This chapter interrogates the expertise of Theatre for Development or applied theatre practitioners in transnational North-South partnerships. Taking inspiration from Paulo Freire, TfD projects embrace local knowledge and perspectives on the issues being dealt with to create dialogical relationships between practitioners and participants and to ensure the relevance of the work being undertaken. Knowledge of artforms is also central to TfD partnerships: very often, projects seek to bring together different forms of theatre practice to create participatory performances and workshops that draw on both externally and locally derived approaches. Through artistic forms of co-creation transnational North-South partnerships can, Hovarth and Carpenter suggest, more actively engage with ‘embodied’ Southern understandings that value ‘sensations, emotions, experience and memory’ and which emerge from and focus on transforming oppression (2020: 2). However, as decolonial scholar Anibal Quijano argues, historical forms of domination and racism lead to inequalities concerning how different knowledges are regarded. He states:

After the colonization of America and the expansion of European colonialism to the rest of the world, the subsequent constitution of Europe as a new id-entity needed the elaboration of a Eurocentric perspective of knowledge, a theoretical perspective on the idea of race as a naturalization of colonial relations between Europeans and non-Europeans. Historically, this meant a new way of legitimizing the already old ideas and practices of relations of superiority/inferiority between dominant and dominated. From the sixteenth century on, this principle has proven to be the most effective and long-lasting instrument of universal social domination, since the much older principle—gender or intersexual domination—was encroached upon by the inferior/superior racial classifications. So the conquered and dominated peoples were situated in a natural position of inferiority and, as a result, their phenotypic traits as well as their cultural features were considered inferior. In this way, race became the fundamental criterion for the distribution of the world population into ranks, places, and roles in the new society’s structure of power. (Quijano, 2000: 534–535)

As others recognise, such historic and ongoing issues hinder the extent to which genuine co-creation and equal exchange between Northern and Southern actors are possible (Gázquez-Iglesias, 2020). Drawing on Quijano, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2018) argues that despite decolonisation in the sense that countries gained independence, a colonial matrix of power persists with the result that decolonisation has not, in reality, occurred. While decolonisation is argued to pursue liberation from ‘racial hierarchization and asymmetrical power relations in place since conquest’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2015: 488), a ‘postcolonial neocoloniality’ best describes the current situation where ‘Euro-North American-centric modernity’ (486) has not been overcome. He argues that it is at the level of knowledge and culture that this is hardest to address, writing: ‘mental colonization is the hardest part to decolonize and the worst form of colonialism. It stole the African souls, invaded their consciousness, destroyed and distorted their imagination of the future’ (2018: 50).

To further reflect on issues of expertise, knowledge, and equality, I consider three interrelated themes. In the first section, I argue that racialised and unequal hierarchies exist that shape how the varying knowledges partners contribute are regarded. I draw on research interviews and reflect on a one-year consultancy for the charity Act4Africa in 2015. Act4Africa is based in the UK but has partner offices in several African countries—I was tasked with working with colleagues in Uganda to provide training, develop new performances, and create a TfD manual for African partners to use. Next, I engage further with some of the limitations and possibilities regarding the creation and use of TfD manuals and handbooks. Decolonial scholars Arturo Escobar (2018) and Walter Mignolo (2021) raise concerns with what they call ‘global designs’—or ideas and forms of knowledge which are assumed to be globally relevant and applicable regardless of context. I pay particular attention to the Stepping Stones manuals, co-created in Uganda by Alice Welbourn—a British development practitioner—and the late Professor Rose Mbowa—a theatre academic and practitioner who was based at Makerere University, Kampala. In response to critiques of ‘global designs’, I suggest that such resources provide a starting point for practitioners to set about their work but that these must be viewed as part of what researchers and practitioners such as Jane Plastow (personal correspondence, 2016) and Ali Campbell (2019: 80) call a ‘toolbox’. This infers a flexible and adaptable approach—fundamental principles that I argue are important to avoid replicating colonial dynamics whereby practitioners are told what to do and how to do it. Finally, these concerns are brought together to consider the influence of Theatre of the Oppressed on TfD, with specific attention to Kenya. In agreement with others (Dwyer, 2016; Plastow, 2009), I argue that this methodology has become globalised and is a particularly dominant form of artistic practice. As I will consider, this can range from enabling locally inflected and devised ‘hybrid’ forms of performance (Warheit, 2017) to overpowering intercultural collaboration processes, resulting in local artforms being further marginalised.

Throughout the chapter, I show that tensions exist between the possibilities for learning and exchanges of knowledge partnerships offer and the inherent inequalities of transnational collaboration shaped by colonial legacies. As Christopher Odhiambo, Professor of Applied Theatre at Moi University, Kenya, explained to me in an interview:

There is a problem with knowledge transfer—many times when people from the global North come, they want to transfer a methodology without thinking about local cultures. But it is also important to bring specialists, like people from British theatre companies who have worked with Theatre for Development or Theatre in Education. This is because when people in Kenya see theatre in communities they might not know much about Theatre for Development—they think that theatre is there to entertain. So, it is important to have experts coming from other places. (Interview with Christopher Odhiambo 2016)

A complex tightrope therefore exists when it comes to navigating knowledge and expertise in partnerships. As I suggest throughout the chapter, partners need to balance multiple concerns and conflicting, messy, and unclear contradictions. As a result, neat value judgments regarding whether more equal exchanges of knowledge have been brought about are not possible. Instead, honestly reflecting on the limits of partnerships and dwelling on moments of discomfort are essential strategies to help inform new ways forward.

Hierarchies of Knowledge

In 2015, I worked on a year-long contract with Act4Africa—a charity using TfD in HIV/AIDS education and gender equality projects. Act4Africa is registered in the UK but has offices in several African countries, including Malawi and Tanzania, which have Non-Governmental Organisation status. I have discussed aspects of this experience elsewhere (Smith, 2017), but here I reflect on hierarchies of knowledge and coloniality to expand on well-documented issues of local and global knowledge and perceptions that white ‘experts’ travelling from a European country hold greater knowledge (Kothari, 2005; Khan et al., 2023). Teams in these countries manage funding distributed by the UK office and use resources, such as handbooks that can inform session plans or the creation of performances, developed with British involvement. In August that year, I travelled to spend a month with the Ugandan team. The aim of my visit was to collaborate with colleagues to devise new performances and workshops since, according to staff in both the British and Ugandan offices, their work had become stale.

Around five years before my visit a British TfD practitioner had stayed in Uganda for six months to develop a handbook and guide the work being implemented by the team. Before that, another UK-based practitioner wrote scripts and resources, such as guides to leading games linked to HIV/AIDS education. Staff from the British office and volunteers regularly visit Uganda and, as I travelled in the back of a van with Ugandan colleagues to a workshop, I asked how they felt about this. Someone said that she respected and listened to the ideas of those who had travelled from the UK to work with them. She went on to explain that because the UK team had sent me, she saw me as ‘higher up in the hierarchy’. I felt uneasy about this, and tried to make clear that I did not think this was true. However, the resources they used had all been written and provided by the UK office, which also took responsibility for managing funds and monitoring outcomes. Her perspective was, therefore, not surprising.

The following day we reflected on the workshop, with my colleagues all expressing dissatisfaction with the work, stating that it no longer felt relevant and had become tired. I suggested we develop some new material together to test out later in the week and led a warm-up game to focus the group. The game fell flat, and my confidence faltered. I was unprepared and admitted not knowing what to do next. Someone suggested that we should think about the people in our story first, and I remembered an exercise I had once participated in to create characters. I introduced the activity, and together, we thought about the challenges our central female character faced in her daily life. The rest of the day was a combination of devising performance, interspersed with failed ideas, and laughter. During this day, at least, we had achieved what I felt was a more collaborative, equal relationship—albeit accidentally. Significantly, this more democratic working relationship directly impacted the work we then presented to the community. The Ugandan team felt that the audience were notably more interested in the performance we had created than that I had observed in previous activities.

