Theater as Praxis: Discursive Strategies in African Popular Theater

Gaurav Desai

Although over the last decade there has been a considerable growth in African theater research, the majority of such work has confined itself to the analysis of traditional theater practices or to that of contemporary literary theater. While acknowledging the functional dimensions of African theater, this research has focused on the aesthetics of African performance. When the social dimensions of theater have been evoked, they have been asserted mainly in terms of the propositional value of theatrical content. Playscripts have been analyzed for propositional claims and thematic concerns, and social critiques have then been constructed on such analyses.

This essay presents an analysis distinct from that critical trend. It examines neither traditional theatrical practices nor contemporary literary theater but rather an ambiguous theatrical practice that can be labeled popular theater. The first section of the paper discusses the concept of the popular and suggests that it is best understood as a functional discourse which can legitimate or subvert the existing power structures of society. The second section focuses on the ideas of Paulo Freire, the Brazilian adult educator whose work provides the theoretical basis for most popular theater projects in Africa. The essay then analyzes the discursive construction of popular theater in various African contexts including Botswana, Zambia, and Nigeria. Through the history of popular theater in Africa, the paper shows the growth of popular theater theory. The last section, on the Kamiriithu production of Ngaahika Ndeenda, illustrates some of these theoretical claims.

An analysis of popular theater should begin by formulating a conception of the popular and by distinguishing this theatrical practice from others. This is not an easy task as the term popular theater has been defined in various ways by critics, theorists, and practitioners. (See, for instance, Barber, 1987; Bennett, Mercer and Woollacott, 1986; Coplan, 1986; Fabian, 1978; Kidd, 1982a; MacCabe, 1986; Paterson, 1980; Steadman, 1986.) Even a cursory look at some prevailing definitions indicates the lack of specificity of the enterprise. A primary way of defining popular theater has been to distinguish it from high or literary theater. This distinction has been based on several grounds, the most prominent of which have been those of language and theatrical aesthetics. Critics who base their

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arguments on language follow Ngugi wa Thiong'o in asserting that a truly popular theater is necessarily one which is conducted in indigenous African languages. Any theater in foreign languages plays to an elite audience and is thus considered un-African (Ngugi wa Thiong'o, 1986). From this perspective, playwrights as stylistically different as Wole Soyinka and Femi Osofisan are classed together as elitist by virtue of their choice of language. Other critics, however, draw the line on the basis of aesthetic criteria such as mass appeal and literary form. Sandra Richards, for instance, calls Femi Osofisan a populist, if not a popular playwright, and describes her notion of a populist theater as one "which has a mass appeal, and so must necessarily build upon some of those aesthetic forms or structural patterns which a mass audience values" (1987: 280).

Already one notes an ambiguity in the notion of popular. Is it to be defined on the basis of the choice of language, or on its relevance to the people, or on its mass appeal? Or, as Karin Barber suggests, should it be further problematized to include the dual nature of popular production and consumption in both commercial and non-commercial forms (Barber, 1987: 23-29)? It will be argued here that popular theater, as it is practiced in Africa, ought to be thought of in relational and abstract terms as suggested by Tony Bennett. He asserts that popular culture is best understood not definitionally, but abstractly, "as a site—always changing and variable in its constitution and organisation" (Bennett, Mercer and Woollacott, 1986: 8). The importance of conceiving it abstractly rather than definitionally is appreciated in the recognition that such theater is always an overdetermined discursive practice susceptible to drastic functional aberrations. Because of its functional and normative dimensions, even slight changes in contextual factors can transform an originally popular theatrical site into one which is no longer popular. This is best noted in the shifts in the articulations of the popular throughout the history of African theater. A brief examination of these historical shifts will elucidate the point.

Theatrical activity has existed in Africa from precolonial times. Precolonial theater had its roots in religious ceremonies and rituals and later included drama which was enacted for purposes of socialization. (See, for instance, Etherton, 1982; Oguba and Irele, 1978; Ogunbiyi, 1981.) Describing precolonial drama, Ngugi wa Thiong'o writes, "it was part and parcel of the rhythm of daily and seasonal life of the community. It was an activity among other activities, often drawing its energy from those other activities. It was also entertainment in the sense of involved enjoyment; it was moral instruction; and it was also a strict matter of life and death and communal survival" (1986: 37). With the advent of colonialism African theater maintained some of its original characteristics, but, at the same time, confronted the changing social

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context by effecting transformations in its discursive practices. While traditional theatrical practices continued to serve religious interests, theater also began to be used as a medium of popular resistance to the cultural repression and socioeconomic exploitation faced by Africans under colonialism. The shift in theatrical practices evidenced during this critical phase of African history are as yet underresearched and are only just beginning to be understood. It is accurate to state, however, that a popular theater that set for itself the normative role of raising popular consciousness and, in some cases, such as the Mau Mau protest songs, of being an integral element in transformative activism began to emerge. The advent of colonialism did not affect indigenous theater in this way alone. Colonial officers brought their own theatrical practices and a dialogue was established between these imported practices and indigenous African ones. This dialogue continues today as the remnants of colonial theater play an active role in the theatrical discourse of contemporary African societies. (See, for instance, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, 1981,1986.)

In South Africa, where the dialogue between the various theatrical practices has been most rigorous, the dominant white culture has chosen to select the theatrical voice of the other. Black musicals, controlled by white theater managers and playing to white audiences, have been subject to theatrical hybridization. According to one critic, "though claiming authenticity, [black musicals] distort African culture by pandering to supposed western tastes for bare breasts and pelvic dancing (much to the embarrassment of the dancers); they present a similar glossy image of black South Africa as the tribal dancing displays for tourists, and are used abroad to 'sell' apartheid" (International Defence and Aid Fund, 1977: 57). Such unethical appropriation has provoked strong reaction among critics and practitioners of indigenous theater. Russell Vandenbrouche mentions one debate among critics, which concerned the question of audience, "some blacks [believe] that white patrons [of black theater] inevitably become patronising, and that white expectations and :aste may inhibit the development of black theater" (1978: 50). Anthony Akerman has suggested that "the liberation struggle has always been inspired by freedom songs, and arrogant white South Africans lounging next to their swimming pools don't understand the militant import of the songs they may hear drifting into their gardens from the streets. They smile and tell each other that the blacks have rhythm—something genetic" (1978: 38). Both critics suggest that the functional and normative value of black theater in a society controlled by whites is lost when it is de-contextualized and appropriated into the arena of white entertainment. The appropriation of potentially volatile theatrical practices through reinterpretation, dilution, and exoticization indicates the integral political dynamics of the enterprise; not only does theatrical

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hybridization serve as entertainment but the corollary process of legitimation represses any truly counter-hegemonic activity.

