We always begin with a bang. This time it was us leaving campus late and in a horrid frantic angry rush, including bribing security guards and running barefoot across campus. We drove silently for an hour, not wanting to break the ice, break the tension, break the silence. I drifted off to sleep, this being the only respite from the monotony of silence.After the first toll, we stopped, and Harald got out of the car, shut the door and then reopened it, saying, “good morning.” I giggled, we were starting over. If only it were this easy all of the time. If only all things were this easily fixed. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say, and that ability to look back and learn how to redo is vastly important. In hindsight we ought to have prepared more thoroughly for this week. All of the phone calls and communications that needed to happen with our organizers in Ndumo fell through. We were more or less traveling blind. Not knowing who we would meet after that 5 hour journey, not knowing who we would be working with or when.
We had to stop along the way, to pick up food and supplies, since we had not been given a food list before then. We had a meeting scheduled for the Monday before the trip, but no one showed up except Harald and myself, so nothing much could get done, or at least nothing outside of what my tasks and responsibilities were. We left that meeting with just as many questions as we had answers, and it was only in the koombi on the way to Ndumo that some of these queries were met.
We arrived on that Wednesday afternoon to an empty community center, an empty Umhlanga Rocks, and low spirits. Apparently, some of the youth had been waiting for our arrival, but because we were so incredibly late, they had to leave. Unbeknownst to us, the youth had an exam the next day.
Some of the kids did return, and we spoke with them for a moment, asking them to rally the troops and get everyone ready for Thursday afternoon—we would meet at 3pm—and wishing them good luck on their exam. With good conscience, we could not ask these guys to stay on now to work; they had to study, had to rest, had to get ready. Of course, we were, in a way, blamed for not knowing about this exam in advance, but how could we know if not one had taken the initiative to ask?
We went back to the Environmental Center, where we were staying, and cooked dinner and went to sleep. Because of the youth’s exam, we would not be able to see them until 3pm, greatly cutting down the time we thought we would have with them, and so we scheduled to take a tour of the Ndumo Game Reserve on Thursday morning.
In the game reserve, we met with two rangers who spoke to us about population management, land claims, and the differences between culling and poaching. Then we took a drive through the reserve, sighting wildebeest, crocs, warthogs, giraffes, but unfortunately no rhino or leopard.
That afternoon at 3pm, the UKZN team had assembled at Umhlanga Rocks. Slowly, some of the youth began to trickle in. I think we had about 7 youth that afternoon, which is not terrible, but we realized that we needed many more in order to create a truly beneficial experience. By the end of the day, we had asked each student to bring at least 5 friends, so that hopefully we might increase our numbers. We crossed our fingers and hoped that this would work. Because really, it is word of mouth and the entreats of friends that get us to do things.
But on that Thursday, we began the work of re-meeting everyone and re-learning how to play and work together. We played some icebreakers games, and reestablished connections. We then revisited the values clarification game, which had been a favorite since March. Our statements were not as provocative this time, and often the entire group would agree or disagree together. But at least we were dealing with issues and making choices.
After this, we played a “Gender ABC” game that I had first encountered at the American Alliance for Theatre and Education Conference in Atlanta over the summer of 2008. The game then did not have to do with gender, but the structure allows itself to be adapted for any topic. The letters of the alphabet are listed out on two pieces of paper, and two groups compete to fill in their alphabet with words describing the given topic. On Thursday, we had all of the girls writing words describing maleness and masculinity, and all of the boys describing femaleness and femininity. Once the youth had completed the exercise, we tried to digest the words they had written, looking for similarities, differences, the words that made us angry and the words that delighted us.
We then did a free-write exercise where we addressed the “problems in my community.” These free-writes ended up founding the basis for two newscasts that the youth created wherein the posed the problems of their community and suggested (im)possible solutions. But on that day, we merely wrote the articles, and pop-read them. Afterwards, we attempted a very poor version of a theatre exercise named, “mantle of the experts.” It, unfortunately, was not planned well enough ahead to work as effectively as it could. It was also the first time we attempted a teacher-in-role situation, which I think came out of the blue for these youth, despite my attempts to describe what was going on.
I also think, though, that these youth need less to be secured within the safety net of play than do the kids in the States that I have worked with. These Ndumo kids just want to say what they think, and do not need to pretend to be someone else in order to say it. The fact that we are engaging with the topics is enough.