When I returned to the UK, the final six months of my contract required me to use the time I spent in Uganda to develop a handbook to be used by the African teams. From a living room in South Manchester, I pulled together notes and ideas created alongside Ugandan colleagues. The ability to check in with them diminished until the end of my contract eventually marked the conclusion of my collaboration with the team in Uganda. When I reflect on this experience, it concerns me that the manual might be rigid or give an impression of a certain way in which ‘to do’ TfD, leading to the replication of modes of working that were co-developed in a specific context and rolling these out to very different places, with different people, experiencing different challenges.

Neither my colleagues nor I considered our partnership equal. Our relationship was framed by the perspective that since I was travelling from the UK to work with them, I must have been bringing valuable knowledge to be respected. In cases such as this, ‘experts’ intervening in the global South embody inequalities related to the privileges those in the North experience regarding greater access to knowledge, research, and training opportunities and histories of domination and colonialism (Kothari, 2005, 2006). Prentki writes that ‘the colonial model whereby knowledge is the property of the centre to be disseminated to the unfortunates on the periphery is anathema to TfD’ (2015: 20). While I agree with the sentiment, and would argue that many working in TfD and applied theatre certainly aim to resist such modes of one-way, non-dialogical transmission, I think the challenges alluded to thus far bring into question whether this is possible. Processes of working together in partnerships look participatory and seem to draw upon alternative approaches to development and community-led social change or education. However, in my own experience described here, this was limited.

Against local and specific knowledges which pertain to the contexts in which an intervention is taking place, forms of knowledge and expertise also exist which are regarded as internationally established and globally relevant. Such knowledge is strongly tied to the global North. Walter Mignolo (2021) builds on Quijano’s (2000) concept of the colonial matrix of power to show how this shapes global interactions. According to Mignolo, this operates in four ways:

  1. 1.

    European knowledges and understandings from theology to science and the humanities, have been imposed on individuals and communities globally through colonization and continued Westernisation;

  2. 2.

    forms of governance in former colonies, as they gained independence, maintained Western, colonial structures;

  3. 3.

    in addition, dominant economic models have been conceived by, and primarily benefit, former colonising powers;

  4. 4.

    and the very concept of humanity is shaped by coloniality and hierarchies that position white men above all others—as he writes, ‘racism and sexism, civilization and progress, development and modernization are all keywords/concepts in the rhetoric of Western modernity, anchoring a regional image of man/human […] to legitimize domination and exploitation’ (2021: 37).

The global North and, by association, whiteness are equated with ‘modernity’ and ‘expertise’ in development, meaning that those who are white may see themselves as, or represent for those who are not white, authority figures (Kothari, 2005, 2006). Of course, as I considered in Chap. 2, such hierarchies are not only based on racial terms. But they are particularly important to consider since, as decolonial scholars argue, histories and hierarchies of knowledge and the centring of European perspectives are racialised. This partnership maintained related hierarchies regarding expertise and the kinds of knowledge different partners contribute and value. Following Kothari, those of us who are white and yet involved in development must question how our whiteness ‘places us within development and critique the privileges and advantages’ (Kothari, 2006: 15) of our positionality. As she asks:

how are different types of bodies interpreted and managed? Are certain bodies thought to possess superior levels of knowledge and experience than others? And if so, how are these understandings practiced in development through the (self-) assignation of white people to positions of authority and expertise?’ (ibid.).

A troubling response from the head of an organisation based in the UK, which had utilised theatre in its work in several African countries, indicates that assumptions are often made in partnerships that manage and limit the roles individuals perform. When discussing the contributions that British and African colleagues made while attempting to overcome challenges meeting the aims of a community project, the value of the contextual knowledge African partners can provide was acknowledged. He stated, ‘we asked [the African partners] whether there were different ways of doing it, and suddenly they came back and said, “we can do this”. And [some of the suggestions they made] came from the beneficiaries’ (Interview with head of charity 2016). The African team was able to use their links to the beneficiaries and their local knowledge to impact how the organisation approached the project, illustrating an example of how the unequal relationship between the forms of knowledge Northern and Southern actors bring to partnerships may, in some senses, be overcome. However, when talking about the knowledge the British team brings to projects, he contradicted this view:

I think [the role of the UK office] is to introduce [our African partners] to new ideas and new ways of doing things, but also to make sure that they are doing what we think is best practice. I’d be interested to know how [Okuto and APT] do it. It’s amazing really, that he’s just doing it. I just wonder if they [referring to African partners] were left to their own devices what would happen?

[…]

I think what tends to happen is they just do what they’ve always done, and you can go ‘well what about this?’ and they’ll be open to that, but unless that’s pointed out they don’t engage with it. (Interview with head of charity 2016)

The knowledge that African partners contribute is regarded as useful, since it provides a link to communities and helps to legitimise Northern intervention. However, it is the team in the UK that is felt to offer innovation and best practice. During our interview, I described my work with Maxwel and APT, as discussed throughout this book. He expressed surprise that an African partner would be able to lead their own organisation, demonstrating the same kinds of paternalistic attitudes that other scholars have observed and critiqued more broadly in development (Eriksson Baaz, 2005; Khan et al., 2023).

Discussions of race and racism might be easily sidestepped by those involved in development—particularly when such modes of working are described as empowering and participatory, as TfD is. However, I would argue that those involved in such projects can make assumptions rooted in any number of prejudices, consciously or otherwise. The response from the head of a charity reminded me of a previous experience working on a TfD project when a colleague referred to African partners as ‘child-like’. This is mirrored in Wilson Akpan’s (2011) assessment of how Africans are represented globally and Eriksson Baaz’s (2005) research on partnerships between European and Tanzanian development practitioners. She argues, ‘images of Self and partners were […] informed by evolutionary development, according to which peoples of the world reflect various stages of development. According to this perspective, Africa reflects another stage of development and another time’ (38). I expand on arguments that TfD conforms to such teleological perspectives of development in the following chapter, but here I want to suggest that, regardless of the empowering and participatory goals at the core of TfD and applied theatre practices, perspectives that the global South is ‘in need’ of what the North can offer are observable in terms of how individuals understand their work and their roles in partnerships.

Interviews with some British TfD practitioners further demonstrated a tendency to view partners as in need, thus confirming Wickstrom’s (2012) assessment of TfD discussed in Chap. 2. Two interviewees in particular suggested that their role is ‘to deliver that practice [referring to Theatre of the Oppressed] to them’, or to ‘take knowledge in […] that’s how you develop. You give knowledge’ (interviews with British TfD practitioners 2016). They therefore conform to the view that the role of British partners is to deliver expertise that enables the development of their Southern partners. They also considered themselves highly participatory practitioners who can adapt to various contexts and settings to provide what Southern partners felt they needed. Another British practitioner who had not worked in Africa, but had been approached to do so because of their work with NGOs in other parts of the world, reflected on a project that was viewed as particularly effective stating:

We did a needs assessment at the beginning, we went and we said ‘what do you want? What do you need? This is what we can offer, what can we do with this?’ So we went through a period of consultation, and put together a training programme which was based on those consultations’ (Interview with British TfD practitioner 2016).

While seeking to increase the participation of Southern actors is a crucial motivation for partnerships, the questions this practitioner asked his partners indicate his assumption they were in need and, as with the other interviewees quote earlier, that he has skills to offer that could address these needs. The roles of Southern partners are therefore cast as choosing from a menu of pre-determined imported models while these British practitioners are regarded as having expertise that enables them to work across a range of global contexts. Cornwall and Gaventa have critiqued such participatory strategies, arguing that often those in the South are positioned as ‘users and choosers’ of development approaches, picking from a range of pre-determined options and thus legitimising interventions, rather than ‘makers and shapers’ who are active in conceptualising development projects from the outset (2000: 50). While I referenced the notion of a toolbox of approaches at the start of this chapter, caution is required to avoid casting oneself in the role of an external expert, who always has the right tools for the job. To expand on this further, it is helpful to consider Spivak’s (1999) writing on the native informant, described in Chap. 2. There is a risk that, in partnerships, global South actors are simultaneously positioned and positioning themselves in this role and are utilised in partnerships to provide local knowledge of performance forms, cultures, and languages. Of course, this can be considered beneficial in some regards, but Spivak highlights that the relationships that emerge between North and South in such situations uphold colonial power dynamics. As Kapoor (2008) warns, they result in Southern partners playing the role that Northern partners desire, providing them with perspectives on life in other contexts which may, or may not, be reliable and which essentialise diverse communities. Through these relationships, Northern partners can then claim to be responding to local contexts and, therefore, legitimise their interventions.

