In September we explored the creation of positive and negative tableaux. It was very interesting to see the students’ interpretations of their peers tableaux and also sobering to note how the majority used violent images to portray a negative scene. These moments always serve to remind the facilitators that violence is something with which our young students are often confronted. The transition from their positive to negative tableaux enabled discussions to emerge on what instigates violence and how it may perhaps be mitigated in various family and community situations. After the performances we then spoke about things that make a tableau more interesting, like the focal point, expressive body shapes and positions as well as exaggerated facial expressions.

We also experimented with how to create sets for scenes using our bodies instead of real furniture etc and much fun was had with mobile chairs and doors; a wonderful kitchen was created complete with oversize kettle; Janet had a shower in the most magnificent bathroom; we even had a talking cross hanging in a church which was being led by a corrupt pastor!

The team felt that the students needed a break from performance art for a session so Tatu and Lawrence led the students through a process of kitemaking during the third week of September. The kites were made from waste material that the students decorated and collated. Each one was unique and all were beautiful.

During the final week of September they returned to their plays, exploring conflict and conflict resolution. Although this was done through little enacted scenes and a further exploration of their stories, Tatu, Lawrence and Janet spent many hours before the lesson going through what this could mean in the lives of the students and how important it is for them to recognise different types of conflict and learn how to deal with these in the real world. Quite a simple lesson, but with complex content that was explored in great depth by the students.

These plays will be taken forward into scripts during October and we hope to perform them for our next volunteer, Raven Cassell, a drama practitioner from the USA, when she arrives in Viljoenskroon on 29 October. Raven will be with us for 6 weeks and the students will be proud to be able to offer her something of their own on her arrival.

Raven  plans to co-create a unique society with the DN youth, co-developing values and practices. Thematically she plans to look at science fiction or visionary fiction as an entry point to “creating new realities.” Over the course of the session they will look at community, collaboration as a process, relationship to body, earth and else, how to be in conversation with art and its context and personal history - all through the lens of theatre.

By the end of the course she’d like students to walk away with the ability to understand what it means to be a  collaborator, to create work with the knowledge of how to be in dialogue with identity and the position they hold in the world and to have learned how to use the theatre as a tool for community building. She plans to introduce the students to the works of artists that reflect the students and their communities, and to guide them through a process of finding ways to express themselves through art. They will use theatre, music, photography, poetry and film to achieve this.

Janet, Tatu and Lawrence also met with all the Grade 7s at Adeline Meje Primary School (at 07h30 on a chilly spring morning!) to tell them about Dramatic Need and invite them to join our sessions in 2019. They all came outside with their chairs and congregated on the netball court next to the DN container to hear what we had to say. There were 130 of them and they were all very interested and engaged. We taught them a song (Tony Chestnut) which they loved and they all went back to their classrooms smiling and chuckling. The teachers are very supportive of our work and asked if we could not come and work with them in the Primary School too. Tatu and Janet are working on a plan to include morning sessions in the local primary schools of Rammulotsi in the DN programme from January 2019.