Drama for Life Festival kicks off
The long awaited Drama for Life Festival kicked off on Thursday August 20, 2009 on a high note with a handful of well attended workshops and performances.
The Festival titled Changing the Face of HIV/AIDS; changing our consciousness runs up to September 5, 2009 and judging from the Thursday and Friday events, theatre audiences are in for a treat.
Theatre for Life presented a scintillating drama for children which even attracted adults and at the end of the show members of the audience would not stop asking questions it raised such pertinent issues.
The play has a unique character, a traditional healer who accepts that HIV/AIDS is incurable. He had the audience in stitches when he suddenly stopped his chants on hearing that his visitors needed him to help them with an HIV patient. The usual trend is that traditional healers claim to cure the disease. This was an aberration which the audience found fascinating.
The traditional healer attracted questions when he said, ‘It is unfortunate that your brother is going to die’. HIV messages have moved away from direct death messages as they seek to bring hope to the problem of HIV/AIDS and the disease is now viewed just like any other terminal illness like hypertension.
Phyllis Klotz of Sibikwa presented a workshop on Theatre in Education which started with games as participants introduced themselves and were made to tell each other what they expected from the workshop.
Phyllis, who has over 30 years experience in this field was able to elicit a lot of audience participation in her workshop.
The workshop touched on critical donor community issues and Phyllis commented on the tendency by some people to fall into the game of numbers at the expense of quality in the area of humanitarian interventions. She was quick to point out though that she had made a name for herself and so could afford to say no to number demands made by donors.
She said that this could be difficult for new entries as they could mar their chances of getting further funding. This, however, raised a critical issue that humanitarian organisations need to tackle with the donor community.
The Sibikwa Theatre in Education interventions are culture specific and are cognisant of the fact that what works in one place may not work in another. Their interventions are therefore tailor made to suit specific audiences and are research orientated. They carry out a thorough baseline research before claiming to know the needs of a given group.
Sibikwa take the audience participation technique seriously and in every performance the spectator is given a role. The spectator is an integral part of the performance and they learn by doing. The workshop ended with participants being divided into groups and coming up with theatre in education performance examples.
For something a little different Bill Gee of International happiness Institute (iHi), formerly International Laughter Institute (iLi), presents a unique workshop that takes participants through laughter exercises that are meant to reduce stress and increase happiness and health.
Bill says that through research they have established that stress kills more people than any other disease in the whole world. Does it mean that there is need to give this problem more attention?
What makes society ignore this critical area? One reason could be that it is a condition that opens way for disease but cannot be referred to as a disease itself per se. It is a human condition that affects the immune system making human beings more susceptible to disease.
After going through Bill’s workshop one is left asking a lot of questions around the subject and really wanting to know why no attention has been given to this area of human life.
The most exciting part of the workshop was when participants were taken through practical laughing exercises. It is a workout indeed as some participants complained of hunger after the session.
International Happiness Institute trains people to be laughter therapists for just less than R2000.
The festival continues and more is expected from the different theatre practitioners.