Performing arts-based interventions in post-conflict zones: critical and ethical questions

ABSTRACT

Arts-based practices can occupy a fragile position where its interventionist character becomes both a gift and a poison. For instance, some practitioners/researchers from the Global North consider the Global South as a region to curate, perform and market interventions to solve problems. Such interventionist initiatives have also positioned those regions as sites for/of experimentation as seen in different international development and humanitarian initiatives. Some interventions have been done ethically while others have become a way to extract knowledge and extort the people. I pose ethical questions on performing interventions particularly in conflict/post-conflict zones in Africa not to change what we do but to rethink how we do what we do and perhaps at times to change why we do what we do. I reflect on a theatre performance I directed in Nigeria that was staged in Sudan and raise ethical questions because intervention itself is a performance that should be staged within appropriate ethical protocols and respectful canons.

KEYWORDS:

• Performing intervention
• ethics of care
• relational interaction
• post-conflict zone
• ethics
• ethics of applied theatre practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Taiwo Afolabi

Taiwo Afolabi is a theatre practitioner-researcher with a decade of experience in applied theatre/theatre for development in four continents. His research interests include public health/biomedicine, ethics and theatre for civil engagement and social change. He is a Research Associate with the Department of Sociology, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and he is currently pursuing his doctoral studies at the University of Victoria and his research focuses on forced migration, mobility and displacement and ethics of conducting arts-based research among refugees and internally displaced persons in Africa for citizen participation.