Theatre Group

On Thursday afternoon, a few of my students – Santos, Elton, Saúl and Emídio – came up to me as they were leaving school, “Teacher Mary, you’re coming with us to our performance tomorrow right?” The boys from my theatre group had been asked to present a short play at a local grade school the next afternoon. They wanted me to come, but I had a lot to do with end-of –the-year grades coming up...they looked so hopeful that I would come, though, that I couldn’t say no.

The next day at 11 am on the dot, the “transport” the boys had hired arrived to pick us up: An open back pick-up truck to take the 11 boys, 1 girl and I to this primary school which was, I was told, “sort of out in the bush.” We all piled in, big theatre curtain and wooden drum in tow. I was a bit leery about the ride in the hot sun and then through the dusty, dirt back roads, but as we drove along, Fernando, one of the boys, started pounding out rhythmic traditional beats on the drum and soon all of them were singing at the top of their lungs as we rumbled along. I looked up at the group of them – 12 skinny kids, all still in shirt-and-tie school uniforms, laughing and singing and dancing around – and I couldn’t help but smile.

My “grupo de teatro” or high school theatre group, is one of the best things I’ve been a part of in Mozambique. What started out as a hodge-podge group of teenagers, thrown together during mandatory school-activity time last year, blossomed over the course of a year into a tight knit group with a knack for improv-acting.

Last October, I led the theatre group during school-activity month and the kids performed a play about school-corruption and the importance of education during the end-of-school festival. They had such a great time with it, that when they all returned to school in January, a couple of the boys came to me and asked to start an official group for the school. (While the group has had 2 or 3 girls participate during the year, it is – for a multitude of reasons – an almost all-boy group, and you will notice that I continually refer to the group as “the boys.”)

We began meeting on Tuesday afternoons, and the kids picked the club president – a tall, lanky kid named Elton, who turned out to be Mr. Organized and kept the group going all year long. I talked to some Peace Corps friends and was able to get our group to be part of a project called JOMA – Jovens para Mudança e Acção (Youth for Change and Action) – that provides funds, organizational materials and the opportunity to attend a training conference, for high school groups focused on Theatre, Journalism, Art or Photography.

In March, Elton, Luís – another boy from the group, Professor Tomás – a music and Portuguese teacher from my school who helps me lead the group – and I all were able to attend the week-long JOMA conference. We joined students and teachers from other Mozambican secondary schools for training sessions on theatre skills with a professional actor, and then the students and teachers split up for other sessions. The boys received leadership training and also had sessions about gender roles and other important issues, while the teachers worked on facilitation skills and the role of teachers in society.

After the conference, Elton and Luís almost entirely took over the leadership of group and led most meetings, teaching their peers the skills that they had learned at the conference. I often facilitated small lessons to start the meetings and taught them simple theatre techniques through games that I remembered from high school theatre or using the theatre manuals JOMA provided us.

The group presented several times in our community: Twice at school functions – once with a play about the importance of encouraging youth to stay in school and another time with the story of Mary, Mother of God, for the May 24^th Feast Day of Mary celebration.

A few weeks ago, I took them to the “Act Against AIDS” theatre competition in the city of Maxixe where they had to present a 10 minute play showing an idea for a piece of legislation the government could propose to help stop the spread of AIDS in Mozambique. Their idea: a sweeping legislation plan to create jobs for the abundant number of female prostitutes on the streets of cities and at the same time create nursing homes for advanced-stage AIDS patients to help them live more comfortably. Their play got 4^th place out of the 20 schools from across Southern Mozambique that participated.

After that, they started preparing a show to participate in a JOMA “Experience Exchange” in which groups can get together to show each other their work, give and accept critiques, and get to know students from another district. We decided to get together with a school from Chogoene, another village a few hours south of us and to produce plays around the topic “corruption in schools,” which could also be presented in our respective communities. My kids prepared a good piece showing a teacher who accepted money to raise grades and then also tried to seduce one of his female students. (Both unfortunately common occurrences in many Mozambican schools) Another teacher at the school realized what was happening, though, and went to the principal to demand justice. Our two groups met yesterday in Xai-Xai , near a beautiful beach. The students presented the plays and then had a good meeting to discuss what each group had done well, and what were things each could improve on in there presentations. I think the kids learned some good new skills, and then they had some time to swim in the ocean and make some new friends.

I will be sad to leave these kids in a few weeks; the boys in the group have become my friends – like 14 little brothers. They’ve taken to calling me “Mana Mary” instead of “Teacher Mary” – a lapse in formality as “Mana” is the word one uses to address family members or older friends and teachers should always be addressed with “Teacher” before their name – and I love it. Yesterday, on the bus coming home from Xai Xai, I went around and asked all the 10^th graders their plans for next year, as they’ll be graduating in a few weeks and must decide if they’ll go on to 11^th and 12^th grade (pre-university studies), a training institute for teachers, nurses, businessmen, etc., or finish their studies and go to work.

I have high hopes for them. I like to imagine that someday I’ll come back to visit and Elton will be mayor of Inharrime and Luís will be a doctor and Carlos will be running the bank. I listened happily to their grand dreams – business training, university, seminary, medical school. I wish I could do more for them, dreams are often hard to realize in this country. I admire their enthusiasm. I wish I knew that I would stay in touch with them, but they don’t have phones, and they’ll leave Inharrime for other places to continue their studies next year. After three weeks from now, I may never see some of them again. Things like that are the hardest part about leaving here in a few weeks.

I wished I had a camera as I was riding down the road in the back of that truck the other day. But since I didn’t, I tried to imprint the images on my mind. The boys all stood up in the back of the truck, their faces imprinted on the clearest-of-clear blue sky as I looked up from my seat low on the wheel-cover. I noted it all clearly: Their navy blue school pants, tearing at the seams after a year of daily wear, their dark, shining faces with bright white-teeth flashing in smiles all around, jaunty teenage-boy stances – until the truck went over a bump and they all lunged to grab onto the sides. After a few traditional songs, someone yelled “Laura!” and the drum beat changed – I couldn’t hold back hearty laughter as the boys broke out at full force singing the school hymn, a church song about a 12-year-old girl, “Laura Vicuña, model for all youth, you’ll stay in our mind for always, you’ll carry us always forward!”