Community Theatre and AIDS Book

List of Illustrations ix

Series Editors' Preface xi

Acknowledgements xii

Introduction 1

Bringing the messages back to their questions 7

A festival, travelling troupes, and ukimwi 11

The fieldwork sites 16

Research hypothesis and realization 22

1 HIV Prevention as Community-Based Theatre 33

Life as epidemic mimicry 33

The parallel developments of community-based theatre and HIV prevention 37

The development of Theatre for Development 41

The reproductive misfortune of Zakia 52

2 The Performativity of Community-Based Theatre 56

Topical uncertainties of traditional practices 59

The ritual function of speech acts 62

The performativity of community-based theatre 66

3 The Social Drama of Backstage Discourse and Performance 79

Part I 80

Morbidity and commitment in Ilemera village 80

The religious predicament 86

The backstage performance of community-based theatre 90

Part II 92

The social drama of AIDS statistics 92

The social drama of focus group discussions 94

Focus group discussions as action research 104

Part III 105

A lost performance in Mumbaka village 105

A wider epidemic pattern 120

4 A Deadly Paradox: Assessing the Success/Failure of Community-Based Theatre against AIDS 123

CBT as epidemiological counteraction 126

The multiple lives and deaths of Neema 130

Towards a community-based theatre as a relational agency 138

Recommendations 142

Appendices

Appendix I Focus Group Discussions: Modus Operandi 149

Appendix II Questionnaire for HIV Preventive Organizations in Tanzania 151

Notes 159

Bibliography 169

Index 177