This section has begun to identify some problems associated with knowledge and expertise in TfD partnerships. Although there were some potentially positive outcomes of my work with partners in Uganda—including new performances that seemed to better engage audiences and a handbook co-created with them for their use—this partnership can hardly be considered equal. Those who travel to intervene in the global South can be accused of white saviourism assuming that, because of the knowledge they possess, they can enable progress and development (Khan et al., 2023). Laura Edmondson (2018) extends such criticisms to those creating arts projects, who believe they are doing good work in places where other people are suffering and in need. Although some overt markers of such attitudes have been identified in this section—particularly the views of those who regarded African partners as child-like or who cannot fathom that an African partner would develop their own approaches to projects—there are also ways in which related problems are more covert. The sense that knowledge is brought in to ‘develop’ others, for example, or that partners can pick and choose from a range of innovative practices that European experts are well versed in. To be clear, I am not sidestepping my own culpability. As I considered in the introduction to this book, I am critical of the perspective I first held when travelling to be involved in a project in Malawi in 2009 and, in Uganda six years later, I wanted to try to achieve an equal relationship with colleagues but largely failed. Colonial legacies and uneven access to knowledge and training shape how the expertise and contributions of global North and South actors are perceived, with the balance mainly in favour of Northern practitioners. Postcolonial scholar Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000) argues that European values and knowledge systems marginalise, or provincialise, alternative epistemologies and, upon reflection, it is clear that my work in Uganda did not engage robustly enough with how to foster more horizontal modes of collaboration or challenge the view that because I was from the UK, I possessed valuable knowledge and expertise.

Concerns such as those set out above have led some to question the value and ethics of global North practitioners doing anything at all when it comes to work in global South contexts. Instead, the importance of listening rather than doing is reflected upon (Edmondson, 2018) or ‘going and doing absolutely nothing’ (Wickstrom, 2012: 127). The arguments here are enticing: doing nothing, or listening rather than acting, might well dismantle a sense that global North practitioners have anything of value to add. And yet, those I have worked with in African countries have very often wanted something to be done. So—back to the tightrope. As Thompson notes regarding his work in Sri Lanka: ‘If I was to learn something of their theatre, they by rights wanted to know something of mine […] Not for me to be precious and worry about applicability, interculturalism, or boundaries. This was, “go on then, show us what you do”’ (2005: 77). Clearly, concerns regarding boundaries, interculturalism and power dynamics are important to think about. But the point I think Thompson is making is that the sensitivities of global North researchers and practitioners might not always be shared by those in the global South, who are entitled to learn more about their collaborators’ practices and ideas. What I would suggest, then, is that doing nothing until listening and negotiation have taken place and Southern partners have been able to shape the terms of engagement fully, including how knowledge will be shared, is important.

The Stepping Stones Programme: TfD Resources and ‘Global Designs’

Training and creating resources for practitioners to use are important aspects of TfD partnerships. A simple online search for TfD resources brings up multiple books (for example, McCarthy, 2004; Mehta et al., 2010) or downloadable handbooks produced by NGOs including the American peace and conflict organisation Search for Common Ground (2005) and Save the Children (2001). I have found such resources helpful in my own work and have also created handbooks to be drawn upon, as described in the previous section. However, decolonial scholars are critical of extrapolating knowledge, methodologies, or ideas that arise from a specific local context and then directly applying these to other places. This is a process which Escobar (2018) and Mignolo (2012) term ‘global designs’. Both argue that, to counter Eurocentric hegemonies, ‘local’ rather than ‘global’ designs are required. Mignolo (2012) advocates reinstating or fostering more specific, plural and culturally specific ways of being that resist any sense of global applicability. The primary aim of creating these ‘local designs’ is to resist and push back against the dominance of Western thought. Another critical aspect of Mignolo’s (2012, 2021) argument is that no ‘design’ should be assumed to be, or allowed to become, global. Therefore, even those projects designed in the South should not be scaled up from one context to another—any form of universality must be questioned and resisted. Instead, a series of very local approaches are developed that may encounter other forms of knowledge and action but should not dominate. Such attempts to roll out forms of knowledge or ways of being and living from one place to the next are imbricated in assumptions that certain people need to be saved by ‘conversion, civilization, development, globalism’ (Mignolo, 2021: 190). In some ways, this poses a challenge for those involved in TfD: various forms of knowledge, perhaps regarding an issue or particular workshop methodologies, are relied upon, and projects are often informed by specific handbooks or texts that exist to share knowledge.

The Stepping Stones programme, which grew out of a collaboration involving Ugandan TfD practitioners and researchers and a British development practitioner in the mid-1990s, illuminates some of these concerns further. The Ugandan team included Professor Rose Mbowa, Germine Sebuwufu, Baron Oron and Milton Bekebwa (Welbourn et al., 2016). They worked with Alice Welbourn, a British woman who had travelled to work in several African countries and is also living with HIV. Alice described to me that Mbowa had previously been using forum theatre in Uganda, creating pieces with actors and taking these to communities. Stepping Stones therefore drew on these experiences and brought them together with Alice’s approaches. She worked in several African countries before meeting Mbowa and was influenced by participatory methods such as Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Participatory Learning and Action (PLA). Robert Chambers and various working groups and projects at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, UK, from the 1970s championed these. As detailed in several books, they involve interactive exercises designed to facilitate conversations with stakeholders and participants about issues affecting them. In doing so, it is hoped that processes of change and action can be established which will enable ‘bottom-up’ development, or a process whereby those who are not usually listened to can influence decision-makers and shape development according to their desires and needs (Chambers, 1997; Hickey & Mohan, 2004). According to Chambers (2014), greater participation of local stakeholders can also offset dominant epistemological biases and empower those who might typically be excluded from development processes. They are therefore able to contribute their understandings, to analyse their contexts for themselves, and come to their own conclusions regarding what is necessary.

The team worked in Buwenda village over several months to test out and develop a programme which they then wrote up into a training manual to be used by other practitioners in different contexts. Unlike many of the examples that have been explored in this book, the Stepping Stones methodology does not involve the devising of performances with, or for, a specific community. Instead, the programme draws on a range of games, participatory discussion techniques and the use of characters, storylines and role plays. The programme has been used ‘by over 1,000 organisations in over 100 countries’ (Welbourn et al., 2016: x) and has also been adapted many times. A more recent version, co-authored by Baron Oron, Germine Sebuwufu and Alice Welbourn (2014), applies the methodology to peace and conflict resolution—an area which is attracting a lot of donor funding presently (Smith & Okuto, 2023; Plastow, 2021). Other versions have also sought to translate the methodology to various places, or to adapt its original focus on HIV/AIDS to more precisely engage with different target groups—for example, men who have sex with men or injecting drug users. A recent version has also sought to use the methodology to prevent the spread of HIV among young people who are street homeless in Eldoret, Kenya (Embleton et al., 2020).

Over 3–4 months, Stepping Stones is designed to engage with five themes:

  • ‘group cooperation’, in which communication skills, perceptions and prejudices are explored;

  • ‘HIV and safer sex’, which considers facts about the virus and issues around condoms and male circumcision;

  • ‘why we behave in the ways we do’, which aims to probe deeper into attitudes regarding sex;

  • ‘ways we can change’, involving workshops looking at asserting oneself, personal change and reflection, and group dialogue around plans for the future;

  • ‘moving forward together’ which explores ways of providing community care, supporting women and children and discussing ways of accepting those who are living with HIV (Welbourn et al., 2016).

