Sunday, February 26, 2012
Q: Can you outline your background on how you first became
involved in working with theatre for children and young
people?
A: I first got involved with theatre for young audiences
after studying drama at UCT, where I trained as an actress. My
first professional acting job was for PACT, touring with
educational shows to schools across what was then the Transvaal
province - these were often rural schools where children had never
or very seldom seen theatre, or out of the way mining towns, where
there was little in the way of theatre. I started off acting in
these productions, but later began directing them as well. I was
fortunate enough to work with fantastic directors such as Lara Foot
whose passion for theatre and for finding new ways to access young
minds and hearts was hugely inspiring. It was very challenging,
touring to places where people had never seen theatre before, and I
really enjoyed the interaction with young audiences. So my first
experience was really a positive one. And then I went on to do a
lot of other kinds of work for adult audiences, and wasn't
necessarily focussing on theatre for children and young people. But
it remained an interest and through teaching and working with
adolescents, I became more aware of their needs in relation to
theatre and the things that excited them, and I really wanted to
find ways to explore that further.
Q: When you first started working professionally in this
sector, were there many opportunities for employment?
A: There have never been many opportunities for
employment, particularly in theatre for young audiences. At the
time I started in the industry, there were the youth companies of
the performing arts councils, one for each of the four provinces of
South Africa, and that was the main area where one could be
employed to perform for young audiences, but there were very few
independent companies working for young audiences. Then, with the
beginning of our democracy and the disbanding of the performing
arts councils, it became more and more difficult to find permanent
companies doing any form of theatre, let alone theatre for young
audiences. Work became more ad-hoc, geared towards freelance
artists and companies that exist in name but reconstitute
themselves around projects, rather than permanent ensembles, and
that's still the situation today.
There are a few companies that manage to find funding to remain
working in the field, and they usually get funding because they are
willing to align themselves with a particular agenda. So if you are
willing to make theatre about the environment, or theatre about
HIV/AIDS, and that's all you are going to make theatre about, then
it's easier to get funding to sustain yourself as a permanent
company. It's very hard to be a permanent company and to do a range
of work, which is not about theatre with a particular agenda. So
there are very few opportunities, certainly for long-term
professional employment in the industry at the moment.
Q: Was there a particular person or organization that you
would say impacted or assisted in mentoring your development as an
artist and as an educator?
A: There have been many people who have had an impact on
me. There have been particular directors that I've worked with who
I've found particularly inspiring. Lara Foot, Clare Stopford, Liz
Mills, Janice Honeyman. All of them are hugely passionate, highly
intelligent, deeply insightful theatre practitioners (and all
women, interestingly) who have a real sense of theatre, both from
the point of view of a textual exploration that I found very
challenging and interesting as an actress, but also from the point
of view of a social awareness which was inspiring. On another
level, Arthur Lessac has been an enormous influence in my work. He
was an extraordinary voice and movement teacher whose work around
physical and vocal energies also has a deeply spiritual dimension.
I met him when he was 90 and he died earlier this year at the age
of 101, still teaching, having just launched a theatre school in
Croatia! His passion, his socio-political engagement, his capacity
to reach all people through his work, was extraordinary. My
relationship with him over the last 11 years, and his mentoring of
me in that time, both in South Africa and America, was profoundly
life-changing and has affected not only my approach to teaching and
to theatre, but also to life.
I can't say that there has been a particular organization that
has impacted me. I was very inspired by the two independent
theatres in South Africa - the Market and the Space, during the
80s. There are many organizations that I've worked with and their
impact has been in some instances wonderful, and in others
problematic, and I guess I've learnt from the challenges that they
created. The National School of the Arts, where I taught and
directed for a long time and where I worked with young people, was
an organization that had an enormous impact on me and was also a
great challenge. It was and still is an institution that is a very
important one in South Africa, but very few people, both within the
organization and outside, really understand its full potential.
Q: At what point in your career did you begin to become
aware of and then involved with ASSITEJ in South Africa, and then
internationally?
A: I became aware of ASSITEJ only in 2006. There had
apparently been two attempts before that to create a South African
ASSITEJ, but the people who'd been involved were very locally based
people, one in Kwazulu Natal and the other in Cape Town, and in
neither case were they people who were very networked, and so their
attempts made little impression on the industry. I found out about
ASSITEJ through a Professor of literature, Andries Oliphant, who
had attended a writing workshop in Namibia that had been organized
by the African ASSITEJ network. He came back and told me about it
and said he really thinks this is something that we should be
starting in South Africa. I'd never heard about it, but I
investigated it and I then went to a meeting of African ASSITEJ
centres in Swaziland and became very excited about it and realised
that there was huge potential for supporting the development of
theatre for young audiences on the ground. I became involved in
setting up a South African ASSITEJ, which we launched at the
National Arts Festival in 2007. Almost immediately I became
involved internationally by first of all working with the African
network, with Niclas Malmcrona,finding ways to network better on
the continent, and then being introduced to the broader
international community when I was invited to attend the World
congress in Adelaide in 2008. There I was elected to be Treasurer
of the organization, which was a huge honour and responsibility. So
my trajectory in terms of ASSITEJ has been a very rapid one, and a
very recent one. I feel deeply privileged to have experienced so
rapidly the full scope of the organisation and to have become so
intrinsically involved. And we have seen many concrete benefits for
the field in South Africa as a result of becoming part of the
ASSITEJ family.
