The Drum Beat 232 - Wan Smolbag Theatre - Vanuatu

WAN SMOLBAG THEATRE - Vanuatu

Wan Smolbag Theatre (WSB) is a grassroots NGO using drama to address social, health, and environmental issues in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. "Wan Smolbag" means "one small bag" in Bislama (pigeon English); the troupe relies centrally on simple props and tools to pass on information to, and foster communication among, people living in even the most remote villages.

The group consists of 50 full-time (and many part-time) staff, predominantly youth at varying degrees of risk. In addition to offering live theatre and participatory drama workshops, WSB works in radio and video. It also acts as a consultant, designing plays or materials at the request of organisations that have a message for people living in Vanuatu or any of the Pacific Islands. Focus areas include governance, reproductive health, and natural resource management. 

This issue of The Drum Beat will highlight some of WSB's strategies and activities. 

For more information, see also

• Summary of WSB on The CI site
• Summary of WSB within the publication 'Making Waves'
• WSB site.

APPROACH

WSB describes itself as "solving problems together, energizing communities to take action, and adding drama to development in the Pacific". Here are its key strategies:

 

1. Disseminating information - WSB uses theatre to pass on facts. Residents of Vanuatu's 83 small islands need information (some of it of life-and-death importance), but many are illiterate and do not have access to computers.
2. Understanding communication as a multi-directional, multi-dimensional process - WSB does not tell or show communities the problems they face and then provide solutions but, rather, instills a sense that "we all know this is a problem; let's look at it together". Dialogue is created through participation; material for scripts comes from interviews and local stories, and audience feedback shapes WSB's work. For WSB's founder, "the 'process' of people feeling they are being consulted, asked to take part in a debate, that their opinions count will lead to a change that is longer lasting because people genuinely are convinced and believe in it." Both vertical and horizontal communication strategies are stressed.
3. Tailoring messages to suit differing needs and perspectives - To support this strategy, approximately 20% of WSB actors' work is devoted to improvisation so they can adapt quickly to the circumstances of a particular village they visit.
4. Using various kinds of media to maximise reach - While live performance and face-to-face training sessions are preferred, radio drama can reach islanders nationwide on a consistent basis. Videos and workshop guides (bolstered by training) are other means to get the message out and to support, say, the work of teachers.
5. Conceiving of theatre as a possible source for spin-off projects - WSB gets intimately involved in communities and their challenges when touring, inspiring them to work with islanders beyond the play.
6. Evaluating its work - 2 research officers conduct surveys to find out whether, how, and why WSB's work is or is not impacting behaviour.

FACETS

1) Live Theatre
Performing in remote villages gives the group the opportunity to spend the night and discuss issues in detail after the play.

 

• Environmental Drama
  Strategy: To respond to environmental issues highlighted by the communities and to encourage wider discussion and action through drama and workshops.
  Example: People on the island of Ambrym felt that the Namalao, an endemic megapode, was in decline and even lost in certain areas because of over-harvesting of eggs. 3 plays exploring the issue were performed over a 2-year period, followed by a meeting of chiefs from all over the island. In response, a taboo on harvesting the eggs was initiated over the whole island during the breeding season in 2003.
• Social Drama
  Strategy: Social problems such as spousal abuse and political corruption may be difficult to explain but can become self-evident when actors create a picture.
  Example: Officials wanted to inform as many people as possible about voting rights and responsibilities when a snap election was called for. WSB created a play, which 7 groups of actors from different villages performed in the weeks before the election. About 90% of Vanuatu villages saw the play, which was intentionally short to make time for discussion. WSB also created radio spots and recorded the play for national TV. There was an extremely good rural turnout at the election.
• Health Drama
  Strategy: WSB works to open community dialogue on sexually transmitted infections (STIs), physical disabilities, alcoholism, and family planning; actors take on the role of facilitators and invite people to join in the dramas.
  Example: In a set of humourous participatory sketches, actors and local participants play semen, STIs, and their "super-enemy" the condom. WSB also shows through drama the effects of untreated STIs.

2) Radio 
Famili Blong Sarah (Sarah's Family) is a weekly radio drama series aiming to increase knowledge of, and promote positive attitudes about, reproductive health issues. The soap opera is also a teaching tool for nurses, teachers, and aid post workers.
Strategy: Community-based research shapes storylines; actors are also invited to contribute ideas to the script. The first 20 episodes were dedicated to character development in the hope that the audience would bond with characters before sensitive sexual health issues were introduced. 185 episodes have been produced to date.

3) Other Media
Live, person-to-person drama can be a powerful tool but touring can be expensive in a country of scattered islands. Furthermore, videos, cassettes, and printed materials can be used self-sufficiently and watched or listened to repeatedly. For these reasons, WSB produces and sells:

 

• Videos
  Addressing a range of social, environmental, and health issues, these dramas and documentaries are available in VHS format, with accompanying user's guides. The videos are popular; while on one tour, actors came across kids on the island of Tanna reciting lines from a WSB video.
• Books
  The Old Stories (WSB's history of Vanuatu), a book of 3 environmental plays, and a book of 4 plays with reproductive health themes.
• Cassettes
  Songs and radio spots designed to support campaigns to improve the environment, and a popular songs cassette called Democracy Dreams used in schools throughout Melanesia. WSB customises messages to suit particular audiences.
• Scripts
  Over 50 on various themes, available on request.