The participants are broken into peer groups, meaning that young men work with other young men, older women with other older women, etc. These groups are then, ideally, led by a facilitator who is also part of this peer group to help facilitate discussion and ensure participants feel more able to talk about their concerns and perspectives. Throughout the programme, there are strategic points whereby the peer groups come together to share their ideas and learn from each other.

The workshop plans mostly revolve around the use of games to ease participants into the topics being dealt with and are starting points for conversation. The first session uses simple exercises and the creation of mime to think about communication and power dynamics, for example. In another exercise, the balance between needing to provide information and attempting to facilitate participant-led discussion is clear. The sessions aim to explore ‘knowledge of HIV and safer sex’ (Welbourn et al., 2016: 81) by providing opportunities for participants to share knowledge they already have, while also being provided with information that may be new to them. What is critical here is that some local knowledge might be based on myths or misconceptions which could increase stigmatisation of those living with HIV/AIDS and, through misinformation, prove dangerous and contribute to the spread of the virus. For example, in the session plan practices including ‘wearing a good luck charm’ and ‘using dry herbs in the vagina’ are addressed (82). The session therefore starts with a game, ‘muddling messages’ which aims to both energise participants and help them to ‘appreciate in a funny way how easy it is to misunderstand what someone has said’ (ibid.). As it unfolds, participants are asked to share their understandings, and the facilitators are then provided with statements throughout the session plan to help them address any gaps in this understanding. This builds towards a relatively complex exercise, in which participants think about the issues facing a character, Catherine, who tested positive for HIV while pregnant. Her husband leaves her, and her family refused to allow her to live with them, meaning that she needs to turn to sex work to support herself. Using a series of prompts, the group then needs to consider the various impacts on different characters.

Through these exercises, local knowledge is drawn upon and encouraged but it is also, at points, corrected since some participants may have heard ways of preventing or treating HIV/AIDS that are harmful. As the participants learn about issues such as treatment options, or practices that might contribute towards the spread of the virus, the use of characters and role plays allows them to rehearse this new knowledge. There are some tensions here regarding the ways that local knowledge and understandings are both drawn upon but also, at times, challenged. In terms of the relationships between practitioner and facilitator, the former could be argued to be framed as in need of the information the latter can deliver, which—as has been shown—is reflected upon critically by many (e.g. Wickstrom, 2012). However, certain things are known about HIV/AIDS—for example, how the virus is spread, how it affects the body, how to reduce transmission and that, if someone is living with HIV/AIDS, they can take Anti-Retro Virals in order to manage it and, eventually, this can reduce the viral load in the body to the point that it is undetectable and individuals cannot transmit the virus. It is also known that there are drugs that can significantly reduce the risks of contracting HIV in the first place. This is all knowledge that has become internationally established and regarded as important and relevant, regardless of context (Aveling, 2011). We might, therefore, consider this knowledge as global. The problem is that inequality can be observed regarding forms of global and local knowledge. As Dilger argues:

The intimate relationship that exists between the production and circulation of biomedical knowledge and practice, on the one hand, and the establishment and perpetuation of globally and locally enforced worldviews, identities and power relations, on the other, has become nowhere more explicit than in the field of international development. (2012: 502)

It is precisely such inequalities regarding global compared to local forms of knowledge that partnerships seek to overcome. And yet, when it comes to the kinds of knowledge and information linked to challenges such as HIV/AIDS, such distinctions between global and local, and resisting portrayals of specific communities as in need, is particularly challenging. Global knowledge must be combined with local and Indigenous knowledge to respond to different communities’ varying needs, understanding and realities—a process some have called ‘knowledge brokering’ (Cummings et al., 2019). Without local and contextual knowledge any project seeking to address HIV/AIDS is likely to fail. It will miss the mark entirely, or through absence of awareness and careful consideration of the local context, lack sensitivity and nuance. However, as Kat Low (2020) argues concerning her applied theatre practice exploring sexual health in South Africa, exchanges of knowledge are not equal: Northern partners are frequently those who contribute global forms of knowledge, and it is this which is framed as more valuable. This is an important concern for Stepping Stones since Northern development actors do continue to draw on this methodology in their partnerships in the global South. The example mentioned earlier, undertaken with street homeless young people in Eldoret, Kenya, was led by Canadian researchers although an article addressing its impact provides little sense of how different knowledges were brought together or of how the partnership was managed (Embleton et al., 2020).

On the other hand, to reflect again on my own experience, I would argue that knowledge regarding the transmission and prevention of HIV/AIDS is so well established globally that neither myself nor partners can claim to own this knowledge. In the work described earlier with Act4Africa in Uganda, it was Ugandan colleagues who contributed both the contextual understanding of how HIV/AIDS impacted local communities, and the globally relevant knowledge regarding its prevention and treatment. Indeed, as Akpan (2011) argues, the bifurcation between global—which usually signals Northern—and local or Indigenous knowledge fails to acknowledge the ‘“local” in the “global” and vice versa’ (121). While an historicised understanding of how knowledges and values have come to be more globally established is important in partnerships, this cannot be to the extent that certain forms of knowledge are assumed to only belong to those in the global North. That said, this becomes more complex at the level where practitioners engage with participants. The explicit learning points around HIV/AIDS regarding the use of condoms, for example, mean that where participants feed in their local knowledge the focus is often on the myths and misconceptions they have heard—as evidenced earlier in relation to the game ‘muddling messages’—and ensuring these are addressed. But, given the importance of working with communities to address HIV/AIDS and the dialogical approach offered by Stepping Stones this could be considered appropriate.

Other aspects of the programme further demonstrate the dialogical nature of the work and reflect the influence of Boalian approaches—for example, one exercise instructs facilitators to: ‘Role-play typical situations by which teenagers become pregnant. Re-play the role play and invite people to clap, stop the action and step forward to replay the scene so that the girl avoids pregnancy’ (Welbourn et al., 2016: 11). Then, in a later section, characters are ‘hotseated’. As the handbook reads:

Return to the role play and ask people to advise the girl and then the boy/man on what she and what he should do. They can ask her and him any questions to find out her and his feelings about the situation. They should share with her and him what they think are the good points about this choice. (Ibid.)

Here, we see that the hotseating technique involves questioning someone in role as a particular character to find out more about the situation and sometimes offering advice. The delivery is supported by a DVD resource and online videos. In one of these, which concerns the original pilot project that led to the development of the resource, we hear Mbowa argue that drama can ‘talk to everyone who is around, and people can express themselves through drama […] I think everywhere in Africa, people find it easier to express things that concern them because [drama] is a language of daily life’ (Salamander Trust, 1994). Mbowa was a hugely influential figure in Ugandan theatre. Her view that across Africa drama is a language through which people express themselves is rooted in her prolific experience. However, what comprises drama shifts from one context to another. Stepping Stones provides guidance on running exercises that utilise mime and role play, but these exercises are arguably rather generic.

The importance of adapting the programme is clearly recognised—as a downloadable resource from the Stepping Stones website, which those signed up to be part of an online network of facilitators can access, states:

Stepping Stones was designed with a specific community in Uganda and the examples given in the manual, film clips and the factors affecting behaviour are all based on the culture and life ways of that community and country. The Stepping Stones process encourages inbuilt context-specific adaptation. It aims to help people to explore their own behaviour and issues they face and find their own solutions. This means, that although the underlying principles and the process are relevant in all the cultures, the topics covered in each different community and activities are likely to change. (Gordon with Welbourn, 2017: 6)

The areas where adaptation and more context-specific work is possible are where languages or local knowledges are drawn on regarding the issues Stepping Stones sets out to explore—be they related to HIV/AIDS as in the original handbooks, or peace and conflict as in the most recent iterations. Drawing on an example of running the programme in Ghana, it is stated that adaptation is essential because resources developed in other places can labelled ‘as ‘Not made Here’ (Gordon with Welbourn, 2017: 7), resulting in people losing interest. Yet, despite wide variations and diverse cultures across Africa, it would appear that local knowledge regarding the issue is encouraged and can feed into the project, but local knowledge and cultural practice that impact on the art through which issues are explored is not.