Not all dialogues between theatrical practices effect formal changes in the performance. Indeed, a more subtle manifestation of de-popularization may be found in practices which display normative rearticulations without effecting corresponding changes in formalistic terms. A poignant example of such de-popularization of theater is the contemporary phenomenon of the commodification of traditional dances and performance styles in African urban centres. Such commodification markets traditional art and culture as a tourist attraction and, in a sense, serves as a cultural museum. It also entertains the urban elite and reassures the developing nation that it has not ignored its national culture. Through the process of urban appropriation, what originated as a popular theatrical form becomes de-popularized. Although it bears a certain formal resemblance to its original source, the appropriated performance ceases to be a site of popular articulation and moves away from the processual discursive practice of popular theater and towards a different discursive practice.

Popular theater, then, cannot be defined in any one way. It is best thought of as a normative discursive practice that engages in dialogues with other theatrical practices of the society. The social utterance that we conceptualize as popular theater arises from and constantly interacts with other modes of social discourse. It is never in an exclusively privileged position and thus constantly negotiates and renegotiates its own articulations in the larger societal context. These negotiations are carried on not only in the domain of theatrical content but also in the realm of theatrical practices. It is the changeable and constantly changing nature of the relationship between the discursive practices of popular theater and those of the larger society that rescues the theater from a passive redundancy. This relationship makes the theater an active interpretive and socially volatile process.

The Relevance of Paulo Friere

Among other things, popular theater is characterized by a self­consciously normative or functional dimension. This normative aspect can be compromised in various ways as the theatrical practice responds to different social contexts. Throughout its history in Africa, the popular theatrical tradition has presented itself with the functional goal of social education. Although the precise conceptualization of social education has changed significantly through the history of African popular theater, the practitioners have always been aware of the need for social mobilization of the masses. In this respect, many of the theoretical premises of the popular theater workers in Africa originated in the seminal work of the

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Brazilian adult educator, Paulo Freire. Therefore, an understanding of Freire's theory and practice of education is crucial for the appreciation of the normative dimension of African popular theatrical practices.

Those familiar with the writings of Paulo Freire will remember the liberating nature of his practice. Freire's insistence on the reading of the world as an integral element in reading the word has been widely acclaimed in education circles. He contends that no educational practice is value-free or politically neutral, and he rejects the authoritarian practice that he calls banking education. Banking education is based on the assumptions that the teacher is the sole carrier of knowledge and that the student is the depository of knowledge. In this practice, Freire claims, the subjective experiences of the student have little import and the student is assigned the passive role of an unquestioning recipient of knowledge, a recipient stripped of agency. The practice of banking education, Freire asserts, is a discursive strategy engaged in the mystification of the student. Freire contends that this practice is not only analogous to the way in which ideology functions to normalize the human subject (one remembers Foucault) but it is also homologous to it. Or, as Albert Hunt has suggested, this educational practice is "a process of instruction in the power structures of society" insofar as it "tries to teach people how to adjust successfully to the social role they'll be called on to play" (1975: 56). As a radical response, Freire proposes an alternative strategy, problem-posing education, "which breaks with the vertical patterns characteristic of banking education" (Freire, 1970b: 67). It is a dialogic practice in which there is no given message X. The message takes form in the process of communication between the educators and the learning subjects. It is not transmitted from the educators to the learners, but is constructed between them in the process of their interaction. Freire insists that problem-posing education must engage in a genuine dialogue with the people. The adult educator "must listen to [the people] attentively, with the conviction of one who completes a duty and not with the malice of one who does a favor to receive something in exchange" (Freire and Macedo, 1987: 40). The educator also must "respect the levels of understanding that those becoming educated have of their own reality. To impose on them one's own understanding in the name of their liberation is to accept authoritarian solutions as ways to freedom" (Freire and Macedo, 1987: 41). Problem-posing education seeks to conscientize the people. It is "forged with not for" them.

In a succinct paragraph, Freire outlines the differences between the banking concept and the problem-posing concept of education:

Banking education (for obvious reasons) attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which explain the way in which men exist in the world; problem-posing education sets itself the task of demythologizing. Banking education resists dialogue, problem-posing

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education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality. Banking education treats students as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them critical thinkers. Banking education inhibits creativity and domesticates (although it cannot completely destroy) the intentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from the world, thereby denying men their ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human. Problem-posing education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of men as beings who are authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation. In sum: banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating forces, fail to acknowledge men as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice take man's historicity as their starting point (1970b: 71).

Two methods with which problem-posing education tries to achieve its mobilizing mission are codification and de-coding. Freire's notion of codification may be understood as the representation of social practices in a particular and concrete form. In his own practice, Freire has used photographs as codifications of social reality. In the exercise the photographs are presented to a group of learners. The object is to encourage critical deconstruction of the codification. This deconstruction or decoding involves a cognitive move from abstractions to the recognition of concrete structural relations in society. The apparently unrelated maladies of society are recognized as essentially related to the structural formation of that society. In Marxian terms such decodification "leads to the analysis of secondary contradictions that exist within the society (how does oppression look in our world?) to the location of primary contradictions (what are the hidden structures that shape society?) and then to a process of action" (Hall, 1981: 13). The interpretation of the world is conceived of as praxis and knowledge is restored to its active form, to know. Praxis, in this view, is regarded as the source of knowledge (insofar as knowledge arises out of the direct experiences of people, out of their interaction with nature and with each other). It "provides the criterion for measuring the correctness of knowledge-for testing the extent to which ideas correspond to reality." And, because it encourages direct involvement in the structural transformation of society, it becomes the objective or goal of knowledge (Youngman, 1986: 58).

