Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

I examine the possibilities of applying citizens centred approaches in theatre workshops on climate crisis with young people, to empower them and produce citizens that may be steps ahead of the facilitator.

Paper long abstract:

I reflect on a participatory theatre workshop that I carried out in the Niger Delta of Nigeria, a place marked with a long history of climate crisis. I examine the possibilities of applying citizens centred approaches in theatre workshops on climate crisis with young people, to empower them and produce citizens that may be steps ahead of the facilitator. This implies participants’ taking the position of co-leaders in the workshop process. This position is against the backdrop of Maurya Wickstrom’s argument that “Theatre for Development cannot be the ignorant schoolmaster, or the artist who leaves the spectacle intact, because it cannot leave the spectators (the to-be-developed) on their own to… the theatre maker is always one step ahead of the student…always more ‘conscientisized’, more knowledgeable” (p. 104). Wickstrom poses how the facilitator must be well informed and ahead of the student. While I see value in Wickstrom position, I argue that the holistic participation of citizens in theatre workshops can produce participants that may be sometimes steps ahead of the facilitator, in terms of the capacity for knowledge production in the development process. I anchor my argument on Jacques Ranciere’s model of the ignorant schoolmaster, which emphasizes on the equality of knowledge production. Here, I suggest that adopting the approach of the ignorant facilitator creates the possibilities for participants to become co-leaders of the TfD process, ahead of the facilitator-development expert, and can allow for their voices to resound more profoundly in the process of development.