Analysing Stepping Stones therefore raises another challenge when it comes to navigating knowledge—how to recognise and encourage the value of local and traditional artforms? Although both the initial HIV/AIDS resources developed in Uganda in the 1990s and the more recent handbook on peacebuilding involved theatre practitioners, future iterations of projects are not necessarily led by artists. To adequately prepare facilitators to deliver TfD or more participatory projects requires time and resources that are often lacking, as others have acknowledged (Odhiambo, 2005; Plastow, 2021; Bamuturaki, 2022). This is a challenge that Alice Welbourn expanded on further during an interview. She explained to me that donors and NGOs are often seeking to find ways to reduce their costs. Rather than the five weeks necessary to train practitioners, many donors instead ask for condensed training over a few days (Interview with Alice Welbourn 2022). A related challenge is that many experienced practitioners who were once staff members of organisations running the programme were forced to move to freelance, self-employed work following the financial crisis of 2008, when donors and NGOs cut budgets. In Uganda, this has included Baron Oron, a practitioner involved in the initial workshops and development of Stepping Stones. Although, along with others, he has set up Communicating for Action and Results Uganda (CFAR)—an association of experienced facilitators—it is unclear whether this will be successful in terms of ensuring their knowledge is not lost.

During in an interview with Baron, he described that following his involvement in the initial design and delivery of the project he has worked across several African countries to train others in the approach. For him, central to the success of the training conducted, and the work then implemented, are factors of funding and the extent to which the partner he has collaborated with in the different contexts is able to take ownership of the programme. Ownership was described as meaning that trainees can gain a deep understanding of the issues and methodology and, crucially, feed their own local knowledge and approaches into the programme, meaning it becomes tailored to their specific contexts. The training he has led is, therefore, rooted in principles of dialogue and reflection but, as Alice also explained, working in this way is hindered by a lack of adequate funding and the desire of donors and NGOs to condense programmes that would ideally last several weeks into just a few days. As Baron argued, ‘participation takes time—where there is a lack of time there’s not the necessary time and space to think and reflect’ (Interview with Baron Oron, 2023).

Given the issues raised in this section, we find ourselves balancing—yet again—multiple factors on a precarious tightrope. At the point of its inception in the 1990s, Stepping Stones represented a transnational collaboration which culminated in an influential and arguably effective approach to HIV/AIDS education. It brought together local knowledge in Uganda with external approaches, offering what could be a flexible approach that is engaging and has potential to be adapted to specific contexts with essential and life-saving information that should be shared. While it is difficult to judge the dynamics of the partnership that formed to develop the materials, its sustained legacy suggests a high level of ownership by the Ugandan partners involved, demonstrated by their investment in the work and desire to continue to draw upon and adapt it in the years since. Ultimately the issue-based focus of approaches such as this example is important. If a creative and artistic approach enables more locally specific and dialogical approaches, it remains valuable. Having a framework to guide work that can be adapted according to context can, therefore, be useful. However, as Baron made clear, one of the fundamental issues here is that it can take time for ownership over such approaches to build and for them to be therefore seen as frameworks to adapt, rather than models to follow. The associated risk with codifying knowledge through resources such as handbooks is that they might come to represent fixed, static artefacts rolled out across varying contexts. In this sense, they become the kinds of global designs to which decolonial scholars are opposed. However, suppose these resources can be seen as flexible, malleable, with the support and resources to ensure they shift according to context. In that case, they can be helpful and important especially if, as with Stepping Stones, they offer approaches co-created with those in the global South which can offset and address the dominance of global North approaches.

Navigating Theatre of the Oppressed in Kenya

While working with Amani People’s Theatre in Nairobi in 2016, a simple search on Facebook for TfD groups in the country brought up Lagnet Theatre’s profile. They sounded interesting—they had used Magnet Theatre, an approach developed in Kenya, and been involved in a partnership with the University of Alberta, Canada (see Selman and Battye 2016). I wrote: ‘Hi, I’m a PhD student from the UK currently in Kenya and I’d really like to find out more about Lagnet and any development activities you might be involved in?’. Desai Ogada, then the director of the group, replied with some more information and I then shared a link to my website so he could find out more about me. He responded: ‘we would love to learn and see if we can also benefit from your theatre research’. I replied, ‘if there’s anything you think I can do, just let me know’. Two days later Desai wrote back, inviting me to spend some time with the team and telling me a family close to their offices could host me. With that, I booked a bus to Ahero, a town in Western Kenya close to Kisumu—one of the largest cities in Kenya. After the first day I spent with Lagnet, Desai suggested that we co-develop a piece which could explore our different practices and bring these together. I agreed and, to do so, suggested that it would be useful for me to see more of their work and to lead a workshop before then devising a performance together.

In the previous sections, challenges have been raised in terms of navigating expertise. Inequalities exist regarding knowledge, which are shaped by uneven access to resources, training and by colonial legacies. Furthermore, where training and resources are available, they can hinder practice by inferring a fixed methodology, or else be limited by a lack of adequate time and funding to support ownership and greater specificity. So far, the examples drawn on in the chapter have not allowed for more significant interrogation of the creation of performance. Therefore, in this section I consider Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) within the Kenyan context. In particular, I draw on time spent working with and observing Lagnet Theatre in Western Kenya to highlight problems and possibilities with attempts to bring together TO with other artistic approaches.

Boal is a central influence on TfD practice, and on applied and socially engaged performance more broadly. Frances Babbage (2018) shows that a wide range of factors influenced Boal including his life in Brazil, his engagement with theatre while a student, and the experiences he had meeting influential theatre makers and teachers of ‘the Method’ approach to realism in New York in the 1950s. He also experienced extreme oppression when he was tortured and exiled upon his return to South America due to his involvement in activism. Various other intellectual and artistic influences also shaped his thinking, perhaps most importantly Freire, but also Shakespeare, Brecht, and Stanislavsky. TO encompasses a range of approaches including:

  • Image Theatre, whereby participants create pictures, or tableaux using their bodies to explore power;

  • Invisible Theatre, which describes short, provocative scenes that are played out in public spaces and which aim to engage passersby, who are unaware they are watching a performance, in the action;

  • Legislative Theatre, in which performances are created to attempt to create new laws and policies in favour of those who are oppressed;

  • Newspaper Theatre, which Babbage (2018) links to the Living Newspaper experiments in the US in the 1930s, and which uses current news stories to act out key issues and consider how information is mediated by the press;

  • The Rainbow of Desire, a more therapeutic approach using exercises that grew out of Boal’s work in Europe. Here, in contrast to his work in South America, he noticed people were lonely, stressed, and worried but that rather than concrete oppressors—such as the police or military he had encountered—this oppression came from within or, what he called, the ‘cop in the head’ (Boal, 1995: 40);

  • Forum theatre, where a performance is presented that deals with the oppression of a central character. The action is replayed, and audiences are encouraged to take the position of a central oppressed character and reshape the drama to ‘rehearse the revolution’ (Snyder-Young, 2011: 42).

Since Boal was from a country in the global South, TO might—to some extent—be viewed as a form of South-South knowledge exchange when it comes to TfD. However, as Prentki (2015) also makes clear in his discussion of TfD in Latin America, it is important to remember that this is a particular colonial and post-colonial context. There is not the scope here to examine the Brazilian context in great detail, but the country gained independence from Portugal early in the nineteenth century after around 300 years of colonial rule. By contrast, most colonised African countries only started to gain independence from the 1960s and, as has been shown earlier in the book, theatre was heavily shaped by European settlers. As Plastow (2009) has described, Boal did not work extensively in Africa himself. Instead, much of his work began to take place in North America and Europe where—as described above—he noticed that his experiences of government oppression and vast inequality were not directly relevant.

