Ah, it’s our big workshop with the students of Hope North today. We are interested in encouraging the students to form a drama club. Goal may sound modest or naive – but it points to a larger question which comes up in this kind of work – what can you really offer with a two day workshop?I’m going to do a little time traveling here and talk about something I will learn in a month when I am driving across my own country. I’m listening to NPR and they have an interview with a woman who trained a parrot named Alex to speak English. But the thing that really struck me is – what does it look like to teach someone(thing) to communicate? Yes, it involved technique. For example, parrots don’t have lips so you have to be really patient for it to learn how to make some kinds of sounds – “p” “b” – those kinds of things and I seem to remember him having trouble with words that ended in an “s” sound- he would say words like six as sick. That kind of thing. But then also, she told the story of taking Alex home with her once for a vacation and he got freaked out by the owls out of the window and said over and over “Wanna go back!” And she had to drive back to the lab in the middle of the night and bring him back. Because teaching communication is not just teaching sounds and ways of organizing thoughts. It involves teaching trust.
And what does it mean to teach a theater workshop in a community whose individuals have had their trust violated in a profound way? The LRA seems systematic at this – because if the children have their sense of being in the world broken, they need to stay with the rebels. Where else would they go? I feel awkward recording testimony – but I recently watched War Dance – and I’ll talk about this because it was not given to me, but to a camera. To anyone. I have some questions about who is taking the picture in this documentary – their hand is visible, but unacknowledged – but I still recommend it – the children it follows are impossible to dismiss. It’s about the LRA’s impact on the lives of three young children from Padogo in Northern Uganda and their triumph at the national music, dance and drama competition in Kampala – a symbol of resistance and rebirth. A boy named Dominic tells a story to the camera of his time as a child soldier. He says, he was nine years old. He was kidnapped with his brother. The group of kidnapped boys and soldiers came across two farmers. He and two other boys were given machetes and told to kill the farmers and cut them into pieces. If they didn’t do it, they would be killed. If anyone cried or looked away, they would be killed. So they did it. And in telling the story, he says he has told no one – except this camera – that he has killed. And that the community welcomes him back as a victim, not a perpetrator, but he knows in his heart that god is not happy with him. And that these people – that he has killed – were killed for no reason. The LRA has asked children to kill other children. To cut off their lips, or eyes. To kill their parents.
And what can you really offer with a two day theater workshop?
And then I see a lot of reporting on Rwanda and Uganda that ends here. Like OK. This atrocity is the real story and the work of recovery is never enough. But I think there can be some space between doing nothing and making everything better.
So, in this two day workshop, our goal is to encourage the students of Hope North to form a drama club. Because, we imagine, it could be fun. As a space to tell their own stories and to feel heard. As a space to compose memory and to imagine the future. To play. To practice playing.
Our workshop looks like this:
We are a giant group – maybe 150 students? We all get into a circle in the field. We’re a very big circle. I have to squint to see the shy faces on the other end of the circle. We do a warm up together. A movement/sound meditation. There are little kids standing on the periphery and watching us, curious.
We break into groups and do a story circle – do you know this? It’s really simple. Everyone tells a story. Nobody comments on stories. Everyone listens. Most of the stories I hear in my group have to do with times people got injured or scared and ran away from something – they saw a snake, they were playing sports – young kids with old faces and quiet voices and we’re standing under the shade of a tree in a field where students play soccer very well and telling stories of overcoming obstacles in our lives.
Next step, we get into a big group and share images that we remember from our stories – an elephant, soldiers, a birthday cake. Then we tell the students to go and make masks inspired by images from the story. Come back in 15 minutes. At this time, the structure falls apart a little bit. In an hour and half, we are back, gathered under a tree. We look at about 15 masks. There’s two gorillas. An insect. My favorite was the student who was a wall. What did he say? He could hide from soldiers? Or it made him a very good soldier? He performed being a wall for us. That was the next thing – we had some of the masks improvise a scene together. They did capoeira. Capoeira artists came in – last year? Two years ago? – and led a week long workshop. And the practice stuck. And the practice evolved. Maybe that will happen with this work too.
So, anyway, this is meant to be the first half of the workshop. We are meant to practice an exchange. It’s meant to look like – we lead a theater workshop, then we teach each other dances –Hope North teaches a dance, our Ugandan partners teach a dance, Americans teach a dance
In the break between the workshop, I draw with the young children of the village. Why? I don’t know. I want to make friends. The kids draw with serious joy. The oldest, Rose's daughter Concy, meticulously copies drawings from my book. A list of things to do in a day. They don’t know our names so they call us “This one.”
It’s a hot day and the dancing doesn’t happen. I bind all the children’s drawings together and make a book. Zoe draws a cover. She’s good at it. The day disappears. It’s evening. It is night. Dinner by candlelight in a field under the stars. Fire. A van is pulled up and the headlights are turned on and a handful of students perform capoiera by the light of the fire and a car battery and stars and stars. Man, they are good. Dana and Katori and Lauryn have choreographed a hip hop dance. There’s dancing together. Acholi dances. Concy leads me into the dance. I don’t know how to dance and the student behind me is very kind and keeps pushing me into the right position every time the dance changes. We are beating the earth with our feet. It is night. I am asleep. The termites come to the light and die in dark sheets over the floor of our hut.
Today is made possible by the generosity of California Institute of the Arts.
*Photo taken by Cristina Frias.
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