Silent Voices

Participating youth from both countries met in Nairobi and worked together to create a performance on the theme of relationships. The internet enabled the groups in Kungsbacka and in Nairobi to get to know each other before they actually met. They were then able to further develop and continue their communication in person. The performance they produced, called “Silent Voices”, also played during the 3rd EATI Regional Theatre Festival on November 27 2004 at the Little Theatre Club in Mombasa, Kenya.

Specifically, this project used intercultural exchange, fostered through information and communication technologies (ICTs) and face-to-face contact, among young people engaged in theatre as a tool to understand the human experience. By connecting peers from very different geographical and cultural places, the project used live performance as a strategy for:

• activating an exchange and fusion of dramatic forms to empower the participants to use theatrical forms in what are intended to be expressive, innovative ways. Students were invited to compare their experiences; for instance, the Swedish students engage in formal training in drama/theatre, whereas Kenyans learn the art form through apprenticeship. Again, the Swedish students are used to using a stage, whereas Kenyans improvise a lot - the interchange enables Swedish students to improvise alongside their Kenyan counterparts in unfamiliar circumstances. The idea is that these two groups could enjoy an exchange of ideas and methodological expertise acquired through the two different styles of skill acquisition. According to the organisers, “Stylistic variation seen on both sides presents the potential for stylistic blending; which could positively contribute to the development of the genres in drama/theatre.”
• appreciating young talent by facilitating face-to-face meeting and working, hopefully in the process building cultural understanding across national, racial, gender, social and economic barriers.
• widening the scope of cooperation between Kenya and Sweden by involving youth in advocacy and social action based on theatre.

Youth.

This project was youth-generated. In 2003, theatre students at the secondary school, Kungsbacka Kulturskola, Sweden developed an interest in exchanging knowledge and experience with young theatre practitioners in Nairobi. The initiators were a group of students who had been studying theatre under their “aesthetic programme” since August 2002. The students felt that it could be of great benefit if they exchanged their knowledge with young theatre practitioners from Kenya. They believed that an exchange would widen their scope of learning and provide a channel through which they could discern different methodologies and approaches that theatrical pedagogy and practice assumes in different regions of the world. The students, with the help of their theatre teacher, used the internet as a mode of communication with the East African country. In April 2003, a workshop was arranged on storytelling. During the workshop the interest increased and in discussion with partners, the idea of starting a cooperation arose.

The students from Sweden have worked with improvisation, how to create a story for the stage and performing skills. Their teacher, a drama paedagogue, employs the teaching style based on the premise that learning is not only for a particular stage, but for life itself and it serves to help people become aware of their own potential and to increase their self-confidence. “Communication with others, which is a very big issue in theatre, is very much about getting to know yourself to understand others. When you create a performance you have to answer the questions who is the person and why does he/she do what he does? This gives you a good platform to discuss why we behave and think as we do.”

The Kenyan counterparts are a group of young high school graduates who have been participating in theatre activities in school, despite a lack of drama/theatre in Kenyan schools.