TO has become influential worldwide and is a globally established form of practice. In part this is due to Boal’s many workshops in universities across the global North in the 1980s and 1990s but it is also because of the establishment of the Centre du Theatre de l’Opprime (or the Centre of the Theatre of the Oppressed, CTO) in Paris when Boal arrived in France, exiled from Brazil, in 1978. Various workshops, performances and exchanges took place, including core members of the CTO travelling to train 80 farmers in Kolkata, India, in TO methodologies. As Jean-François Martel describes, ‘The “Boal method,” which had originated in one country in the “global south,” was now arriving in another, thanks to our mediation’ (2019: 266). Many others also took on Boal’s principles and applied these to their projects and offered training in TO, thus creating a movement drawing on these practices (Campbell, 2019).

Some of the most well-known examples of organisations influenced by TO include Jana Sanskriti, led by Sanjoy Ganguly since 1985 in India, Theatre of the Oppressed New York City, founded by Katy Rubin in 2011 in the USA, Prosper Kompaoré’s Atelier Theatre Burkinabe (ATB), founded in 1978 in Burkina Faso, and Cardboard Citizens in the UK, which works with those experiencing homelessness. It is important to highlight that, for some, TO has become a globalised and inflexible method. Plastow (2009) argues that TO has ‘been exported worldwide’ due to ‘assumptions regarding universality’ (298) and that many have travelled globally, implementing TO techniques. Some, she asserts, adhere rigidly to these methods, resulting in inflexibility and accusations that ‘TO at its worst […] attracts a kind of “groupie” […] thus encouraging an unreflecting idea of the “right” way to make theatre’ (301). However, despite accusations that some have sought to impose rigid TO methods, there is evidence of many across the global South bringing together Boal’s methods with their own approaches. For example, ATB was founded with the goal to link African forms of theatre and performance to development and has, over time, drawn on forum theatre to ‘move towards an aesthetic of participation that draws on the characteristics of traditional African performance’ (Kompaoré, 2005: no page number). James Thompson (2012) discusses their work further and outlines that ATB’s participatory approach is rooted in Burkinabé performance traditions. Most specifically, the organisations draws on Kotéba, which involves ‘speech, dancing and chanting taking place over many hours’ to represent ‘the faults of a villager or display the problems of a whole village’ (95). The community then intervene to investigate and explore the issues, before ‘singers and drummers are then used to draw out the moral lessons for the community’ (96). However, as he describes, it can also be linked to TO approaches and, particularly, to forum theatre—a descriptor ATB increasingly uses since it resonates with international donors and audiences. ATB became aware of Boal’s approach through reading his work and a visit he undertook in the mid-1980s but the lines between the traditional performance forms they draw upon and TO are blurred (Thompson, 2012). Meanwhile, in India Ganguly (2010) describes how he draws on diverse Indian artforms when creating performances, fusing these with aspects of forum theatre and other TO techniques. He is critical of naturalistic and simplistic examples of performances, arguing instead for the use of ‘symbols’ and ‘metaphors’ of which Indian ‘folk forms’ are rich (132).

In her detailed analysis of TfD and forum theatre in East Africa, Emily Warheit (2017) demonstrates that Magnet Theatre, developed in Kenya, presents another example of TO being adapted and reshaped to work within a specific context. As Plastow (2023) also details in an overview of applied theatre in Western Kenya—where she argues several innovations in the practice took place—in the early 2000s, Kenyan practitioner Daniel Oluoch Madiang worked with CY Gopinath, who had travelled from India, to co-develop Magnet Theatre. Both were working for PATH International, an NGO addressing health issues, and responded to challenges they had observed including a reluctance among audience members to participate in performances or workshops and a lack of training for theatre makers involved in development initiatives (Warheit, 2017). This work can be understood to flow from earlier projects taking place in Western Kenya—in particular, exchanges between influential Kenyan practitioners including Lenin Ogolla and Christopher Odhiambo and international practitioners and researchers, facilitated by examples such as the International Drama Education Association, which was hosted in the region in 1998, and a collaboration with British theatre practitioners in the mid-1990s (Plastow, 2023). Several Magnet Theatre trainings took place across Kenya as well as in Eritrea, Uganda and India in the 2000s, with the approach being used predominantly to address the HIV/AIDS crisis (PATH, 2006, 2007).

The Magnet Theatre handbook (PATH, 2007) details a process that includes recruitment and training of performers drawn from target communities, selecting a suitable site and devising performances. The drama is then presented, and critical moments frozen in a still image, allowing time for audience discussion. As Warheit (2017) describes, a break was made from the prevalent forms used in TfD performances, where practitioners aimed to appease donors by reaching large audiences. Instead, Magnet Theatre aimed for quality, sustained engagement with smaller audiences with the intention to use performances to gather ideas from the community to solve the issues at hand, or to understand other themes and problems. This information is then used to create new scripts, which are presented back to the community in follow-up sessions. Magnet Theatre therefore aims to establish ongoing dialogue through sustained contact with audiences (PATH, 2007; Warheit, 2017; Plastow, 2021).

To further consider Magnet Theatre and issues of intercultural TfD, it is helpful to consider Homi Bhabha’s (1994) concept of hybridity, outlined in Chap. 2. As Warheit (2017) asserts, a key benefit of Magnet Theatre is that it represents a way in which a potentially rigid system was reshaped and adapted to resonate within a specific context. I have also seen how various groups across Kenya have drawn upon different aspects of the Magnet Theatre approach in their own work. For example, Amani People’s Theatre often partners with local organisations to create an ensemble of performers who regularly work with the same group, creating new performances based on their concerns, in line with the methodology. Wasanii Sanaa, based in Kibera in Nairobi, draw on aspects of this participatory approach but infuse it with choral speech and highly choreographed movement. These examples resonate with Koch’s observations of work in Tanzania in the early 2000s. Here, TfD groups made ‘eclectic use of different international theatre traditions and forms and [combine] them into something new according to its own rules’ (2008: 136). In line with Bhabha (1994), these examples demonstrate the agency of those in the global South to resist the imposition of exogenous cultures and forms, instead reshaping these to create new and hybrid approaches that they value. In particular, Magnet Theatre represents an alternative to the trainings being led by international practitioners from the global North in Kenya. Oluoch Madiang articulated in an interview with me that this local ownership and lack of reliance on foreign experts was a key benefit of the approach (interview 2016). Warheit (2017) also observes that the use of TO in this context appears to have achieved this goal, enabling ‘innovation’ (10) and, particularly important, greater involvement of those who are local to the contexts in which an intervention is taking place—the latter is significant since, it is argued, these individuals will know the context particularly well and will likely be experiencing the very issues they are seeking to address. I would add that Magnet Theatre also acts as a platform for young practitioners and organisations such as Wasanii Sanaa and Lagnet Theatre to potentially develop their own artistic approaches and expertise. Both organisations work with young people who face barriers to employment in contexts where earning money through the arts is incredibly difficult. Their involvement with these organisations can support and encourage the development of their skills, even if much of the work they have to undertake is very clearly linked to instrumental development agendas and should be better paid. Furthermore, having shown they can manage funding and respond to a brief, regardless of the associated problems of doing so, these organisations become involved in other kinds of partnerships. For example, Lagnet Theatre have managed to sustain themselves through this kind of work and, as a result, have gone on to create plays using Luo folk stories to address post-election violence and are engaged in several partnerships, including the aforementioned work with Alberta University, Canada, and with Jane Plastow and Matthew Elliott at Leeds University, UK (see Plastow, 2021). These have enabled more extensive work to take place and offered further opportunities for training and development.

Despite the potential strengths of this approach, it is important to note some limitations. More specifically, Plastow (2021) has observed that Magnet Theatre is often simplified. As she argues, performances centre on ‘easy laughs and getting a message across’ which can be attributed to a lack of ‘training or exchange of ideas’ (279) and the dearth of resources offered by those who pay for these activities. In the previous chapter, I described instances where performers were paid very little for their work and, subsequently, spent little time on creating theatre or on engaging in more in-depth discussion and analysis with audiences. This was particularly noticeable in Lagnet Theatre’s work on the Amnesty International ‘Artivist’ project, where participatory performances were developed about police corruption. Whereas the Magnet Theatre methodology revolves around fostering groups for ongoing dialogue and discussion of the issues, with reworked versions of performances being presented to further interrogate issues or identify new ones, other than APT’s relatively well-funded work I have not seen this take place. As with Stepping Stones, a recurring factor in whether approaches to TfD that are created with or by African practitioners can have sustained benefits is the extent to which these forms are supported with adequate resources in the long-term.

