HIV prevention as community-based theatre -- The performativity of community-based theatre -- The social drama of backstage discourse and performance a deadly paradox: assessing the success/failure of community-based theatre against AIDS
Summary
Applying research into assessments of community theatre, epidemiology, and young people's shared and private stories using a wide range of methodologies, this book explores the potential efficacy of community theatre to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in Tanzania with reference to several other comparable sites in Africa. HIV/AIDS is the most serious health issue in the world today. Beyond information and medical campaigns the breakthrough of an effective social prevention is still challenging aid workers and researchers in Africa. Through a series of case studies and analyses, this book argues that participatory and interactive modes of community-based theatre may be the most auspicious mode of HIV prevention for the most susceptible groups in Tanzania today, namely young, poverty-stricken people, especially young rural women, and yet the latter groups and individuals prove to be the most knowledgeable social agents when it comes to identifying, organizing, and implementing taboo-breaching public counteractions against the pandemic. But when will the findings be acknowledged by the ones who have deployed the young people as artistic researchers? Not until young people are assigned a political mandate will they be able to make real changes in the ravaging pandemic
