the post-modern-consumer society, for a short while have let the seeds remain stagnant and unproductive. Thus, it is very encouraging to hear John Paul II speak of a ‘new springtime’ in the mission of the church (cf. Redemptoris Missio, nn. 2-3). According to him, God is opening up before the church new vistas of a humanity more fully prepared for the sowing of the Gospel. And Africa has been said to be traversing a period of grace in these times with the Spirit blowing in its direction and human hearts alert to its movements, responding. And since the Council days and documents, through Paul VI, especially through his Evangelii nuntiandi, to our day with the present pope, missionaries and the entire church are challenged and encouraged to identify the "seeds of the Word" (semina Verbi) present in religions, ideologies and cultures not yet touched by the Gospel. Fourth, it is a tool for the mission of the church in the new millennium. Since the1983 papal address at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, we are reminded of the call for an effort of evangelization that is new in its ardour, its methods and its expression. It is not just for the use of modern and electronic means of communication to proclaim the Gospel, but the call is obviously to use methods and expressions that are conducive to respective cultural milieu and that make sense to contemporary audiences. And theatre is something that is at once traditional and very contemporary, very much local in its expression and the use of it makes as much sense to the actors as to the audiences. Nurturing it could only enable the ‘seeds of the Word’ to spring into blossom and bear fruit in diverse measures for the Gospel. A fifth missionary implication of this method is the forum it provides to practice dialogue in real terms with people of other faiths. Parish youth groups can always involve their friends and peers in the process of the "play" even if they are not necessarily Christian by baptism. Evidently, the audiences necessarily comprise, as our experience shows here, non-Christians as well. The proclamation of human and Gospel values are understandable to a non-homogenous group who at the same time knows how to appreciate the theatre as a method that is contemporary and popular. The prophetic vision implied here is not conversion in terms of numbers, but proclamation that will usher in the Kingdom where God reigns in the hearts of all, irrespective of religious adhesion. Conclusion When communication experts in the developed nations are talking about Interactive Strategic Alliances with techniques of direct broadcast satellite development, teleconferencing for meetings, or about international negotiations for satellite use by many nations etc., we are still talking about the need to use more and more traditional means of communication like theatre in Africa for transformation and human development. It is worth doing because it is African, it is indigenous, it is ours, and we are doing it. Viewers connected by mass media globally have watched "people power" being enacted on the streets of Moscow, Poland and Manila. Pyramidal structures and authority are under siege all over; and in Africa we are still able to muster ‘people power’ through forums like popular theatre and to usher in our own development and transformation in our own way, and by ourselves. Such participation by the people also affirms the rights of access of individual citizens and groups to media. The content and the organization of these media are no more under the control of the state nor just with multinational media corporations. Obviously, this will go a long way to prove that the media exist primarily for their audiences and not for professionals or media organizations. This will also uphold two key elements of African culture: the significance of oral tradition and the promotion of community. In the final analysis, the integral development of a people is probably brought about by communication as a form of ritual. This ritual view is not directed toward the extension of messages in space, which is understood in terms of the transmission view of communication, but toward the maintenance of community and society in time. What is important here is "not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs".37 In this sense information is not an end in itself but it becomes useful and serves as a tool for community building. In this sense people are not just consumers of media products, but are makers and participants of their own media. More than communication, the process of growing into communion as a people is well on its way. And when parish youth and other groups stage their "play" under the starry, moon-lit sky, they are proclaiming their hope in the transformation of God’s creation to its fullness and the arrival of the Kingdom of God in their midst. In their own way. In a typical African way. References 1 See the Working Paper of the Synod of Parakou Archdiocese, À l’écoute de l’Esprit (1999), p. 37. 