Possibilities exist to bring together TO with other modes of performance. However, at this point I return to my work with Lagnet Theatre to outline issues that pertain more closely to North-South partnerships and attempts to draw on TO. The objective of TO to co-explore oppression and social change with participants, combined with its roots in a country in the global South, has led some to consider it a decolonising methodology that can reveal neocolonialism and sociopolitical inequalities, thus empowering groups to change this (Goulet et al., 2011; Perry, 2012). However, when it comes to those in the global North using and being involved in partnerships and projects where TO is drawn upon a particular dynamic emerges that we must pay greater critical attention to. Southern knowledge is often appropriated by those in the global North to legitimise their positions as researchers or practitioners. As Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2021) argues, there is a long history of colonial centres claiming knowledges from the global South which are then redistributed across networks of countries linked by colonial histories. Therefore, colonising countries put themselves at the centre of such forms of knowledge. She writes:

The globalization of knowledge and Western culture constantly reaffirms the West’s view of itself as the centre of legitimate knowledge, the arbiter of what counts as knowledge and the source of ‘civilized’ knowledge. This form of global knowledge is generally referred to as ‘universal’ knowledge, available to all and not really ‘owned’ by anyone (72–73)

This means that Eurocentric knowledges, or those knowledge systems felt helpful by those in the global North, are assumed to be universally applicable. This results in unequal partnerships that legitimise the interventions of individuals and institutions from countries like the UK and which also position them as holding expertise regarding forms that have emerged from global South contexts. In his discussion of ATB’s work, Thompson (2012) argues that due to Boal’s links to North America and Europe, and the preponderance of individuals from the global North travelling from country to country to deliver programmes and trainings using TO, such instances can be read as an exchange from ex-colonial centres to formerly colonised countries. This can lead to TO being seen as a global form of theatre practice, resulting in assumptions that, as one practitioner writes, ‘these techniques are not culturally specific’ (Stourac McCreery, 2006: 91). Even when Southern approaches are being utilised, if the partnerships built involve those from the global North bringing such approaches, more caution should be exercised in terms of whether we regard these examples as more co-equal, or able to address imbalances and inequalities of knowledge exchange.

Taking this forward into a critical self-reflection on my work, my keenness to share my approach to using TO cast me in the role of a willing helper, seeking to improve and build on Lagnet Theatre’s practice. In particular, my assessment of the performance about police corruption was that some further exploration of participatory modes of performance and how to facilitate audience engagement could be useful. My positioning as a ‘helper’ or ‘expert’ travelling to work with the group was encoded in the initial back and forth between myself and Desai when we discussed my trip to visit Ahero. Desai expressed his hope that he could learn and benefit from what I offered and, in turn, I positioned myself as someone equally able to provide some kind of help and support. Upon reflection, this initial dialogue should arguably have stressed the value of exchanging knowledge in terms that went beyond me simply being a PhD researcher, interested in seeing their work and possibly in a position to help. In so doing, a dynamic was set whereby I was coming to observe and then support development, rather than one of co-learning and inquiry. Furthermore, no acknowledgment of how I might also develop my theatre practice was made, preventing a more mutually beneficial or reciprocal exchange of knowledge.

Alongside the above issues, this experience can also help expand on bringing together traditional or Indigenous artforms with TO. As mentioned earlier, scholars as well as organisations such as Jana Sanskriti and ATB recognise a need to draw on local artforms when using TO (Ganguly, 2010; Kompaoré, 2005). This is partly because such knowledge pertains to a given context’s specifics, thus implying deep understandings of a place. It is also because such knowledge is at risk; as Gómez-Baggethun (2022) argues, Indigenous languages and cultures are being eroded, even attacked, by continued persecution. Escobar (1995) argues that this at-risk knowledge poses important alternatives to Eurocentric epistemologies regarding how we live and interact with the human and non-human worlds around us. More specifically, in terms of theatre, it is argued that projects which incorporate local and Indigenous knowledge and expertise regarding culture and art are more successful since they respect and revitalise such knowledges (Prentki, 2007). Consequently Kamlongera (2005) identifies that diverse forms of Indigenous performance including puppetry, dance and drumming are often drawn upon in TfD projects. As Premaratna and Bleiker (2016) argue regarding theatre and peacebuilding, and Johansson (2011) discusses in terms of HIV/AIDS education initiatives using art and performance, the use of local artistic and cultural traditions can appraise local knowledge. Ownership of the project by local partners and participants is thus increased, resulting in ways of working that are understood and shaped by communities. By ensuring communities can influence projects according to their knowledge and expertise, more nuanced initiatives can be crafted that respond to the ways any given issue might vary according to context.

To return to the piece created with Lagnet Theatre, throughout the process of devising, the performers from Lagnet were extremely clear about how the storyline, which they wanted to focus on domestic violence, should unfold, and what the different characters should bring to the performance. Having worked with them to show how a forum theatre intervention might function, and what the role of the joker is, they were also quick to decide among themselves who should take on this role, and what kinds of questions might be asked to help facilitate audience interaction, no doubt due to their experience of working through Magnet Theatre. I also noticed that while the team felt able to shape the direction of the drama in terms of the relationship between the characters and its links to what audiences might be experiencing in their lives, and how this could connect to the drama, they were less confident in terms of the aesthetic considerations. This is important, since as we worked together, I was cast in a role whereby I brought artistic or dramaturgical expertise, whereas the Lagnet team brought their contextual knowledge, which could help ensure that the art we made together was relevant to the audience it would be performed to. I had hoped that by working with Desai we might have brought together our different approaches to creating theatre, but he seemed a little more referential and not as vocal as I thought he might be. To counter this, I asked how we could incorporate some forms that I did not know about into the piece. Many of the young people were also dancers, and part of a group called the Ahero Cultural Dancers. They therefore devised a short piece to be woven into the performance and, although I was unsure about performing a piece about this topic in a very public space, they decided to take it to a nearby market and try out our experiment.

At the time, the energy of the actors was captivating and the size of the crowd they managed to draw in impressive. However, that evening I reflected on what we had created. Regretfully, I realised that the relationship between the dance and the ‘main action’ of the piece was weak and relatively shallow. As shown in Fig. 4.1, the dance was used primarily to attract an audience, thus functioning according to dynamics that Shadrach Ukuma has observed in Nigeria. He writes: ‘Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) has become the framework around which local forms are forced to fit, often sprinkled as spice simply to create some “local flavour”’ (2020: 566). We had, essentially, garnished what was a relatively standard piece of forum theatre with aspects of Luo dance.

Fig. 4.1
A photo presents the close-up view of 2 female dancers performing in a public space. They wear a thick band of several bright, tie-die patterned threads strung together to form a skirt. They swing away from the waist as they move in a line. A small crowd watches them dance in the background.

Dancers performing a short piece devised with Lagnet Theatre and Ahero Cultural Dancers, Ahero. Bobby Smith 2016

Full size image

The dance and the dancers were quite literally relegated to the margins of the performance, and the performance space. As indicated in Fig. 4.2, once their section was overthey played no other part in the performance. It was not, therefore, the kind of hybrid or intercultural performance I hoped we might be able to achieve and, in this dynamic, I took on the role of the creator, seeking local knowledge which could then be incorporated into my artistic vision for the piece. This maps against the concerns I have previously raised regarding the roles partners take on and the way in which Southern partners may be limited to performing the role of the native informant. In such collaborations, the approaches brought by Northern partners further relegates other modes of working to the margins and puts their approaches (regardless of where they may be drawn) at the centre of collaborations.

Fig. 4.2
A photo of a group of people performing in an open public space. A man stands facing away from the camera and swings his right arm wide backwards as a woman slightly crouches, putting her hands in front as if to defend a strike. A crowd watches them perform in the background.