It is through such an understanding of education as social praxis that one ought to approach popular theater in Africa. Regardless of the conscious or unconscious political affiliations of the theater workers, African popular theater has continually articulated itself as an educational medium and thus as a primary arena for social struggle. Indeed, it is in its articulations of the political and social that African popular theater has approximated the normative claims of Freirian pedagogy. These articulations have been asserted on at least two different

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counts: a) in the explicit theoretical affiliations of the theater workers, including their own attempts to formulate a theory of a political popular theater; and, b) in the actual politics of the process of theatrical constitution. The degree of consistency between the theories and the practices of the actual theatrical projects has varied in different contexts. Therefore, it is appropriate to turn to some actual cases to observe the consistencies and inconsistencies between these theories and practices.

Theater for Deve lopment in Historical Perspect ive

The use of African drama in adult education traces its roots to colonial times in Ghana if not further back to precolonial theater pratices. In a 1957 article on "Village Drama in Ghana," A. K. Pickering wrote,

It has been an axiom since mass education commenced in Ghana In 1948 that the creation of an atmosphere of good will in villages is essential if serious teaching is to succeed. It was in this connexion, with recreational physical training, boxing, games for the young and not-so-young, community singing and simple craftwork, that village drama, by a happy inspiration, was introduced. Plots were borrowed from old mystery plays, from short stories, fables and local legend, plays were woven around them and enacted in the simplest of rural settings. In village drama theatrical terms acquired a special meaning. The 'stage' was a clearing in the crowd, a space between two palm trees, an open stalk in the village market: the 'stalls' rush mats or the trunk of a fallen tree, and 'raising the curtain' a simple statement by the team leader that the audience was about to see a play. 'Stage lighting' was provided by a kerosene lamp. Yet to mass educationists the atmosphere of intimacy achieved in the absence of physical barriers offset the lack of theatrical device. Not infrequently a member of a village audience, having grasped the drift of the play, would join in and take part—a gesture which always evoked great enthusiasm. By 1951 three mass education teams were operating in Ghana and village drama was a widely established and popular favourite both with staff and audience (178).

The pedagogical value of adapting indigenous theatrical techniques to educate adults has also been recognized by the independent African states. Some countries have used theater to advocate development in rural areas. A discursive practice commonly labeled theater for development has emerged in several postindependence African states. A close look at one of the projects will help evaluate the efficacy of this theatrical practice.

Although university sponsored traveling theater groups have played a significant role in the education of adults since the mid-1960s, the first major institutionalized theater for development project in independent Africa was implemented in 1974 in northern Botswana. The project,

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which was called Laedza Batanani or, "The sun is already up; It's time to come and work together," was organized in the Bokalaka area, home of about 30,000 Kalanga people. Laedza Batanani was conducted as an annual, one-week campaign covering the five-village cluster of the Bokalaka with the theater troupe traveling from village to village every day. Typically, before a campaign tour, district extension workers held a planning session, a community workshop decided what themes and issues to dramatize, and the actors' workshop transformed the issue into a concrete, workable dramatic plot.

The guiding principle of the actors' workshop was "lots of action, less talking." In order to keep the enterprise simple and to allow for contextual adaptation and audience participation, the skits were not scripted into a fixed text. A multimedia approach was implemented. Not only were indigenous theatrical elements such as songs, dances, and drama used but certain imported media forms, such as hand-puppet theater, also enrichened the enterprise. The themes and issues had clear developmental overtones. However, because it presented itself as an entertaining activity which was free of charge and conducted in the indigenous language, the Laedza Batanani campaign was able to draw upon that sector of the community which would otherwise have been reluctant to engage in any purportedly adult education extension project. The purposes of the theater program were to stimulate participation in community activities on the part of the villagers and to encourage a public forum for the discussion and resolution of commonly experienced community problems. In the words of two of the coordinators, the project attempted to "promote the twin goals of self-reliance and active participation in development" (Byram and Kidd, 1978). At the same time, the educators expressed a commitment to raise critical consciousness among the villagers and decided to put into effect a theatrical practice based on the philosophical premises of Freirian pedagogical theory.

Although it claimed allegiance to the Freirian education program, the Laedza Batanani campaign either seriously misconstrued or misapplied the Freirian approach in its early years. This failure has been noted not only by critics of the campaign but also by its organizers. Ross Kidd and Martin Byram, two adult educators involved in the project since its conception, remarked recently, "Laedza Batanani started with an inadequate understanding of the power structures within which it was working" (Kidd and Byram, 1982: 103). They never explicitly state it as such, but Kidd and Byram could be referring to the power of discourse in the legitimation of certain theatrical practices. In other words, one of the power structures which inhibited the efficacy of the theatrical enterprise was the discourse associated with its implementation. The project, as mentioned above, was conceived as an attempt to involve the Kalanga

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people in the development of the country. Indeed, this goal was explicitly stated in the campaign song which translates:

Awake and come together to build Botswana Build your villages together Leave staying at lands and build homes Attend meetings and hear what is happening in your country Men should work and give money to their wives Leave fighting in the Gumba Gumba Teach your children to respect adults Awake and come together to build Botswana (Kidd, Byram & Rohr- Rouendaal, 1978: 23).