Friday we arranged to meet at 1pm, with all of the friends that our kids would be bringing. We wished on the shooting stars we saw Thursday night that we might have a solid group of students on Friday. And I guess that wishing helped, because we did. A group of about 15, which did fluctuate a bit, but more or less stayed consistent.
But we had to start over, in a way. Here were ten new and wonderful boys and girls who had never seen us, never met us, and only knew the tiny bit that their friends might have told them. Why did they agree to come into this process and spend the next few days with us? What did they tell their parents, siblings, grandmas?
So, on Friday, we played. Name games. Silly games. Focus games. Games that forced us to get close to each other, to really look at each other, to hold hands, to touch, to fail together, to laugh. Those boundaries started to break down, a bit, as much as they can in the first 30 minutes.
We then explained the process that we wanted to venture on, and the product, being a short performance piece that we would share with the community on Monday afternoon. Everyone seemed to get on board, they agreed to our process. So we got started.
Thursday, we had explored the world we live in now, so Friday was the day to discover the world we want to live in. We spread out long sheets of white paper across the floor, and empowered the youth with words and images, crayons and markers.
Flatfoot Dance Company was arriving that afternoon in Ndumo and had agreed to use the afternoon session to work with our kids in order to make a dance that addressed our theme of “the world we want to live in.”
The session started haphazardly and slowly. Gathering the youth was a mission, and motivating the work was almost more so. But by the end, the youth were creating their own pieces with the guidance of the Flatfoot members, and were working quite well on their own.
What emerged were three distinct dances; two groups of boys, and then all of the girls. The first boys dance was utterly shocking yet beautiful. These three boys had an incredible ability to break down all physical barriers and get exceptionally close to each other. The dance was not sexual because they did not imbue it with anything, but it certainly could have been. These three were rolling on top of each other, holding each other’s legs, crotches were everywhere. But because they were not aware of this, they kept going, kept playing, kept exploring. As a facilitator, I felt myself being pulled in so many ways. Here were three boys experiencing the greatest of expression and improvisation, yet if this was put in front of an audience, what would the reaction be? Would the piece be read as homosexual, would the boys be criticized? Would I be responsible for that? How could I shift the nature of the dance slightly without alluding to how the dance could be perceived and yet still preserve the integrity and vitality of their work?
Luckily, this did not come to pass. One of the boys was unable (or unwilling) to return to the process, and so the remaining 3 boys decided to change the dance. In their edits, all possibilities of sexuality were erased. The work was still their own, entirely.
We left the day Friday with a fully choreographed and assembled dance, an epic of images and words about the world we want to live in, and from Thursday, a description of the kind of world we live in now.
So Saturday had to be a big day. Our scheduling was full, starting at 8am and going until 5pm (which of course actually means that everyone arrives around 9 or 9:30am). We had to decide the forms that our work would take, but of course could not define the content in advance. We had to trust the youth.
We started the day—after some games and a bit of yoga—with a rehearsal and polishing of the dance from Friday. This was when the boys altered their dance and everyone else solidified what they were doing. Leaders started to emerge within the groups. Sanele proved to be a detailed perfectionist, needing to be in the limelight. Zanele pulled people away with her laughter. Scora counted his group in delicately and led his dance, making sure everyone was on the same page.
From the “world I live in now” writings, I found that the youth’s ideas broke down, roughly, into three categories: health, environmental, and social concerns. So, we asked the youth to choose the one topic that they would like to work on, and from there we would make short newscasts addressing those issues. But actually the youth were only interested in health and environment, so that is what we did. It made the groups bigger and the scenes longer, but that was okay, if that was what the youth wanted.
We created newscasts, which seems to be such a great tool in allowing the youth to talk about what they want to talk about. Although the UKZN supervised, we were really able to let the kids go on this one, choosing their own topics and arguments. Of course, that meant their material was not entirely accurate or realistic. But for now, maybe it is okay for the kids to dream? To dream that their problems of poor infrastructure will be solved by a tar road and the introduction of big industry, such as Coca-Cola, into their rural community.
We walk the line, as representatives of the university, of presenting 100% accurate information and, as facilitators and artists, of allowing the youth to create their own understandings of their world. Hopefully these two can align together, but oftentimes that is not possible. So we must gently guide the youth into our academic understandings? But that is not right either, because who gets to decide what is best for a community? Well, it seems that the academics do, but maybe the people who live there know best. However, the argument is that these people might not be educated enough to know better. It is the eternal question of who has the right to choose, and so often it is the western and the formally educated.
