adminStephen Chifunyise Theatre Corridors
ON the second day of the third African Theatre Reviewed at Creative Economy Conference Network in Cape Town, South Africa, from October 6 to 9 2013, theatre practitioners and scholars from several African countries congregated at Cape Town’s District Six’s Homecoming Centre to review the African theatre scene and to establish professional networks. The theatre breakaway session was part of the third conference programme under the theme “Africa by Genre” designed for participants to involve in “genre-based discussions to reflect on and suggest how the creative and cultural industries on the continent can be developed”.
The theatre breakaway session, which was attended by theatre practitioners and scholars from Namibia, Ghana, South Africa, Tunisia, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Morocco and Zimbabwe, was facilitated by Ms Yvette Hardie of South Africa, who is the current president of the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People (ASSITEJ) and Florence Makanga-Majachani of Zimbabwe.
Makanga-Majachani led the breakaway session by presenting a paper in which she listed and highlighted challenges being faced by the theatre sectors in different African countries. In her presentation, she discussed what she considered as major constraints to the development of theatre industry and what theatre practitioners in different countries have indicated as actions that should be taken to make African theatre industry a major contributor to the viability of the Africa’s creative economy.
In discussion theatre practitioners elaborated with examples what had been features in Makanga-Majachani’s overview about the challenges being faced by the theatre sector.
Some participants provided examples of activities, projects, programmes, organisations and institutions that enhanced the appreciation by participants in this dialogue on the nature of diverse theatre situations in Africa.
After taking note of the varied additions and comments of the participants to the presentation, Hardie set participants in groups that looked at the issues of theatre education, theatre creation, theatre production, theatre consumption and theatre distribution.
Leaders of the groups were given maps of Africa on which they indicated, country by country, what participants thought was happening in terms of the various aspects of theatre development.
This activity proved to be a vital theatre mapping exercise, although what was mostly highlighted was what was happening in the theatre scene of countries represented at the break- away session.
Fortunately, many participants were familiar with theatre scenes in neighbouring countries that were not represented at the Third African Creative Economy Conference.
In the plenary session that concluded the session, rapporteurs of the groups on theatre education, theatre creation, theatre production, theatre consumption and theatre distribution reported on the information gathered and the rest of the participants indicated what they thought were strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the African theatre scene indicated in the reports. This session was very fruitful as participants gave personal testimonies on the challenges they face in different African countries.
The manager of one of South Africa’s leading theatre, The Market Theatre in Johannesburg, gave a very eloquent exposition of how difficulty it was to mount in this famous theatre space, theatre productions that enabled the theatre organisation to break even in terms of costs of running the theatre facility and its programmes. He indicated how difficult it was for The Market Theatre to generate income from a theatre programme featuring different plays in a year in order to provide a rich diversity of theatre. What looked absurd in the case of The Market Theatre was the view that from the funding the theatre institution receives annually, the institution can break even if it did not put a single theatre production on its stage throughout the year.
There were several ideas shared by participants on how to ensure that theatre productions are consumed by a large number of people in order to justify the huge costs of producing such cultural products. One idea that was highlighted was that of bussing non-paying audiences who have no opportunity to consume theatre because they cannot afford the require entrances fees. The other idea shared was on how resources for producing such theatre would have to be mobilised and what corporate would find attractive in terms of sponsoring the participation in theatre consumption by the underprivileged members of the community.
Dr Awo Asledu of the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Ghana in Legon illustrated the poor distribution of theatre in Africa by showing how difficult it is for African universities that have theatre education programmes to access theatre scripts by African playwrights. He indicated that he had only been able to secure from Zimbabwe a copy of “Workshop Negative” by Cont Mhlanga and few scripts from Ethiopia. He pointed out that African playwrights who were attending the Third African Creative Economy Conference, had not bothered to bring their scripts for sale.
Participants in the theatre breakaway sessions also observed that many excellent theatre productions in Africa were “killed” before they had been taken on tour to various parts of the country and to neighbouring countries and that theatre companies were finding it difficult to take theatre performances to universities and colleges.
The meeting recommended that national theatre organisations in African countries should endeavour to dialogue with national associations of university vice-chancellors to work out systems of theatre performance tours to universities not only as good method of promoting theatre education but also a way of broadening of the scope of theatre distribution and theatre consumption.
The session also provided an opportunity for sharing best practices in theatre industry development and what other theatre practitioners were doing to solve some of the challenges to theatre industry development indicated.
In response to the observation made mainly by participants from Southern Africa that although in a number of Southern African countries there is theatre education in the school curriculum at primary and secondary levels, the absence of theatre teachers was cited as the main reason why in many of these countries there is no viable theatre education in schools, participants from Tunisia made a presentation that most participants considered a best practice in the development of theatre education in schools.
It was explained that in Tunisia, theatre practitioners that are formally trained at universities or produced informally by theatre organisations are all registered by the Ministry of Education as theatre teachers in their different communities thereby ensuring that the compulsory teaching of theatre in all schools in Tunisia is achieved. Several other best practices in theatre industry development discussed will be featured in the next edition of this column.
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