Beneath its rhetorical call for community awakening and cooperative development, the campaign song embodied the underlying assumption of the program—that the Kalanga people were, in general, apathetic to the country's development, but, given the right motivation, they would be willing to participate in this development. Working with this assumption, the Laedza Batanani program did not follow the Freirian philosophy of critically challenging, analyzing, and ultimately subverting the status quo. Instead, they proposed to find ways in which people could be normalized into certain government-prescribed roles. This is not to suggest that the educators consciously attempted to prescribe solutions and behavior patterns to the people, but rather that their conceptual and discursive practices made them accomplices to the process. For instance, one of the guiding principles in choosing the themes to be dramatized was to select problems which could be worked out by the people rather than by the government (Kidd, Byram and Rohr-Rouendaal, 1978: 13). This meant that no major structural challenges were to be made through the use of popular theater. It also limited the scope of the critical consciousness which the educators had hoped to evoke.

For example, when dealing with the issue of venereal disease, the campaign produced skits suggesting the use of condoms and the limitation of sexual partners. The campaign also spread the knowledge that venereal disease could be cured, and, indeed, the skits were very effective. "In 1976, VD statistics were collected for a three-month period before and after the campaign. This data showed that clinic attendance for VD treatment had increased by 42% in the Laedza Batanani villages. However, in the North-East district clinic attendance declined by 12% during this same period" (Kidd, Byram and Rohr-Rouendaal, 1978: 41). But, while the campaign succeeded in teaching the villagers health issues, it did not encourage a critical consciousness about the origins and implications of venereal disease. One major issue which such a critical

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consciousness could have raised is the role of the migrant labor system in the spread of venereal disease in urban centers and its retransmission in the countryside. The campaign appeared to be content with solving social problems on the immediate level without engaging in a truly problem-posing pedagogy. It did not encourage the kind of social praxis promoted by the Freirian program. (See Kidd and Byram, 1982 for a thought-provoking reassessment of the "pseudo-Freirian" nature of the Laedza Batanani program.)

The nature of popular participation in the day-to-day activities of the campaign also posed problems. The educators attempted to involve villagers in the earliest stages of campaign planning, but villager input was very selective. Only "the headman, councillors, extension workers and leaders of the VDC and other organizations from each of the villages" participated in the initial stages of choosing the "generative themes" for performance and discussion (Kidd, Byram and Rohr-Rouendaal, 1978). The theatrical discourse was in the hands of an elite group of villagers and the adult educators and extension workers—the outside allies. Although on some occasions there was a certain amount of villager input, the process of theatrical codification was nevertheless in the hands of the village elite and catered to their concerns. Ross Kidd and Martin Byram have made this point by noting that the decision to deal with "the problem of cattle theft" in 1974 was a clear manifestation of the cattle-owning elite taking control of the discursive practice of popular theater (Kidd and Byram, 1982: 97). It is clear, then, that the actual process of the theatrical constitution was only minimally dialogic. Instead of engaging in a genuinely problem-posing pedagogy, the theatrical practice engaged in banking education. Although discussions were held at the end of every performance, the villagers cannot really be considered to have lent a dialogism to the practice. The educators had already implicitly (if not explicitly) decided on the ideal solutions to the problems, and no amount of villager discussion at this late stage could allow for a genuinely dialectical pedagogy.

The Laedza Batanani program succeeded as a medium of communicating development messages. However, it fell short as an educational campaign committed to Freirian pedagogy. The major reason for this failure seems to be the inadequate attempt to reconcile Freirian theory to the theatrical practice, both before and during the implementation of the process. The original ideology of the program, which considered the villagers apathetic and lazy, persevered throughout the theatrical discursive practices. Rather than being self-reflexive and self-critical, the educators (until recently) allowed themselves to be immersed in a given discourse which they did not attempt to critique. Albeit unintentionally, they aligned themselves with the authorities and the village elite, and thereby negated the possibility of engaging in a

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liberating educational practice. Ironically, they exemplified a Freirian notion—"the pedagogy of the oppressed cannot be developed or practiced by the oppressors. It would be a contradiction in terms if the oppressors not only defended but actually implemented a liberating education" (Freire, 1970b: 39).

Although the Laedza Batanani project did not live up to the expectations of the Freirian program (or, perhaps because it did not do so), it was hailed by the authorities as a successful use of indigenous media in the education of adults. The discourse authorities used to legitimize popular theatrical practices is particularly interesting. Botswana's Minister of Education, the Honorable K. P. Morake, reminded a team of popular theater practitioners that "to develop democratically, the government and the people must be able to speak to one another and must use a language that everyone understands" (1980: 13). The task of popular theater was to provide this language and "to communicate ideas and messages from the center to the remotest villages in this land. But its task was also to bring back to the center the ideas, aspirations and messages of the people" (1980: 12).

Despite the fact that the pedagogical practice of popular theater was far from being dialogical, it was hailed by the authorities as a model of two-way communication between the government and the people. The populist thrust in the discourse of the government was further enhanced by an emphasis on the Africanness of the pedagogical enterprise. Even though the theatrical practices were essentially hybridized processes, incorporating certain imported elements (such as hand-puppet theater), the authorities chose to disregard the imported elements and emphasize the indigenous origins of the theater. This emphasis was part of the larger discursive strategy of situating the educational medium in the postindependence rhetoric of nationalization and Africanization. Hence, popular theater was seized upon as a pedagogical medium with the potential "to provide a bridge" between the "two great creative forces" of traditional culture and modernization. Thus, addressing a group of extension workers at a popular theater training workshop in Molepolele, Botswana, Morake remarked:

popular theater...seems to provide a connection between the education and culture.... Education is important in terms of the development of individuals, communities and nations. It is the creation and dissemination of new knowledge, and knowledge is power. But In our enthusiasm for modern education, we must also hold on to all that is best and unique and enriching in Botswana's inheritance. Our country is undergoing rapid and significant changes in its economy, its development programs, its educational opportunities, and its political importance. But let us try to remember who we are, and why we are what we are. Let us move forward through education, but let us remain in touch with our past and with ourselves, through our traditional

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culture. If popular theater can provide a bridge between these two great creative forces, it will help us to develop as a nation with a clear sense of identity (1980: 12-13).