After lunch, we spent some time discussing various higher education options, from UNISA (the correspondence university), to technikons, to formal universities such as KwaZulu-Natal. This is information that the youth have been wanting since day one, and so we brought course booklets and application forms for all of the youth. They all dream of going to varsity, but most of them will not be able to make it there. After the performance on Monday, I walked with Scora back to Umhlanga Rocks. We spoke of the work we had just completed, and I said that if I had it my way, this would be the work that defines who we are and forms the basis for our acceptance into varsity. Speaking your mind in front of an audience of strangers, friends, and community leaders, for me, is far more difficult to do than sit in class and write an exam. For me.
From the images and words that the youth had written on those long sheets of paper, two ideas were inspired. First, we came back to the idea of writing poems about “the world I want to live in,” and secondly, Sanele had written a song about peace, freedom, and respect in South Africa. We split the group into boys and girls. So while the boys turned Sanele’s poem into a rap, the girls created what would become, for me, one of the most powerful pieces in our play, a poem about our ideal world.
My favorite devising idea ever comes from Betsy Quinn, who once gave her students the assignment of “bring something in for the play.” It could be anything, anything the student could imagine. From what she said, this was the most liberating of exercises for her students and also generated much of the play’s content. We tried this exercise with our youth on the spot. We asked them to break up into groups, and gave them an hour to create something for the play.
From this exercise, we gained a version of the national anthem layered with text about “this is our world, this is our South Africa,” a selection of traditional wedding songs, and a drama, completely in IsiZulu about the problems arising from unemployment. All three pieces were absolutely wonderful and poignant.
The drama was more difficult than the others, because it was in IsiZulu, and it dealt with some controversial issues. For instance, the unemployed man is South African, while the employed man is from Mozambique, which led to xenophobic remarks being used that were actually offensive to members of our group. But using those words is a re-presentation of reality, of what happens everyday. I do believe that such potentially offensive words must be used carefully and with purpose, if they are to be used at all, and that the message of the piece, or its resolution but also be created with purpose. The ending of this piece was originally such that, in order for the unemployed father to get out of jail, he must give his daughter to the Mozambiquan, for free. And this, clearly, starts dealing with issues of human rights and trafficking. Luckily, we were able to workshop this play a bit such that the resolution was not so impossible and the language was not as offensive.
At the end of Saturday, we had a dance, two newscasts, a rap, a poem, the national anthem, a series of traditional songs, and a drama. Our play was taking shape.
That night, we started dreaming up the structure of the play, so that we could rehearse it in order on Sunday. We found a structure that moved from the issues of now into the possibilities of the future, while separating sections similar in structure. So, all of the newscasts were not back-to-back, etc.
Sunday morning, the youth went to church and the UKZN students created a scene that we would perform in the play. After a lot of unused ideas, we decided upon creating an episode of Captain Planet. So, the four of us created a short scene about the consequences of littering. It ended up being quite a funny scene, partially because I, as Litterbug the villain, spoke in an absurdly stereotypical villain voice and melted like the Wicked Witch of the West when I was defeated by the Planeteers.
After the play, the kids kept quoting the piece, shrieking “Litterbug!” and laughing. The message was memorable because of its mode of transmission. But, the message did not change the student’s behavior. After the play, at our celebratory braai, Harald found chip bags all over the ground, the chips that the youth had just been eating. The message was remembered, but not heeded. Which begs the question, can theatre actually change people?
Once we met with the youth, an hour later than scheduled, we incorporated an interactive component to our play, adding a version of Values Clarification that the youth would lead with their audience, allowing the audience to respond verbally to the questions raised.
We brainstormed the beginning of the play, settling on a series of songs, which I named “the Ukubingelela song” as a result of needing a common phrase for the piece, and it also made the kids laugh. Ukubingelela means to greet. So it was a natural beginning of our play.
Then we rehearsed. We put the whole thing together and performed it in front of a makeshift audience, which is to say the other collaborators of the project and us. When the 5pm hour rolled around and we were not finished with our run, I stopped the kids and asked if they would like to finish now or if they had to hurry home. To my happy surprise, the youth wanted to finish the work. We stayed until it was nearly dark outside and we finished running the piece. The play ran one hour and five minutes. The youth knew what was going on, and were already able to cover for each other when members of their group were absent.
From the run, we as facilitators were able to generate a list of things that we needed to work on or touch up before the performance the next day. The list was mildly short, but included the attempt to correct the incorrect and erase the offensive.