4) Training and participatory drama workshops
WSB teaches drama and scriptwriting skills to other theatre groups, and creates participatory workshops on particular development issues for nurses, health educators, and teachers. Some of this training focusses on the use of WSB's videos and cassettes. For example, WSB watches teachers try out the materials in the classroom and offers feedback and guidance.

PROJECTS

Wan Smolbag Kids
In 1995, WSB held a series of workshops with 30 children who were not at school, asking them to talk about their lives so they could make a play. The kids then performed Rod Blong Ko long Skul (The Way to School) in primary schools around Vila and North Efate. A core group of 6 emerged; they became a semi-permanent part of WSB, appearing in plays and videos.

Vanua-tai (Species) Monitors
WSB's plays inspired a nationwide network of 200 volunteers who watch for nesting turtles and advise people on various environmental issues. One goal is to encourage fellow citizens to respect bans on the practice of killing and eating turtles and their eggs. WSB trained some of the monitors to use its video A Piece of Land so that, even when not aided by WSB actors, they can use these materials as an interactive way of looking at conservation.
Click here for a more detailed summary.

Blacksands Community Play
In 1997, WSB approached one of its bordering low-income communities, saying it was interested in collaborating. 130 Blacksands people were waiting outside the chief's compound at the first meeting. 6 months of workshops prepared 70 of them (aged 10 to 60) for performance; strategies included games and role plays, storytelling, and creation of musical instruments from bamboo and old tyres. In the words of WSB's founder, "Barely a day went by without somebody in tears - boys pinching girls, bully boys hitting other boys, husbands coming for their wives, feuds from within the community breaking out at the theatre - but somehow above all this, a fantastic spirit of working together on something very special". WSB's scriptwriter turned the experience into a 2-hour play that was performed in a 2-month run to packed houses. 

Kam Pussem Hed (KPH) Centre
Having performed plays on reproductive health issues for years, WSB asked: What if people have the knowledge and have overcome the shame, but the local clinic is under orders from a chief not to give contraception to non-married people? Or the nearest supply is far away? In partnership with Blacksands community play cast members, WSB built a youth drop-in centre/reproductive and sexual health clinic in 1999. Outreach services include peer education - youth visit places frequented by their peers, such as kava bars.
See evaluation - click here for the HTML version OR click here for the PDF version.

National Youth AIDS Congress
While STI rates are high in Vanuatu, there is only 1 confirmed HIV case. However, neighbouring Papua New Guinea (PNG) is experiencing an AIDS epidemic. WSB brought together youth from all over the country as well as people living with AIDS from PNG and a well-known AIDS activist from Tahiti, Maire Bopp. The conference worked on the horizontal level as an eye opener for people from remote areas, but the press coverage it received and the invitations to senior politicians also gave it a vertical dimension. Vanuatu's HIV-positive citizen came out of obscurity to attend the congress and has gone on to address crowds around the country.

LESSONS LEARNED

* People who have information have a duty to pass it on; the issue of political and cultural barriers to acting on that information is a separate one.

* In the absense of core funding (DfID supported WSB from 1994-2000), WSB is challenged to work on a sporadic project, rather than a sustained programme, basis.

* Creating media other than live drama may sustain WSB's legacy should it disband.

* Paying islanders, especially at-risk youth, for the work they do supports economic development goals - WSB is a leading employer in Port Vila - and exposes employees and the people they communicate with to issues of community importance every day.

* Discovering and developing local talent works better than forcing actors, say, to perform multiple organisational tasks.

* One goal is practising what WSB preaches - e.g., dividing its own rubbish to support promotion of sustainable environmental practises in dramas.

* Behaviour change can be constrained by attitudes that have complex dimensions; it is crucial to avoid oversimplification and be willing to adjust communication strategies.

* Resisting complacency is important, as is remembering that WSB can't provide quick-fix solutions to huge problems and that one play is not going to change the world.

FOR MORE INFORMATION Peter Walker Director, Wan Smolbag Theatre PO Box 1524 Port Vila, Efate, Vanuatu Tel: 678 24397/27119/27464 Fax: 678 25308 jopet@vanuatu.com.vu OR contact@wan-smolbag-theatre.org Wan Smolbag Theatre site.

See also the summary of WSB on The CI site and the summary of WSB within the publication 'Making Waves'.

 

This issue written by Kier Olsen DeVries. Many thanks to Peter Walker for his assistance. 

 

The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.

Please send material for The Drum Beat to the Editor - Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com

To reproduce any portion of The Drum Beat, see our policy.

To subscribe, click here.