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Think tank fires creative salvos
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November 24, 2009
 By Adrienne Sichel
Organise, organise. Unite, unite. Focus on skills development. Arts and culture (which is at dire risk of vanishing from South Africa's school's curriculum) is a critical component of our educational system.
These were among the key messages from President Jacob Zuma, seven of his ministers and two deputies, to the arts and culture industries last week.
Ironically, days before this gathering at the Sandton Convention Centre, a blueprint for these instructions was embodied by the 2009 Africa Research Conference in Applied Drama and Theatre (November 12 to 15).
This event focused on multi-disciplinary strategies and methodologies used in HIV and Aids education; creating public awareness and making tangible differences in marginalised and neglected communities through training, advocacy and networking.
The conference, and the accompanying World Alliance for Arts Education Regional Summit, was hosted for the second year by the Wits School of Arts' Drama for Life programme.
This think tank may have been small, but it was a well organised highly strategic interaction between national drama department academics, students, NGOs and researchers with extensive experience. The depth and breadth of scholarship and practical ingenuity was breathtaking given the environment of donor, compassion and media fatigue in relation to the Aids pandemic.
Significantly, the dialogues and activities embraced scholars and practitioners from Botswana, Kenya, Cameroon, Namibia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Major input was made by Brazil-based Dan Baron Cohen, president of the International Drama Association (Idea) and co-ordinator of the World Alliance for Arts Education. The dialogue, in preparation for the Unesco World Congress of Arts in Education, in Seoul, Korea, in May, and the Idea World Congress in Belem, Brazil, in July, was themed Towards a Creative Paradigm of Arts in Education for the 21st century.
Doctors brushing up on their consulting manners to assist their patients with their anti-retroviral tablet regimen was the focus of Dr Claire Penn's groundbreaking Drama, doctors and HIV Aids (Part Two): Turning Practice into Research paper. The training videos were shot in collaboration with director Baden Dowie.
Warm-up exercises, games and storytelling techniques to enable elderly guardians to connect with their Aids orphan charges, and vice versa, were taught by Clowns Without Borders's South Africa founder, Jamie McClaren Lachma. The University of KwaZulu- Natal's Diana Wilson and Karen Suter (from Pietermaritzburg) presented their The Lover and Another, a university student performance poetry - competition an innovative HIV/Aids Education initiative.
These topics aren't normally associated with theatre-making and serious academic research, but they were among the fascinating case studies, workshops and papers presented. There may be barriers between applied drama (think community theatre, theatre for development, theatre in education) and mainstream theatre, but there was unanimous agreement that these borders need to be blurred because drama can transform lives and perceptions.
Young voices from the region were impressive, reinforced by the legends in their midst. Tireless activist Professor Lynn Dalrymple, now retired from the University of Zululand, talked about her fight for African aesthetics and how DramAidE (Drama for Aids Education) was born in 1992 when a doctor "bounced" into her office. She received a rousing standing ovation when Warren Nebe, Head of Dramatic Art, announced that a research award was being instituted in her name at the Wits School of Arts. The late theatre academic and activist Yvonne Banning was honoured with a bursary in her name for the 2010 conference.
A six-member steering committee was appointed for the establishment of the PAN African Association of Applied Drama and Theatre Practitioners to take care of professional needs across the continent.
Another concrete outcome was the formation of a working group for an African Network of Arts Education, which will lobby and send submissions to the Unesco summit.
Arts Activism, Education and Therapies is the theme of the next Drama for Life Conference, in October. Open to all art forms, this edition, says Nebe, will acknowledge the history of healing through the arts.
It will be presented in collaboration with the University of Pretoria music's department.
A major agenda is to "create a campaign to argue for the arts in Africa in the 21st century".
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