Community in Motion: Theatre for Development in Africa by L. Dale Byam (review)

Reviews special issue does offer, it must be admitted, a great deal of interesting detail about theatrical practice. One of the striking things about it, though, is the replication , in its editorial posture, of a very old view of ..Africa" as object of Western scrutiny. Only two of the contributors and two of the book reviewers work in Africa itself. The remaining twelve contributors and thirteen reviewers are located mostly in the United States or Europe. Hence, perhaps, despite the promise of the editors, the paucity in this collection of any sense of what is happening in current African theatre. L. DALE BYAM. Commllnity in Motion: Theatre for Development in Africa. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1999· Pp. 240, illustrated. $59.95 (Hb). Reviewed by Salldra L. Richards, Northwestern University L. Dale Byam offers an important analysis of recent theatre for development projects in Africa. While most scholarship examines projects in only one nation, this author offers case studies from Botswana (where the first African theatre for development project began in 1973), Zambia, Nigeria, and Kenya. These serve as contrasts for Byam's main focus, a thorough analysis of ZACT, the Zimbabwean Association of Community Theatre. To this project Byam brings considerable field experience, having worked in Nigeria in 1989 and in Zimbabwe from 1989 to 1993. Byam is careful to distinguish theatre for development from other popular theatre projects wherein practitioners - generally urbanites affiliated with universities or funded by organizations like UNESCO - operate unilaterally, taking well-made plays to rural areas or appropriating folk forms in order to teach lessons about health issues. Byam rejects a definition of development that equates the term with economic growth and technological advancement; rather, she draws from the work of Walter Rodney and Paulo Freire to identify control over one's labor, critical reflection upon situational constraints, and indigenous participation in crafting solutions as key elements of human development . Freire's pedagogy of the oppressed serves as the standard by which Byam evaluates the success of various projects. As Byam is careful to note, the Brazilian educator's emphasis on a critical, dialogic pedagogy between student and teacher finds resonance in traditional African practices that locate individual and collective health in reciprocal relationships and utilize local conditions to inculcate skills as well as abstract knowledge in the young. In addition, Freire assisted the government of Guinea-Bissau in instituting its 1iteracy campaign, and educators like Ross Kidd in Botswana, Ngugi wa Mirii in Kenya, David Kerr in Zambia, and Steve Abah in Nigeria were familiar with the Freirian model, using elements of it in their own pioneering theatre for development projects. .REVIEWS For Byam, the effectiveness of theatre for development is measured by the extent to which popular panicipation occurs throughout the three-stage process of conscientization or the development of critical thinking that is historically grounded and stimulates resistant praxis; reciprocal engagement of the teacher or facilitators and community people in research, integrated learning, and problem solving; and thematic investigation in which the results of analysis are staged and funher discussed in codes that the community itself values. Not surprisingly, in that the educated, whether indigenous or expatriate, have been socialized to see themselves as experts whose knowledge is superior to that of the African masses, development projects sponsored by Laedza Batanani in Botswana, Chikwakwa and Chilimbana in Zambia, Wasan Manoma, Samaru, and Theatre for Integrated Development in Nigeria all fell shon'of the central objective of helping local peoples to empower themselves. In several instances, practitioners failed to collaborate with residents in researching community problems; resorted to performance idioms with which they were familiar rather than encouraging local expressions; spent too little time in the village before retreating to the relative comfon of campus life; or failed to make follow-up visits to suppon cQmmunities in their effons at change. Those who benefited most tended to be university participants, either professors who made international reputations from their work or students who learned more about rural life in their nations. Kenya and Zimbabwe offer the contrast to this general picture of top-down "development." The Kamiriithu Community Education and Cultural Center, headed by university professor Ngugi wa Thiong'o and adult literacy educator...