NPR: In the village of Corozal in Honduras, men ready boats for fishing excursions and boys play soccer on a beach lined with thatched huts.
On a sandy lot next to the town's main street, two teenage boys begin playing drums while women sing. For centuries, this has been the signature sound of celebration for the Garifuna, an Afro-Caribbean people on the Atlantic coast of Central America. Now this music has an additional purpose: to prevent HIV.
4 comments:
This reminds me of the morality plays used in medieval Europe by the churches to spread the stories of the Bible. For people who couldn't read and didn't have access to books in the first place, these morality plays provided an "education" in what the church wanted them to know. In this situation, it's not as much someone trying to impose their religious beliefs, but more a spread of facts. These people are living in poverty, and of course they don't have access to books and TV, and pamphlets are more useful at keeping a fire going. In this way, these plays should help these people be more educated about HIV and I think it could definitely help these people lower the rate of AIDs in the country. We don't normally associate theatre with disease and death, in America, but these people are using theatre as a crucial education tactic against disease. I serves as good reminder to us theatre practitioners that theatre isn't just about having the latest technologies and most beautiful backdrop, but about sending a message across where the written just won't do.
Theater is a device that lends itself well to education, and I think that putting it to use in such a way is a very smart decision. By spreading awareness and knowledge about HIV through theater, this group can reach out to audiences on a more personal level, which is much more effective than a pamphlet. It's good that there are organizations monitoring the effectiveness of this approach as a whole, because positive results could lead to the creation of many more groups similar to this one in areas highly affected by HIV.
I mentioned in another one of my comments that I am skeptical about the actual impact of theater on audiences; this article seems to say that it can indeed influence the way people act, which proves me wrong; and I've rarely been so pleased to be wrong.
Theatre is, of course, a wonderful way to educate and spread awareness and thus help solve problems. Shows keep people engaged and are much easier to understand than, like the article says, big words in pamphlets that seem so foreign and impersonal. This article brings to mind CMU's recent production of "Angels in America" which, on a larger performance scale, did something similar to what is happening in the Honduras. It educated the audience in a way that they didn't even know they were being educated but which allowed them to leave the theatre pondering. The show made some very intense and personal points, and hopefully it, too, helped spread awareness and understanding.
I think this is an extremely creative way to educate people about the disease. I also love the idea of the people putting the disease on trial. For years people have personified thing in order to understand them better. I truly think that this is a great way to send there message out and be entertaining at the same time. I believe that we should be recording these performances as because they are so strongly based in the present with problems concerning that area these performances are becoming a strong indication of culture and would be absolutely terrible to lose. It might be an interesting idea to bring the performed or the play to america and do performances of it to raise money to help them.
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