Q: What changes are taking place with regards to arts and
arts education ecology over the past few years in South Africa and
also across the African continent?
A: Arts education has been compulsory in South Africa
since 1994, and I've been involved in the writing and re-writing of
the curriculum that is being used, as well as the textbooks which
go into schools. South Africa has been going through a real
sea-change in terms of educational practices. It tried to make a
very strong break from the National Christian Education system of
the past by introducing Outcomes Based Education, which on one
level had many positive attributes, and on another level was
extremely poorly implemented, and as a result was misunderstood,
misused, abused, and ultimately unsuccessful. In arts education
we've seen the introduction of many good policies, but
unfortunately there has been very poor implementation of these
policies over the years. I've been involved with training teachers
to deal with the challenges and to incorporate the arts into their
teaching in different ways.
In terms of the arts more generally, we've seen a move away from
permanent companies or theatres that support artists and commission
new work, to a situation of receiving houses and independent
artists trying access funding to make work to take to these houses.
We've also seen the rise of Festivals as the most important site
for performances in SA. That whole shift within the South Africa
scene has meant that people have had to put their focus in
different places. They are putting more into developing pieces that
can travel from festival to festival, rather than into sustained
work that is going into schools on a regular basis, for
example.
In terms of Africa more generally there is certainly a greater
understanding of the importance of arts education developing. A
couple of interesting developments have happened in that respect. A
network has been set up, there is currently a project being done
under the auspices of the AU, around mapping the scene in arts
education around the continent. There's a far greater awareness
than before, but in most African countries there's still a real
deficit of actual arts education policies being in place, so
children are getting access to the arts through the professional
theatre groups that happen to do a bit of extra arts education work
on the side, rather than through any kind of systematic exposure to
the arts in the education system.
Q: Can you provide a brief overview of some of the
different organizations, for example the Arterial Network, which
you work with and their importance?
A: The Arterial Network is a network of artists and
cultural activists across the African continent. There are about 32
national chapters that have already been set up and many others
that are in the process of being set up. It has been enormously
helpful organization in that it has dealt with policies head on,
and has made artists far more aware of what international protocols
their countries have signed up to, and what they say they're doing
on paper, and how they can perhaps use those facts to get a better
deal for the arts in their countries. It has also facilitated the
growth of specialised networks, for example, a network of writers
across the continent, a network of arts journalists, a network of
festivals. This has resulted in a far greater exchange of work and
better interaction then there has ever been in the past. Arterial
Network has been very valuable in the growth of ASSITEJ in Africa,
and ASSITEJ has been very valuable in the growth of Arterial
Network, so we've seen each other as synergistic partners, feeding
on one another's energy. PANSA is the Performing Arts Network of
South Africa and is a network organization of artists across all
disciplines and not just working for young audiences, and again we
find a lot of synergies with what PANSA is doing within ASSITEJ. I
have served on the Western Cape PANSA committee for several years,
although I have recently given this up due to having too many
commitments! UNIMA South Africa, which is part of the international
UNIMA, and is well known to ASSITEJ. It's an important organization
that we partner with a great deal. We work together on festivals
(like Out the Box Festival of Visual theatre and puppetry which I
am currently directing), we celebrate world days together because
our world days sit side by side, and we find ways to use one
another's strengths to build our own organizations.
Q: What do you see as being the main issues facing the
development of theatre for children within the broader African
context now?
A: Firstly, in many African countries there is no
developed formal theatre system, and what is there is often
inherited from a colonial background and is connected in some way
to colonial baggage. This means that for ordinary children within
the country there may be no access to theatre at all. Secondly, in
many countries there is a perception that adults should not be
performing for children, there is almost a taboo against it and
it's seen as unseemly or inappropriate. Thus, very often theatre
for children means theatrebychildrenforchildren, rather than
theatre by professionals. Whilst I think theatre by children
absolutely has its place and should be embraced by ASSITEJ, I think
that both forms need to be encouraged and that professional theatre
should be introduced for children in countries where it does not
currently exist. Due to the theatre for development movement, which
has been so strong in Africa, theatre is seen as something that is
used to get a particular result. This is usually around HIV/AIDS,
or education around where to find clean water, or health issues,
lifestyle issues, social issues, and as a result theatre is there
simply to serve a particular function and in itself it isn't an
artistic expression. It means that the theatre experience is often
quite poor, and not particularly engaging for children, and they
see it as being only a teaching tool.