African governments supported theater for development financially as well as rhetorically. By the late 1970s and early 1980s popular theater for development projects began to be established in several African countries. For instance, between the period of May 1978 and August 1979, there were at least 22 recorded development theater activities in Botswana alone. These ranged from training workshops for adult educators to the use of theater in agricultural extension projects, health education programs, resettlement education schemes, literacy training sessions and the like. It was during this period, in November 1978, that Botswana saw the birth of its first national popular theater committee, the Lekgotla la Bosele Tshwaraganang, funded by Canadian aid and the Institute of Adult Education in Botswana. Also in 1978, the first major African popular theater training workshop was conducted in Botswana. This workshop, in turn, inspired similar workshops in other African countries. The Zambia International Theater Institute, for instance, sponsored a theater for development workshop at Chalimbana, Zambia, in August 1979 (Chifunyise, Kerr and Dall, 1980). The Nigerian Ahmadu Bello University organized workshops for adult literacy officers and drama students in 1979 and 1980 (Ahmadu Bello Collective, 1982). Under the auspices of the Chancellor College Travelling Theater of the University of Malawi, the Mbalachanda Rural Growth Centre hosted a theater for development workshop in July 1981 (Kamlongera, 1982). Zimbabwe saw its first theater for development workshop in August 1983 (Kidd, 1985); Cameroon, in December 1984 (Eyoh, 1986); and Sierra Leone, in November 1986 (Malamah-Thomas, 1987).

Despite having gained their original impetus from the Laedza Batanani project, and having been classified generally under the rubric of development theater, the discursive practices of these various projects manifested themselves in diverse forms. In some cases, such as in Sierra Leone, the theater for conscientization and development articulated itself as a practice clearly distinct from the theater for commercialism of the urban centres (Malamah-Thomas, 1987: 65). Presenting itself as a logical extension of earlier uses of didactic dramatizations in the country, Sierra Leone's development theater emerged relatively independent of the forces of cultural renewal and revitalization implicit in the urban theatrical tradition. In contrast, in countries with strong university traveling theater traditions, such as Zambia and Nigeria, the reception of developmental theater practices was clearly dialectical. Such interaction between the older practices of the university theaters and the newer practices of development theater is well documented in the

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activities of the Chikwakwa Travelling Theater of the University of Zambia in the late 1970s.

The Chikwakwa Travelling Theater was established by instructors and drama students at the University of Zambia in 1969. It was originally intended to serve the pedagogical interests of the drama students by providing them with an opportunity to "use precolonial theater traditions of dance, mime, drumming, open-air performance, audience participation and simple props, not to provide the pseudo-ethnic exoticism of traditional dance-for-tourists, but to create a postindependence Zambian theater aesthetic, attuned to the demands of modern society" (Kerr and Chifunyise, 1984: 60). In order to be socially relevant, Chikwakwa engaged in theatrical practices which catered to the needs of its peasant audiences. Plays performed in the tours were adapted to local conditions and were conducted in the languages indigenous to the various areas. In addition to performing such plays, the theater organized drama workshops in villages to "try to establish popular theater traditions in the rural areas themselves" (Kerr and Chifunyise, 1984: 66).

By the mid and late 1970s, the Chikwakwa organizers recognized the pedagogical potential of theater and began to experiment with explicitly didactic theatrical content. The 1976 Northern Province tour, for instance, included two plays, Blood and Kansakala, both of which contained health care messages. This trend towards a development-geared theater was encouraged when Chikwakwa theater workers were introduced to the theatrical practices of the Laedza Batanani campaign. "On the 1977 Chikwakwa tour to Luapula Province, two Botswana veterans of the Laedza Batanani experience, J. Kelepile and K. Matenge joined Kerr and Garikayi Shoniwa in leading the drama workshop and Travelling Theater, and some attempts were made to introduce the Laedza Batanani ideas about researching local problems, which led to the creation through improvisation of 77ie Funeral, about a typically Luapula problem of widow's rights of succession" (Kerr and Chifunyise, 1984: 71). In this way, the development theater practices imported from Botswana made permanent changes in the direction of the Chikwakwa theater practices. But, just as the development theater strategies helped Chikwakwa re­direct its energies, the Chikwakwa theater played a reciprocal role in preparing the Zambian authorities for the warm reception of the imported practices. As David Kerr and Stephen Chifunyise have pointed out, Chikwakwa had already espoused the authorities' interest in popular theater so that the possibilities of using theater in adult education were more easily recognized and supported by the government. Zambia's International Theater Institute sponsored workshops and development theater activities in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Discussing these activities, Kerr and Chifunyise wrote, "although ITI was a national

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(rather than University) organisation, most of the members of the national executive were current or recent theater workers, and the impetus for its programme came partly from their dissatisfaction with some aspects of the Chikwakwa popular theater programme" (Kerr and Chifunyise, 1984: 73).

While in the eastern part of the continent the Chikwakwa theater was adopting some development theater practices, in Nigeria, Ahmadu Bello University was also engaging in a theater geared towards adult education and development. Rather than unquestioningly accepting the previously formulated discursive practices of development theater in Africa, the Nigerian theater workers chose to analyze the hidden agendas of these practices. Serious theoretical reflection began to creep into the practices of the Ahmadu Bello theater practitioners, and hitherto unasked questions, such as, "What is development?" and "What is adult education?" were asked. Although the Ahmadu Bello University's drama division had engaged in several theater workshops and projects since the late 1970s, it was in 1980, in the context of the annual Samaru project, that the theoretical issues first gained momentum.

Samaru is a small town near the main campus of Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria. It is an underdeveloped, waterlogged area with an erratic electric supply and untarred streets. Samaru and its outgrowth, Hayin Dogo, house most of the workers of the university. The life-styles and experiences of the Samaru inhabitants are vastly different from those of the wealthier senior staff of the university. In 1980 a group of first-year drama students and their instructors decided to engage in a theatrical practice which drew upon the everyday experiences of the Samaru people. They decided to research the social problems of the Samaru inhabitants and to codify these issues in theatrical form. The object of the exercise was Frierian in nature; the codifications were to be presented to an open audience of villagers and to be decoded with their cooperation. In theory a dialogic theatrical practice was being advocated.

