Ahead of the Drama for Life conference, which takes place from August 26 to 28, Percy Zvomuya sat down to talk to Warren Nebe, head of Dramatic Art at the Wits University’s School of Arts and director of Drama for Life, Africa
Could you tell us more about the conference?
The first two conferences brought together a number of African academics and some international people. This year it’s quite extensive in terms of who is coming and the content. We are not just focussing on issues like HIV/Aids. We are looking at the arts and social justice, arts healing practices … So the programme is incredibly diverse and rich. But we are also asking some serious questions in relation to South Africa.
[One of this year’s invited guests] is Mike van Graan who was directly involved in the formulating of the new culture policies during the transition years. We want him to speak about the dream then and now. There are many people who feel that the arts are in as much danger as the media, but for slightly different reasons … Have we implemented the policies? And have the arts made inroads in ways that are substantial?
Explain the work and genesis of the Drama for Life (DFL)
I was invited by GTZ SADC and i was very critical of [the scenario where a donor gives] once off seed money to create a production that maybe a few people are going to see, productions that never never make much impact. This is historical, often donors will come and throw money at a group, often it’s a group that’s not supposed to be getting the money, other times the funding goes to really good artists.
DFL is about ensuring that we create a programme at a high level of leadership. We share knowledge, skills and create a very strong network not only in the region but across Africa. At DFL, our primary goal isn’t to train directors and actors. Our goal is to train educators and facilitators, people who can go into leadership positions in arts institutions, universities and NGOs to train other people. We worked with the health and education ministries of SADC countries and then there was a big briefing here in Johannesburg in October 2006. It was in that meeting that names were bandied about [including Drama for Life].
I suppose it’s an affirmation that the arts can play a fundamental role in affirming life. What’s interesting is that the name doesn’t fully embody what we are doing now. We have this wide range of people with inter-disciplinary skills but very interested in the notion of arts playing social justice, health and education roles.
As you move out of Johannesburg and the major centres, most of the work that artists are doing there is engaged. We can’t negate that. [But] in South Africa arts for social change has often been seen as the other, similar to how protest theatre in this country was perceived whereas in Kenya theatre for development is esteemed. We aren’t certainly aligning ourselves with work that is didactic, that reduces everything to fundamentals. But we are interested in work that’s complex, work that speaks to people’s humanity. We are not shy of protest … the phrase protest theatre was used specifically by those who wanted to maintain the status quo. It was a means of undermining and demeaning work that was surfacing in this country in the 1970s and 80s. It was a means of maintaining a divide between high and low art.
That’s what we are challenging … As artists we should be mindful of these issues. Do we want to create arts that throw bricks? Sometimes one has to throw bricks, but sometimes your art has to be complex as well.
Are you happy with the young generation of emerging artists?
I have tried, under my headship, to create a space in which students feel enhanced. I don’t want to use the word “empowered”. I want them to know that they can go out and create work, work that is mindful of their audiences. Many of them are showing courage, testing new waters, saying things that haven’t been said.
We need to ensure that there is a constant movement between past, present and future. Part of our memory has been fractured, erased, moulded and reconfigured in the name of the rainbow nation, a new South Africa, when there are still critical issues that need to be faced.
Why are theatres not attracting big audiences?
How do you get people into theatres? By creating work that is topical. Our theme this year is “sex actually”. We got the theme right because there has to be a unique, cross-cultural intervention [to deal with HIV/Aids]. Yes, we want to deal with it as a health issue, but it can’t only be looked at from a moral, medical point of view. It needs to be holistic, gender, culture, everything. We have to start talking about this in a way we haven’t.
A number of people who were involved in the Market Theatre company days — during the time when there was an enormous amount of new, original work-l feel that the energy has been lost. Where is that vibe of artists gathering and talking? We have tried to recreate it here, in part because this is a laboratory …
Audiences don’t lack intelligence, regardless of who they are and where they come from. They will go and watch something that will speak to them on some level, whether something titillating or something that speaks to the soul. It’s our responsibility to make theatre that speaks to the people. There’s a reason why theatres are half-full. We had shows (like Tsepo wa Mamatu’s Mbeki and Other Nightmares) that commanded full-houses. It drew a primarily black audience, highly politicised and curious.
We just had a South African season. There were three or four productions that pulled in full houses from the opening night to the closing night. My sense is that even though those works were old, we found ways to speak to a contemporary audience.
One of the issues we have to address is one of writing. We have fallen into the old South African trap of the good play, high and low art. So no one is quite breaking the boundaries [on the other hand] international artists are doing cutting edge work. Where is experimental work that makes people go, “oh my God!” ?
Is everything well with our theatre?
If you talk to Sibikwa Community Arts Centre, they will tell you they are under enormous strain. If you talk to them about theatre groups in their network, they will tell you most of them have folded. That shows something is not right. Those who have access to foreign funding have survived. We are not coming together as theatre people and taking care of our own.
There’s work to be done around arts management, community arts centres. These should be playing a critical role in our country and my sense is that these could be hubs for creation of new work , education and fulfilling a range of [other] needs. We know that the arts and culture syllabus has bombed … because there aren’t enough arts and culture teachers and our biology teachers won’t do it. The Department of Education is in crisis around this issue. Yet exceptional artists in the community could play a role in the schools. Every week an artist could go and teach at such and such a school.
The arts and culture syllabus hasn’t worked perhaps because the arts are not a priority now.
I understand why we need Maths and Science, of which there’s serious lack, but my experience tells me that arts can allow the child into the world of making meaning. They can start understanding the world at a symbolic level. [Some of the top schools in the region] are Waterford in Swaziland and Maru a Pula in Botswana. Both schools have arts at the centre of their curriculum. The kids come out confident, highly expressive and deeply engaged with the world. They get scholarships to the top universities around the world. It doesn’t make sense that in this country where we have incredible artists and where the arts could be the means to educate , heal and reconfigure, this is not being done.