Moving outside of this paradigm is extremely important. But
finding funding for theatre for its own sake is very difficult when
Africa faces so many other broad crosscutting issues, and it
certainly isn't prioritised by governments, or by the private
sector, or by private sponsorship. And yet the potential for
creativity and the imagination is so vast and I think in many ways
African children are in their very bones, creative beings. They are
born into cultures where songs, storytelling, dancing and music are
intrinsic, that it is really a crying shame that theatre is not
given as prominent a position as it should be given, especially
because African children have such an affinity with it.
Q: You became the ASSITEJ President at a crucial time in
its history. For the first time since its inception the association
has effected dramatic change in its structure, and it's becoming
more open. Do you have any doubts when giving your consent about
becoming its head during this transition? What do you think these
changes will mean for ASSITEJ?
A: I don't have any doubts about giving my consent at this
particular moment. I'm very excited by the changes ASSITEJ is
effecting, and I feel that part of my strength is my capacity to
see new possibilities and find practical ways of making these
happen. I've been very involved in the talking and planning and
strategising around the changes that are now coming into play, and
I find it very energising to see how the organization has started
to shift the way it's structured. There are many strengths to
ASSITEJ and its history, and we don't want to lose those aspects of
the organization that have been its bedrock, but at the same time I
think there are new challenges in the world today that require a
different response. Opening up the membership to networks and to
individuals is a very important way of ensuring a more democratic
participation across the world, and in finding ways for artists
from first and third world countries to work together more
effectively, for the east and the west to work together more
effectively, and to find creative ways to bridge the divides that
exist between us in terms of language and culture and history.
Q: What will be your goals and priorities in your first
term as president?
A: Firstly one of my goals will be to put in place the
policy frameworks that need to be there in order to drive the
change. Secondly, to find new ways of communicating with our
members which are more effective, to allow the voice of ASSITEJ to
be an embracing voice that reaches out to everybody, and that finds
ways of meeting people where they're at; I would like to see less
of an enclave of people who are making decisions behind the scenes,
and more a truly engaged leadership. A leadership that is listening
to people, and dialoguing with people, and seeing how we can best
move the organization forward together. During my term I'd like to
find concrete examples of how we can do the things we're dreaming
of doing, for example taking the New Faces Program and seeing how
we can make that work effectively. Also to find best practice
studies that are happening internationally, to see how we can
emulate those in different ways across the organization. I also
think it's a priority to engage with the younger generation within
our organization, both the younger, emerging theatre practitioners,
and also with the children and young people for whom we are making
the theatre. We can't afford to isolate ourselves, and it is
important to engage with the youth and listen to them so that we
ensure that the work we make is relevant and engaging.
A further goal is to energise regional networks across the
globe: I would like to continue to build and strengthen the African
network, and to assist with doing the same in networks in
South-East Asia and South America, and in other parts of the world
where centres are struggling and under-resourced, but could benefit
from finding synergies within a regional network to achieve
collective goals.
Q: In your opinion, do you think the establishment of
regional networks will affect general policies that can then be
pursued by ASSITEJ? How do you think this may aid with links
between the national centres?
A: I think the establishment of regional networks is
absolutely crucial to the direction that ASSITEJ has started to
take, and I think it can only be of benefit to national centres.
Regional networking allows for a stronger voice, it allows for
stronger advocacy on the issues that are important to all of us, it
means that we become more visible to people in power who are making
decisions about what is taught in schools or what theatre is
allowed in schools, or what theatre is supported through funding.
Regional networks can also be a source of inspiration as we learn
from one another's successes and failures. They can assist us in
building infrastructure. For example, festivals can only be
stronger if they start to co-operate with one another, and through
exchanges we can really begin to build on festivals that are
already in existence. I think that regional networks affect not so
much the general policies pursued by ASSITEJ, but rather they
enrich the life of the organization and particularly the life of
the national centres.
Q: Finally, on a more personal note, how do you navigate
and balance your working life, professional commitments and
personal life?
A: At the moment I don't have a great deal of balance, and
it is a continuous struggle, but I think it helps that I am
passionate about what I do. I love what I'm engaged in, so the fact
that it takes up so much of my time, and interferes with my
personal life at times, is mitigated by that. I get my greatest joy
from seeing a project come to fruition, or seeing an audience
receive a piece with excitement, or feeling the engagement between
the people in our organization. I know that finding greater balance
is something that I actively have to work on; I hope that within
the next year I'm going to be putting in place better strategies to
deal with the stresses of my work life, and to be able to give
myself more time out. Thankfully I have a very supportive and
understanding husband. Also, nothing quite has the capacity to
restore me like long walks on the beach, or on the mountain. And I
live in a part of the world (Cape Town) where that is possible on a
daily basis - if I can just find the time to make use of it!
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