The dialogism which constituted the Samaru theatrical practice was discernable in several different arenas. The most concrete dialogue occurred during the initial research and interview process when the students established contact with the villagers and their concerns. This outward dialogue was advanced during the theatrical performances staged for the Samaru residents. It was here that the students received their most immediate measure of success marked by the applause and cheers of the audience. The dialogue was not always so vociferous. Oga Abah and Michael Etherton have noted, for instance, that in the earliest years of the Samaru project, there was a tendency for adults to arrive after the performances were well under way. Abah and Etherton suggest that this may have been a direct result of the Hausa notion that drama is an activity for children. (They point out that the Hausa phrase for drama,

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is Wasan kwoikoyo, or, game of imitation.) In this case one may discern an implicit dialogue between the Hausa tendency to view theater as essentially faking and the tendency of the practitioners to consider theater as an important force in the making of the educational practices of a society. Insofar as it was a direct manifestation of the differences in worldview of the theater practitioners and the residents of Samaru, the dialogue can be regarded as one based on epistemological and ontological grounds. This dialogical engagement eventually proved fruitful and regenerative to all the participants. The number of Samaru adults attending the performances grew over time. This growth, in turn, encouraged the students and convinced them that theater could be used successfully as a tool of social critique and consciousness raising.

Yet, a commitment to a dialogical practice requires serious reflection on the ontological positions of the subjects engaged in dialogue. A dialogism that emphasizes the epistemological differences between two subjects without attempting to relate these differences to their ontological origins is, at best, sterile. The Ahmadu Bello theater practitioners recognized and confronted the material dimensions of their project. This was particularly evidenced by the serious acknowledgement of the difference between the outside, privileged, theater practitioners and the relatively underprivileged inhabitants of Samaru. While engaging in research, the instructors were always careful to remind the drama students of their own prejudices and class-bound interests. They attempted to demystify the biases of the students by critiquing the paradigms in which they were situated and by encouraging self-reflexivity on the part of the students. Thus Abah and Etherton write, "when pushed in the group discussions some students were even prepared to articulate the view that lowly manual workers were too stupid to be anything else. We guided the students, attempting to make them more objective in their 'analyses,' and reformulated the problems on the basis of 'You see the problems in this way, but those people probably see them in that way'" (1982: 226).

The attempt of the Ahmadu Bello theater practitioners to distinguish the discursive paradigms of the elite from those of the relatively underprivileged marked a major move in African popular theatrical practice. The practitioners developed a culture of critical discourse in the arena of popular theater; henceforth, all such projects in Africa would consciously reflect upon the ontological origins and political functions of discourse. In their ability to move to the foreground the discursive constitution of concepts such as development and education, the Nigerian educators demonstrated a more progressive consciousness than had their Botswanan predecessors. A socially progressive conceptualization of development, based on the notion of critical consciousness, took shape in response to the recognition that development had hitherto been based on

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inaccurate notions of villager apathy. The recognition of this rhetoric of blaming the victim and the recognition of this recognition was necessary to make the enterprise a theory-laden praxis committed to a larger philosophy of social change.

A closer examination of the practices at Samaru, however, indicates that, while the theater practitioners were acutely aware of the ontological origins of discourses including their own, they allowed themselves to make the error of equating the ability to make this recognition with actual ontological transcendence. In other words, the practitioners seemed content with the mere recognition that their own position as outside intellectuals was a privileged one even though this recognition in itself did not significantly alter the privileges of that position. Surely one cannot expect the educators to abandon all of their privileges in the larger societal context (even if this were possible), but, when these privileges function as determining factors in the process of theatrical constitution, a truly dialogical practice is compromised. If the educators allow their privileged position to control the theatrical practice, what results is a product-oriented theater which includes popular participation only minimally. Such theater—scripted, performed and directed by the educators—attempts to articulate itself as a dialogic practice incorporating the worldview of the villagers, but, in effect, is a banking of theatrical practices if not of theatrical content. In the words of Kimani Gecau, such theater "is yet another form of bringing aid and charity to the people from the outside, a form of deepening a dependency complex, of institutionalising reform and domesticating the people. It is not the stuff from which development comes, if we understand development to be the mobilization and transformation of men and women—a nation's most important resource—to become the makers, the subjects and the objects of their own lives and history" (1983: 25).

Adult educators can only be true to their dialogical aims if they consciously control their own dominance in the arena of theatrical practice. This does not have to mean the complete abandonment of theatrical projects on the part of the educators. Rather, it should encourage educators to make an increased effort to include villagers in theatrical constitution. A truly dialogic educational practice must allow the student to play an active role not only in the decoding of a codification but also in the initial stage of the construction of the codification. In terms of Freire's own practice, this may be understood as the handing over of the camera to the student; in African theatrical practice, it means giving control of the theatrical means of production to the villagers.

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Towards a Revolut ionary Theater

Perhaps the most celebrated proponent of a dialogic popular theatrical practice in the Third World is Augusto Boal. His treatise Theater of the Oppressed is regarded by many as the first major manifesto of a popular revolutionary theatrical practice. The crucial characteristic defining Boal's practice is his insistence on breaking the dichotomy between the spectator and the actor. In Boalian theatrical practice, the spectator plays an integral part in the action and takes over the stage at various points in the process of theatrical constitution. This is particularly important in what Boal calls forum theater. Here a group of people decide to enact an impromptu scene about a particular social problem. Often, the problem to be enacted is chosen by the spectators. During the process of improvisation, any member of the audience may suggest an alternative turn in the dramatic events. In such a case, this person replaces the actor on stage and acts out the alternative plot. Boal writes, "anyone may propose any solution, but it must be done on the stage, working, acting, doing things and not from the comfort of his seat. Often a person is very revolutionary when in a public forum he envisages and advocates revolutionary and heroic acts; on the other hand, he often realises that things are not so easy when he himself has to practice what he suggests" (1979: 139). Boal's practice moves the practicability of specific social actions to the foreground. Framed as theater, potentially subversive actions can be rehearsed without facing the burden of social pressures.

