Following Khulumani’s receipt of an Art Moves African (AMA) mobility grant, Khulumani hosted Africa Director of Forum Theatre, one of the approaches to Theatre for Development that is based on the work of Augusto Boal. 30 young people were trained over 3 months in this methodology by Mr Mohamadou Diol from Dakar, Senegal, using the Orlando East premises of the YMCA as our training base.
The training led to the production of a manual of exercises which we use in our ongoing work every week. On Mondays, our team offers a 3-hour long programme in the Krugersdorp Correctional Facility to 20 long-term offenders who envision Forum Theatre being a tool for them to share with young people in their communities after their eventual release as a way of facilitating participatory community problem-solving.
On Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons the team offers Forum Theatre to learners at two Soweto High Schools – Lavela and Kwadeda. The Lavela learners have presented their piece on teenage pregnancy to the final year and Honours level students in Drama at the Wits School of the Arts where the project leader, Mr Bonginkosi Mayepu, has been a beneficiary of a scholarship at the Drama for Life Programme offered by the School of the Arts at Wits University and will complete his Advanced Diploma at the end of the year.
The team was engaged during 2014 by our Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to present 29 performances in public spaces across Soweto, mainly in the malls that have sprung up across Soweto to encourage young people to vote as a remedy to the phenomenon of a lack of interest of young people in voting in a country in which people made huge sacrifices to win the right to vote.
Khulumani’s work has been presented at the International Research Conferences organised by the Wits School of the Arts.
While there is huge demand for these methodologies to be shared with young township residents, the only obstacle to realising this dream is that of securing the budgets needed to provide for transport for the team leaders to the groups they facilitate and a small stipend to enable them to keep offering this work to an expanding audience of people who long to be involved.
Please download and review an overview of the work of Khulumani Forum Theatre (below) and please consider making a contribution to enable this work to expand. Contributions could be sent using the PayFast facility on our website.
