Community theatre and public health in Malawi
Resource type
Journal Article
Author/contributor
- Kerr, David (Author)
Title
Community theatre and public health in Malawi
Abstract
This paper describes an experiment, intitiated in 1985, in linking performing arts with primary health care campaigns in Machinga and Zomba districts in Malawi. The groups participating were the Primary Health Care Unit of the Liwonde Agricultural Development Division and the University of Malawi's Theatre for Development. The theatre group had already established aesthetic and organisational strategies to ensure that the communities where they peformed not only had their interests genuinely reflected in the dramas but gained increasing control over the theatre process. The result was a series of performances where the debates about such matters as the siting of village wells or the performance of Village Health Committees took off in unplanned directions, drifting in and out of the frame of fantasy provided by the story and back into the ‘safety’ of the frame when it became too embarrassing to individual members of the audience. Over the next two years, other groups of actors, including at least one group of peasant women, began to imitate the performances they had witnessed to maintain the momentum of their demand for improved facilities. While it would be quite wrong to see such performances as having revolutionary potential, it is important to realise that even under dictatorships like Dr Banda's, one‐party hegemony is never monolithic.
Publication
Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume
15
Issue
3
Pages
469-485
Date
1989-04-01
ISSN
0305-7070
Accessed
13/08/2022, 15:14
Library Catalogue
Taylor and Francis+NEJM
Extra
Publisher: Routledge
_eprint: https://doi.org/10.1080/03057078908708211
Citation
Kerr, D. (1989). Community theatre and public health in Malawi. Journal of Southern African Studies, 15(3), 469–485. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057078908708211
Type
Country
Link to this record