Forum theater aims to empower the masses by placing the theatrical means of production in the hands of the people rather than under the control of an elite group composed of director, playwright, and actors. It therefore articulates itself as a discursive practice which is conducive to the Freirian ideal of conscientization with its desire of breaking through the culture of silence. Recognizing the liberating potential of Boalian theater, adult educators and theater practitioners in Africa began to experiment with this practice in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Nigeria, for instance, the Ahmadu Bello University's drama division set up the Benue State Workshop in April 1980. Here, Boalian theatrical practice was used in an agricultural extension program to raise villagers' powers of social critique. "The farmers became the actors and theater became the medium through which they analyzed their situation, the possibilities of action, and the implications of each course of action. In examining the increasing appropriations of their land by outside agencies, the farmers 'role-played' various ways they could question and resist these practices. After each 'rehearsal' the farmers analyzed their action—its limitation and potential obstacles—and then redramatized their course of action" (Ahmadu Bello Collective, 1982: 22-23). Thus, forum

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theater was used as a tool of social critique and as a rehearsal for potential social action.

While forum theater has been practiced in several African contexts, the best known Boalian theatrical movement in the continent has been the Kamiriithu project in Central Kenya. Ngaahika Ndeenda Q Will Marry When I Want), a Gikuyu play produced by the collective efforts of over two hundred villagers of the Kamiriithu village, was first staged at the community cultural center on 2 October 1977. The play was developed under the guidance of Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii, two university intellectuals who contributed to the epistemological and theoretical dimensions of the project. Ngaahika Ndeenda drew an audience from all over the country before it was officially banned by the Kenyan authorities on 16 November 1977. Later that same year, Ngugi wa Thiong'o was arrested and detained until his release on 12 December 1978. The major reason for his detention was widely believed to be his involvement in the Gikuyu theater at Kamiriithu.

Ngaahika Ndeenda arose out of a desire on the part of the Kamiriithu peasants and workers to establish a theatrical tradition which articulated itself against the remnants of the colonial theater still practiced in urban centers of Kenya. At the same time, it was an effort on the part of the villagers to voice their frustration with the postindependence Kenyan regime. Their frustration had its roots in several factors, the two most prominent being the unequal distribution of the national product characterizing any capitalist economy and the growing awareness of the betrayal of nationalistic ideals on the part of the ruling class of the neocolonial Kenyan regime. These two aspects of postindependence Kenyan society, along with related issues, such as the roles of Christianity and multinational investment in the sociocultural and economic exploitation of the masses, inform the tone of the play.

The play exposes these issues through the story of Kiguunda, a farm laborer who works for the rich farm owner, Kioi. Kiguunda's small plot of land is appropriated by Kioi for the purposes of multinational expansion. This appropriation is aided by the fact that Kioi's son, John Muhuuni, impregnates Kiguunda's daughter, Gathoni, a move which Kiguunda interprets as a sign of an impending union of the two families through the marriage of the lovers. When Kioi and his wife, Jezebel, visit Kiguunda's home, Kiguunda is sure that the purpose of their visit is to discuss the upcoming marriage. Instead, Kioi and Jezebel discuss Christianity and assert to Kiguunda the importance of Christian weddings. They go so far as to say that Kiguunda and his wife Wangeci are not properly married because they have not had a Christian wedding. This infuriates Kiguunda. But, because he strongly desires a marriage between his daughter and Kioi's son, Kiguunda decides to marry Wangeci again, this time in a Christian ceremony. Short of money,

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Kiguunda uses his land as security for a loan to pay for the marriage expenses. Kiguunda finds himself unable to repay the loan on time and forfeits his plot of land. Kioi buys the land for the expansion of the multinational corporation with which he is associated. To make matters worse, Kiguunda learns that John Muhuuni had no intention of marrying Gathoni; thus his loss of land was in vain. The play ends with a strike at a local factory led by Kiguunda and his friends and a call for unified action on the part of peasants and workers.

Ngaahika Ndeenda reflects the everyday concerns of peasants and workers of Kamiriithu. It is presented from the villagers' point of view, using their local idiom and language and drawing upon their songs, dances, and mime traditions. As a theatrical product, Ngaahika Ndeenda articulates a national culture rooted in the traditions and struggles of the Gikuyu peasantry and working class. An examination of the processual constitution of this articulation, controlled by the majority, reveals the richness of the theatrical enterprise as a tool for adult education, consciousness raising, and social change.

The integral role played by the Kamiriithu community in the creation of the Gikuyu play indicates a firm allegiance to the Boalian tradition of mass-controlled theater. Although the English translation of the play has been published under the names of Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii, the Gikuyu play was produced by communal effort. This is clear from the expository writing of Ngugi wa Thiong'o in which he describes the involvement of the people not only in the physical tasks of constructing the stage and collecting funds but also in the more aesthetically demanding domains of script revising, directing, rehearsing, and acting. For instance, the script, which was originally drafted by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii, was adapted and reinscribed by the communal practices of improvisation and forum theater. The original script was constantly checked for historical accuracy, linguistic verisimilitude, and realism. It was then revised and rehearsed in a dialectical fashion. Each step checked the excesses of the others. This meant that the audience-performers controlled the script-writing as much as the written text controlled the performance.

Psychologically, this was an empowering experience in which actions were not prescribed by a given authority, that of the written text, but were negotiated between the performed and the written texts. The actors controlled their own historical representation and subjectivity and the metonymic contiguity between the actors and the characters they portrayed enriched the psychodramatic experience. In other words, there was little need on the part of the actors to imagine themselves as character X or character Y. The distinction between their own lives and the lives of the characters they portrayed was so minimal that there was no need for epic leaps of imagination. In real life the actors were both

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character X and not character X at the same time, just as on stage they were both themselves and not themselves simultaneously.