2 Schmucler, Hector (1992), "Communication as a Disservice to Humanity", Media Development, 39(2), p.11. 3 Schillerm Herbert (1976), Communication and Cultural Domination, New York: Pantheon Books, p.70. 4 See for example Fore, William F (1988), "People’s Power and the Change of Social Structures", Media Development, 35(3), pp. 2-4 and Machila, Margaret M (1988), "People’s Power and Development in Africa", Media Development, 35(1), pp. 5-7. 5 Freire, Paulo (1972), Pedagogy of the Oppressed; see also his Education for Critical Consciousness (1972), both by Penguin. 6 MacBride, Sean (1980), Many Voices, One World, New York: UNESCO. 7 Boal, Augusto (1979), Theatre of the Oppressed, New York: Urizen Books, p. 122. 8 For a detailed study of popular theatre see Srampical, Jacob (1994), Voice to the Voiceless, London: Hurst and Company. 9 Lerner, Daniel and Wilbur Schramm (1967), Communication and Change in the Developing Countries, Honolulu: East-West Center Press. 10 Okunna, Stella C. (1995), "Small Participatory Media Technology As An Agent of Social Change in Nigeria: A non-existent Option?", Media, Culture and Society, 17, p. 617. 11 Srampical, op.cit., p. 9. 12 White, Shirley (1994), "The Concept of Participation", in Participatory Communication, ed. Shirley White, Sadnandan Nair and Joseph Ascroft, London: Sage Publications, p. 17. 13 McQuail, Denis (1983), Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction, London: Sage Publications. 14 See Servaes, Jan and Randy Arnst (1993), "First Things First: Participatory Communication for Change", Media Development, 40(2), pp. 44-46. 15 See Ochsenius, Carlos (1988), Practica Teatral y Expresion Popular en America Latina, Buenos Aires: Ediciones Paulinas. 16 See Boal, op.cit. 17 See Srampical, op.cit. 18 See Shinar, Dov (1988), "Nation-Building on Stage: Palestinian Theatre Liberates", Media Development, 35(3) pp. 4-8. 19 See Semil, Malgorzata (1988), "Young People’s Theatre in Poland Reaches For Truth", Media Development, 35(3), pp. 12-15. 20 See Andruske, Cynthia L (1994), "Exploring the Impact on Literacy and Upgrading Students: ‘Marks on Paper’", Convergence, 27(2-3), pp. 138-155. 21 Morrison, Joy (1993), "Communicating Healthcare through Forum Theater: Egalitarian information exchange in Burkina Faso", Gazette, 52, pp. 109-121. 22 Kidd, Ross and Martin Byram (1985), Popular Theatre and Non-Formal Education in Botswana, Ontario: Participatory Research Group. See also Malamah-Thomas, David H. (1987), "Community Theatre with and by the People", Convergence, 20(1), pp. 59-68. 23 Malamah-Thomas, David H (1988), "Community Theatre Uses Culture for Development in Sierra Leone", Media Development, 35(3), pp. 25-27. 24 See Abah, Oga S. (1988), "The Samuru Street Theatre Project, Nigeria", Media Development, 35(3), pp. 22-24. 25 Epskamp, Kees P. (1982), Training Popular Theatre Trainers: A Case Study of Nigeria, Lansing, MI: Michigan State University. 26 Malamah-Thomas (1987), op.cit. 27 Epskamp, Kees P. and Jaap R. Swart (1991), "Popular Theatre and the Media: The Empowerment of Culture", Gazette, 48, pp. 177-192. 28 White, Robert (1988), "NWICO Has Become a People’s Movement", Media Development, 35(1), pp. 20-25. 29 See my article on Storytelling in Verbum SVD, (1998), 39(3), for a brief study on oral tradition and its impact in Africa. 30 For a detailed study of Oramedia, see Ugboajah, Frank (1985), Mass Communication, Culture and Society in West Africa, New York: Hans Zell Publishers. 31 Bandura, Albert (1977), Social Learning Theory, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, p. vii. 32 McQuail, op.cit. 33 McQuail, op.cit., p. 97. 34 See Phillipart, Michel (ed.) (1992), The African Church in the Communications Era, Nairobi: St Paul Publications, p. 141. 35 See Phillipart, op.cit., p. 55 36 See Phillipart, Michel, op.cit., p. 152. 37 Carey, James W. (1989), Communication as Culture, London: Unwin Hyman, Inc., p. 18. From the author and also in VERBUM SVD, Vol. 40, fasciculus 4, 1999.
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