Building Critical Citizenship Through Syncretic Theatre: A Zimbabwean Case Study

Abstract

Community-based theatre in Zimbabwe has played a limited, if not passive, role in promoting active citizenship among its audiences. More often than not, crucial decisions affecting target communities have been made from outside, making it appear as if externally driven interventions are being imposed upon them. The overriding tendency has been that of ‘taking theatre to the people’ rather than ‘making theatre with the people’. The former approach seems to promote passive spectatorship, which is not effective in resolving conflict and building peace in a country characterised by the virtual absence of the rule of law. This article argues that syncretic (or hybridised) theatre can satisfy the need for critical objectivity by staging fictionalised stories that illuminate the specific conflicts affecting target communities. As a means of ‘waging conflict non-violently’, such theatre creates space for critical citizens to assess their problems objectively, to try out theatrically staged options for resolving conflicts and transfer these alternatives to real life.

Keywords:

• Syncretic theatre
• pungwe theatre
• hybridity
• forum theatre
• passive spectatorship
• critical citizenship
• social capital
• bridging
• bonding
• spect-actors
• joker

Notes

¹ Examples of these satirical plays are Daniel Maposa's Decades of Terror (2007), Cont Mhalanga's The Good President (2007), Raisedon Baya's Super Patriots and Morons (2006) and Silvanos Mudzova's The Final Push (2011). None has been published and some have been banned.