wiov rui^ciu u n^iouuu pi fncnu^ living ill I'ictllUUl

wiov rui^ciu u n^iouuu pi fncnu^ living ill I'ictllUUl where he is building a hospital for infants with AIDS who have been abandoned on the city streets. “Dag,” as he is affectionately called, returned the following night for a second performance, bringing with him several carloads of nuns and priests.

Nairobi was our port of entry into Africa. It is a young, modem city and the home of one of Africa’s only professional theatre schools - The Nairobi Theatre Academy. We gave a week long workshop for the students there. Our residency ran concurrently with the first All Africa Theatre Conference. We saw performances by Academy students and delegates from more than 12 countries. Their work was unabashedly robust and high spirited. For performers and audiences alike, theatre is a celebration of community.

As we worked behind the scenes with artists in each Country, Paul and I were amazed by the democratic process used to create a production. Everyone had an opinion and expressed it. All the artists had gtt^t patience with this process and each other.

We had spent 10 days In Kenya and another four in Tanzania. Our journey was at the mid-point. We would spend our final two weeks in Malawi: first in the capital, Lilongwe, working on the AID’s drama; and then in Blantrye, with a group of actors.

Suddenly, I realized how tangibly excited I felt as we met more and more artists, teachers and students. Perhaps for the first time in my career in theatre, I was witnessing a process of how theatre gets bom as an independent art form. Paul and I were working with young artists who were not creating theatre from a bedrock of traditional western or asian theatre. They were instead writing their own plays in their own languages and grappling with the challenges of how to create present and bring a new theatre to their own people in the cities and the villages. We were witnessing how stories and drama get separated from village rituals and ceremonies and carry with them all the rich inspiration of drumming, dancing, singing.

We were introduced to a totally new aspect of contemporary African Theatre when we arrived in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe. An American who is a consultant for AED (American Education for Development) had arranged a five-day workshop'. He had assembled a full array of resource people including a team of Malawian officials from the Health and Education Ministry, news writers and broadcasters from Malawi’s Public Broadcasting Corp., The Health Ministry Band, a British woman who is a puppeteer, two students from Malawi’s Chancellor University, a visiting Fulbright Professor in Ethomusicology from the University of Indiana, and Paul and I. Our task was to create a low budget puppet show on AIDS Prevention that be performed the following week in a soccer field for several thousand people and thereafter become part of the touring repertoire of the Malawian Health Ministry Band.

For the first time since we had started this tour, Paul and I knew we were in trouble. All the officials in the workshop were dressed in suits and ties. There were school desks and lesson books to write notes. The Health Ministry Band was there - four young women