Except our Monday plans were dashed by a lack of keys. This moment, for me, epitomized what our experience, logistically, had been in Ndumo. The varsity students arrived at 9am at Umhlanga Rocks. But we did not have the keys. Neither did the youth. We phoned and phoned our professors, organizers, and anyone who might be with them. We could not get through, and when we finally did, they were in the game reserve and could not leave to get us the keys. We were stuck outside, and it was cold and windy. All of our materials were inside.
Finally, we were told the keys would be with us in 20 minutes, so we waited for 40. Then I gave up, gave up and said okay, we are moving, this is absurd. And it was. Absurd that we stood outside. Absurd that no one thought to ask for the keys.
But this is my quandary for this whole project. We are supposed to be doing this on our own, creating our own process, but there are little things, minor things that are arranged for us. Like matches for the Bunsen burners, toilet paper, keys. When these items go missing, oftentimes we do not know what to do because we do not know where the supplies are, who to ask, where to go. It is our fault for not asking. But we cannot anticipate the questions that we do not know will be an issue.
When we arrived at the community center, the floor was sopping wet. Apparently it was cleaning day, so we could not use that space either. We ended up settling in the courtyard, which is a difficult space because it is not contained and it is open to the elements. I tried to organize the group into working on our newscasts, but my fellow facilitators were missing in action; resting elsewhere, playing with tree parts, or some other odd thing.
Eventually we were able to work through the parts that were suspect and the youth agreed to make the necessary changes in their newscasts. Of course, only a fraction of these happened in performance, and the newscasts were longer in duration than they had ever been before.
The lead actor in the unemployment drama was absent on Monday. Apparently he had gone to Durban. And that, of course, was a trip that had been planned for a long time, and yet he had not told us. So, we had to scramble. Luckily, we had just added a new member to our group on Sunday, Mdu. Mdu agreed to be our master of ceremonies, but also stepped into the role of the father in our drama. He got to rehearse the part, the improvised part, only one time, after seeing it once on Sunday. I must say, Mdu was brilliant. Just as I experienced in Haven Middle School, the students have an uncanny ability to step in and take each other’s roles if called to do so. There is something about the spur of the moment that allows the youth to take a huge risk and perform.
During a quiet moment during our workshopping session, one of the youth asks the bold question, “Why are we doing this?” In moments like these, I like to reflect the question back. Why do you think we are doing this play? “Because it helps us with our confidence in speaking English.” Yes, definitely. “But here is a question for you. Have you ever been able to stand up in front of your community and say exactly what you wanted to?” No. “Did anyone tell you what you had to say in this play?” No. “Are you saying exactly what you want to say in front of your community today?” Yes. Yes we are. Then that is why we are doing this play.
Soon, that time rolled around. Of course we held the house for 30 minutes, hoping that some more people would show up. A few did. We had about 20-30 people of varying ages in our audience. But, the wonderful thing that we did, was to ask our performers to sit in the audience when they were not on stage, which gave the illusion that the house was must fuller than it actually was.
They performed so well. Mdu was incredible at improvising all of the segues in between scenes, if not long-winded, and the youth performed with confidence. They needed to project more than they did, but for a first stab at it, they were fantastic.
The play grew and grew in length, finally clocking in at over 90 minutes. But that time was added by Mdu’s emcee-ing and the interaction between audience and ensemble during the values clarification section. This was conducted in IsiZulu, so I had no idea what was going on, but the tone did get slightly heated. Mdu did quite well toning everyone down and reminding them that this was a conversation not a debate. It is hard to facilitate, but Mdu did well.
The audience, in the end, received our play well. I think it is a strong yet raw piece. If reworked and edited and styled, it could be an incredible piece of theatre. Harald has mentioned continuing this work and presenting this play in the schools in November. That could be interesting. And a lot of work. If it is anything like this semester, I do not know if I can handle it.
After the play, we all walked back to Umhlanga Rocks were we prepared a large braai, chicken, salads, pap, beans, juice, the works. It was a deserved treat for the youth who had given up so much of their time to be with us and embark on this journey.
It got dark and cold and the food ran out. We said our goodbyes. And departed. Some of us for the last and final time.
Alarms went off at 4am the next morning and we stumbled into the koombi. As a deserved treat for us, we drove through Hluhluwe Game Reserve on the way home. I think we needed that. We were all so sick (literally, I had terrible flu) and tired after our week.
In, effectively, four days we created, wrote, and rehearsed a difficult and reflective hour and a half long play, and performed it in front of the community that the issues in question arise from. It was daunting work. We devised a community interactive play based on the kind of world we want to live in and the world we live in now. And we deserved a nap.
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