The Gender and Advocacy workshop recently held by the Knowledge Hub for Organic Agriculture and Agroecology in Southern Africa (KHSA) was an arena of activity as participants delved into participatory theatre as an information dissemination tool for education and social change.
Participatory theatre engages audiences and allows participants to act out scenes on real-life issues such as gender equality, climate change, food security, and many more issues affecting communities. This turns inactive participants into active ones. It requires that the audience interacts with the actors, fostering dialogue, suggesting solutions, and sparking discussions that will inform remedies to prevailing challenges in communities.
Soils, Food and Health Communities Communications and Knowledge Management Officer Isaac Mafuel was on hand at the workshop to introduce KHSA staff to practical participatory theatre.
Each country group identified the gender issues their communities were grappling with and acted it out.
“It is the best session in the whole training, so many emotions are ignited as real gender challenges are brought out through theatre”, says Mareike Voigts, a participant from Namibia.
Mafuel says participatory theatre empowers farmers and communities with public speaking and negotiating skills and allows them to advocate for their rights, giving them a practical feel of situations they are experiencing in communities.
Additional Benefits of Participatory Theatre
Empathy:
Participatory theatre creates emotions as people brings to light some of the touching experiences. This fosters empathy and makes communities relate more to the challenges they are experiencing.
Platform Flexibility:
Participatory theatre can be done as traditional staged plays with audience interaction or through virtual platforms where participants can engage in real-time. This allows for the dissemination of information to larger and broader audiences based on their preferred media platform.
Behaviour Change:
Participatory theatre allows community members to experience new behaviours through theatre. This encourages them to make better choices and adopt desired and appropriate behaviours and practices
Community Action:
Participatory theatre allows for collective learning and action. It goes beyond individual learning to bring about desired action for the benefit of communities.
Download Knowledge Product by SFHC for more information on participatory theatre
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Author: Rabecca Mwila
Rabecca Mwila is a passionate advocate for sustainable agriculture and environmental stewardship. With a background in climate change and communications, she has spent years telling the untold stories of the realities of climate change, environmental and climate injustices and how they affect vulnerable communities in Africa and beyond.