The metonymic contiguity between the real lives of the people and their theatrical roles is an aspect of tremendous import to the revolutionary potential of theater. As Boal points out, "these theatrical forms are without doubt a rehearsal of revolution. The truth of the matter is that the spectator-actor practices a real act even though he does it in a fictional manner. While he rehearses throwing a bomb on stage, he is concretely rehearsing the way a bomb is thrown; acting out his attempt to organise a strike, he is concretely organising a strike. Within its fictional limits the experience is a concrete one" (1979: 141). It is no surprise, then, that a play such as Ngaahika Ndeenda resists closure, especially a cathartic closure which aims at the pacification of the audience through the purgation of emotions. On the contrary, the play ends with a nonending, a call for action, unity, and revolution—a call which is to be answered not within the confines and security of the theatrical frame, but in the more volatile and larger frame of human experience and social struggle. The power of the process of theatrical codification is in the very rupture of the theatrical frame, and it is the efficacy of this rupture which marks the educational and political success of the theatrical practice.

It is clear that the conception of education in the context of the Boalian theater of Kamiriithu was very different from earlier formulations of the concept in African popular theater. What is interesting to note here is the fact that one of the objectives of the Kamiriithu program was to increase the level of adult literacy. In a socioeconomic context such as that of Kenya, where literacy may open avenues to upward social mobility, the advocacy of such literacy has struck some critics as contradicting the class-based movement urged in the theatrical arena. Literacy, to these observers, has indicated the potential of class betrayal and competitive individualism on the part of the villagers. These critics have feared that literacy would give rise to what Gramsci called traditional intellectuals, people who would engage themselves in bureaucratic and scientistic tasks and thereby be lost to the interests of their class of origin. Although this may be a legitimate problem in some contexts, it has not emerged as such in the Kamiriithu scene. The major reason that this has not proved to be a problem is the involvement of the villagers in the theoretical dimensions of their own practices. Guided by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii, the literacy students and theater practitioners developed a class consciousness at the same time that they were attaining the potential privileges of literacy. Such a dual learning process—of learning literacy and social critique simultaneously—was enabled by the fact that the literacy program included the villagers' participation in the actual codification of reality.

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The intellectuals who emerged at Kamiriithu were "organic intellectuals" insofar as they became the "thinking and organizing element" of their class and functioned to direct "the ideas and aspirations of the class to which they organically belonged" (Gramsci, 1972: 5).

A group of women tea leaf pickers demonstrated the emergence of organic intellectuals at Kamiriithu by the manner in which they succeeded in increasing their wages. The tea estate owners, who had previously been able to exploit competition in the labor market, were forced to raise the wages in response to the more organized labor supply. The successful formation of organic intellectuals was evidenced even more dramatically by the continued struggle of the Kamiriithu center despite the fact that its cultural productions had been banned by the Kenyan regime and the fact that Ngugi wa Thiong'o had been detained. What had originated as a counter-hegemonic tradition did not hesitate to thrust itself forward as an illegal practice even when threatened by constant judicial repression and control. Ironically, herein lay the reason for its success. The voice of the people was now so potent that it could not be ignored by the authorities, and the continual repression by the state provided a larger sociodrama for a growing audience of workers and peasants throughout the Kenyan country.

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." Thus reads Marx's eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, a thesis which has been repeated and reasserted in various contexts. The thesis is built on the opposition between interpretation and change. It suggests that interpretation of social facts is, in some sense, inadequate, and that social change is the ultimate goal of human practice. However, the two terms in opposition are not mutually exclusive; the formulation of the thesis and particularly the usage of the word only suggests that interpretation of some sort has to precede change. Thus, philosophers have erred not in interpreting the world, but in only interpreting it. The task is to carry the interpretations further in the realm of social practice.

This consideration of popular theater in Africa has examined the relationship between interpretation and change. Because the normative dimension of African popular theater has been informed by this dialectic, such examination has seemed vital. Freirian theory has suggested that the opposition between interpretation and change is deceptive because interpretation is itself a social practice engaged in the legitimation or subversion of existing social structures. This analysis used this concept of discourse and examined two types of discourse: a) the discourse associated with the theater, and b) the discourse of theatrical practices.

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In the case of the first kind of discourse, this study tried to show the manner in which it legitimized existing social practices. This was most vividly noted in the Laedza Batanani case where such discourse limited theatrical functions. The case of the Ahmadu Bello Samaru project suggested that a different kind of discourse, the discourse of theatrical practices, hindered a truly liberating social practice. This stemmed from the fact that the villagers did not play an active role in the process of theatrical codification. In this respect, the Boalian practice at Kamiriithu represented an advancement. Controlled by the people, the Kamiriithu theatrical practice embodied the dialectics of interpretation and change simultaneously. If theater as discourse has always been a social practice, at Kamiriithu it was fully realized as a social praxis, committed to a dialogic process of social change.

Today popular theater continues to be practiced all over Africa. What remains to be seen is whether the theater will continue to exhibit a socialist trend. Some critics have suggested that popular theater in Africa can only be a left-oriented practice. This claim, however, seems politically rather than empirically grounded. Because a vast amount of theater work has gone unrecorded and unanalyzed, a definitive answer to this question cannot yet be advanced. The cases examined here have shown a socialist affinity. Other empirical studies which are available also suggest a definite left orientation. Whether this need always be the case and, indeed, whether this has always been the case, are issues which can only be addressed with more research. I see my own contribution not in terms of providing any definitive theories or practical norms, but as an attempt to highlight some of the theoretical issues which theater practitioners have hitherto ignored. It is in the spirit of cooperative dialogue and discussion that I offer this paper to present and future popular theater practitioners in Africa.

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I would like to thank all colleagues at Northwestern University and at various national conferences who encouraged me to work on this project. Six people who deserve special mention are John Brenkman, Dwight Conquergood, Margaret Drewal, Mette Shayne, Nina Miller and Valerian Lalni.

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