Drama for Life students get down to business
The 2009 AAA-HA!!! Project at the University of Witwatersrand kicked off on August 25 as part of the Drama for Life Festival. The project is collaboration with DramAide and the Counselling and Careers Development Unit (CCDU) at Wits.
In 2008 Drama for Life in collaboration with CCDU successfully piloted the AAA-HA Project at three Wits campuses namely the Main campus, the Education Campus and the Business School Campus.
The AAA –HA Project is a DramAidE initiated project supported by Johns Hopkins Health and Education South Africa, with a main aim of supporting arts departments to actively engage tertiary education students in the conscious creation of art for HIV and AIDS awareness.
Based on the successes, challenges and lessons of the 2008 pilot, AAA-HA at Wits 2009 decided to go beyond raising awareness by ensuring that the issues tackled are on a deeper level and activities spread over a longer period of time reaching more than three Wits Campuses.
In this project, students work in groups to create interactive theatre pieces with the aim of creating dialogue around the subject of HIV and AIDS amongst students at Wits University.
They focus on HIV and AIDS awareness among students and staff, behavioural change and improved quality of life amongst students, mainstreaming HIV and AIDS education in the Division of Dramatic Art and generation of further research in the use of applied drama and theatre in the Wits School of Arts.
Three groups compromising of masters and honours students got the ball rolling on Tuesday dealing with the important subject of HIV and AIDS. These students face the challenge of getting audiences re-interested in HIV and AIDS related theatre after being bombarded with much often ineffective theatre of this nature.
One skit presented a piece with explicit sex images aimed at demystifying sex. HIV is closely related to sex and it is therefore important for communities to be free to talk about sex if they are going to talk freely about HIV.
In this well thought out presentation, the plot borders around two students who meet in a debate club. Their relationship quickly develops and they end up masturbating on stage much to the shock of the audience.
They agree to go for a party where they meet and have beers and sex without condoms. The following day things do not look good especially for the girl. From this point the presentation takes the form of a workshop and the audience come in with questions and views.
This particular presentation raised matters of the silence surrounding sex, masturbation and the influence of technology on the youth and their behaviour. There was talk about the need for there to be interventions that counteract the negative aspects of technology.
Due to a lack of time, the facilitator had to stop the discussions although audience members were burning to say more. This goes to show the potential of applied theatre in tackling serious social issues.
The other presentation took the puppetry dimension, having two actors dressed as the male and female condoms. It starts on a light note with the condoms bragging about how people prefer one over the other. What came out of the conversation between the two condoms was that the female condom is not favoured.
The story develops into a sad tale told by a lady called Thandeka who relates her ordeal of how her trusted husband of nine years brought AIDS to their family.
She brings another dimension to the story when she discloses that when her husband died, she met another man and had a baby with him without disclosing her HIV status to him. This came as a shock to the audience and naturally led to discussions on matters of faithfulness and treatment.
When asked to advise Thandeka, a member of the audience said to her that she needed to love herself first if she expected to be loved by others.
Students and society at large seem starved of such debate provoking presentation. There is still so much work to be done in the area of creating dialogue around issues of behaviour, HIV and AIDS, responsibility and sex. One can still say that there is indeed a trumpet call for more interventions.