Actors perform in a short piece of participatory theatre in Ahero, Kenya. Bobby Smith 2016

Full size image

Views expressed during research interviews undertaken in 2016 and a series of workshops and research focus groups I facilitated with Maxwel Okuto from APT in 2019 across three different Kenyan cities (see Smith & Okuto, 2023) can help to explore the above issues further. Through the research Maxwel and I conducted, it became clear that Kenyan practitioners often draw on traditional performance forms. Doing so might offset the dominance of Boal or European influences, but throughout our conversations with practitioners, the word traditional remained elusive and vague. To a degree, terms like traditional or Indigenous can group together and flatten diverse practices that are often linked to particular ethnic groups, of which there are over 40 in Kenya. This made it difficult to understand, at least from my own position as a British individual, the variations in practice or when and where different artistic forms are appropriate. Indeed, the diversity of Kenyan society also means that this can be complex even for Kenyan practitioners to negotiate. More specifically, in focus group conversations with Kenyan applied theatre practitioners, some reflected on the difficulties of working in communities to which they do not belong, since they may lack language skills or the knowledge required of different cultural and artistic traditions (ibid.). For Chakrabarty (2000) such vague references to the Southern margins results in those in the South being unable to shape the ‘European’ centre. Although I was drawing on a Brazilian approach during the work with Lagnet, my artistic contribution was at the centre of our piece. Alternatively, the Luo dance created by the young people was at the periphery—both literally, in terms of its relationship to the performance and the space, and conceptually in terms of how it contributed to our making process. Even if various knowledges and approaches used in partnerships may have originated from global South contexts, if they are mediated by those from the global North inequalities persist.

Consequently, this section challenges assumptions that, owing to its emergence in Brazil, TO is a decolonial and adaptable practice that Northern experts can share across various contexts. To be clear, my issue is not that TO is, in and of itself, a problematic way of working. Instead, I am concerned by the way it has become so central to the work those of us in applied theatre and TfD are undertaking that other forms are marginalised. This is even more pronounced given the centrality of global North individuals in advancing its use across the world. It is worth noting the distinctions between the kinds of South-South partnership that resulted in Magnet Theatre compared to the North-South partnerships I am concerned with in this book. As Bharucha (1993) argues, the dynamics of North-South versus South-South intercultural work are vastly different. He writes:

It should be acknowledged that the implications of interculturalism are very different for people in impoverished, ‘developing’ countries like India, and for their counterparts in technologically advanced, capitalist societies like America, where interculturalism has been more strongly promoted both as a philosophy and a business […] In the case of India, the exposure to ‘other’ cultures has not always been a matter of choice. Colonialism, one might say, does not operate through principles of ‘exchange’. Rather, it appropriates, decontextualizes, and represents the ‘other’ culture, often with the complicity of its colonized subjects. It legitimates its authority only by asserting its cultural superiority. (Bharucha, 1993: 1–2)

As has been touched upon already, previously colonised countries have often had cultures imposed upon them in ways that can hardly be considered an exchange, and TfD could perpetuate this (Thompson, 2005). Although intercultural practice can enable new modes of working and enable artists to draw on rich practices and traditions, it can also maintain a sense of one culture or theatrical practice being of higher value than another. This is particularly the case when global North partners are involved, not only because of issues concerning knowledge and expertise, as explored thus far, but also due to other factors that enable these individuals or institutions to dominate partnerships that have been considered earlier in the book—such as how different places are perceived, and the various ways funding operates. While Magnet Theatre can be viewed as a hybrid form of theatre practice, in which Kenyan and Indian practitioners were able to engage with a globally dominant approach (Warheit, 2017), the absence of Northern practitioners in its creation or in the country-wide trainings in the methodology is significant. As some have reflected, the kinds of South-South partnerships involved in creating Magnet Theatre are beneficial because they can be based more on principles of mutuality, solidarity and horizontal relationships than with North-South partnership (de Renzio & Seifert, 2014). Here, there is a connection with earlier arguments regarding global designs. We need to question how particular methods might limit the possibilities for alternatives when they are rolled out from one context to the next, regardless of whether these emanate from the global South or North. Of course, I should be clear that my experience with Lagnet Theatre was somewhat hastily agreed upon and we did not spend a significant amount of time together—just a couple of weeks. Doubtless this complicated attempts to create a more equal partnership or a more accomplished performance. That said, such short timescales are often a reality when it comes to TfD partnerships—as the next chapter considers in greater depth. Another concern also emerges from this reflection, similarly related to points I have explored above: while my assessment of Lagnet’s performance in response to the brief on police corruption was that they needed some help to develop the participatory aspects of their work, it is also the case that the resources and time are not available for them to commit to and create more substantial work. The possibility exists, then, that rather than a lack of expertise posing a problem, it is a lack of resources. Given work by others, what I would suggest here is that the reality is somewhere in the middle—there is a lack of resources for both training and performances and, where performers and practitioners have benefitted from the training and support to create more substantial work, they are often not remunerated adequately to dedicate the time necessary (Odhiambo, 2008; Plastow, 2021, 2023).

(In Search of a) Conclusion

By aiming to write a chapter which considers how knowledge and expertise might be navigated in partnerships, I have set myself up to fail. Frustratingly, and counter-intuitively given the imperative for academic work to set out and advance clear arguments and perspectives, no neat conclusion can be reached. Locating possibilities for more equal relations regarding knowledge and expertise is complex because of the range of different forms of knowledge influencing projects, and the assumed contributions and roles that those in the global North and South perform regarding creating, interpreting, and using this knowledge.

To invoke the image of a practitioner precariously balancing on a tightrope between opposing agendas and ethical concerns, we should reflect upon the problems of bringing perspectives and knowledges together alongside the potential value and benefits of doing so. While some warn against the imposition of global designs from one place to another, we should also understand that it can be useful and productive for methods to be shared. Approaches to using theatre and performance in community settings that are brought in from elsewhere hold the potential to both dominate and marginalise but, simultaneously, for practitioners to imbue these with their local knowledge. Furthermore, Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2018) agrees with Chakrabarty (2000) when he suggests that decolonisation of knowledge does not entail the complete rejection of European knowledge but, instead, a ‘democratisation of this hegemonic knowledge so that it recognises other knowledges from the ex-colonial world as equally important and relevant’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018: 60). Drawing on Mbembe (2021), what is needed, then, are not simplistic attempts to reverse power relations but rather ways of bringing together different knowledges and perspectives so that they can sit alongside each other horizontally. Of course, this is far easier to type from behind a computer screen than it is to put into practice during projects and partnerships. In terms of those of us from the global North or who are white and involved in TfD, this necessitates robust reflection on how we may have performed our expertise in ways that are dominating or uneven and, importantly, this is not solely evident in the explicitly patronising views some have been shown to hold. Performances of expertise which lead to inequality can be observed in participatory approaches, too. Others have argued that Southern partners can also be complicit in unequal relations (Murrey & Daley, 2023). Engaging in reflection is, therefore, equally important for those in the South.

Apart from the partnership between Kenyan and Indian practitioners, where the result was a South-South exchange that led to an approach to be used in both countries, and beyond, the examples in this chapter all involved a sole focus on Africa. They lack the kinds of global dynamics that can challenge North-South binaries that, as Chap. 2 showed, some argue development is moving towards. Where this is the case, and where North-South partnerships only focus on what the former can do in the latter, it is important to be clear that inequalities regarding knowledge and expertise can only partially be overcome. In terms of my work in Uganda and Kenya, reflected on in the chapter, the very fact that I was travelling to be involved in these projects embodies and sustains a sense that I have knowledge and expertise to offer (Kothari, 2005), even as I attempt to undermine this or engage in more equal partnerships. It is important to be honest and realistic about this and, if more open reflection and dialogue about these issues can be achieved, this could enable frank discussion and negotiation between partners to address these issues. But, as this chapter has begun to identify, navigating expertise takes time and I remain sceptical that binaries between ‘developed’ and ‘under-developed’ can, in reality, be blurred in partnerships. Time, and factors relating to space and place, are therefore vital considerations in partnerships. It is to these issues I turn in the following chapter.