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1. Introduction

In 2009 I attended the World Forum Theatre festival in Graz. Forum theatre troupes from Asia, Europe and South America were presenting their work. Workshops during the day, performances in the evening. Three performances touched me especially. Actors from the London-based group Cardboard Citizens created an emotional link with the audience[1] by just being themselves. The actors were homeless people, playing their real life experiences on the streets of London. Through the authenticity of their way of acting they became believable. The audience felt with them and for them. This immediately broke the barrier between spectators and actors.

The second group which left a lasting impression was Jana Sanskriti from India. Their style of forum theatre includes dance, movement, images and a lot of symbols that leave a space for personal interpretation and imagination, and are both artistic and educational. Jana Sanskriti is working mainly on Gender-Based Violence in India.

Finally, there was TO-Tehran, a University-affiliated Iranian theatre group, using forum theatre against oppressive systems. With simple black T-shirts and with just a few symbolic items, they were acting injustice and abuse of power in a serious as well as an absurd manner, speaking out the truth while making the audience simultaneously laugh and reflect on the issues presented.

What was missing in Graz was a group from Africa. This fact and the visually powerful impact of some performances motivated me to integrate forum theatre in my practice and explore its opportunities for peace work.

My theatre background is more or less an alternative one. I was trained by Gabor Csetneki, a Hungarian theatre director, who has an actor-centered approach, where theatre becomes a discovery and expression of “body, heart and soul”, rather than the classical approach where actors repeat some sentences others have written.[2] I also had the chance to meet and be trained by Keith Johnstone, the inventor of improvisation theatre. Harald Hahn—a German TO-practitioner—introduced me to Augusto Boal’s methods.

I started in November 2009 to work for EAIGCM[3] in Kampala, Uganda. It was a contract within the framework of the Civil Peace Service[4]. In January 2010 I gathered 12 students and young graduates of Music, Dance & Drama from Makerere University, Kampala, all of them hungry to apply what they had studied. Rafiki Theatre was born. During the next four years we explored the possibilities of participatory theatre for the promotion of peace, human rights and sustainable development. We developed our own style—an emotional and provocative, authentic and believable way of acting; integrating music, dance, movements, images, and symbols.

Productions on various topics were designed, and then more than a hundred performances were given in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and South Sudan. Seven forum theatre troupes in Uganda and one in South Sudan[5] were trained by Rafiki. We developed plays with them and supervised their work. We participated in festivals and larger campaigns, did street theatre as well as indoor performances. Rafiki Theatre did forum theatre with illiterate people in the remotest places as well as with the intellectual city elite. The style we developed became known and experiences were shared at universities and during various workshops.

2013 I left Uganda for Rwanda, where I started as UEM[6] Co-worker for APRED-RGL[7], a regional peace initiative hosted by protestant churches from Rwanda, DR Congo and Burundi. APRED-RGL is building local capacities for peace and promoting reconciliation in the African Great Lakes region, a region that has been plagued by decades of instability and armed conflicts, leaving behind humanitarian crisis, poverty, and deep-rooted hatred against the perceived “enemy”.

In August 2013 I found myself in Goma, DR Congo, in a not yet completed, dusty small building of the CBCA[8], together with the youth group “Jeunesse en Action”. We did a forum theatre workshop while 7 grenades were exploding, one less than a kilometer away as the crow flies. The local people were blaming Rwandans for being behind the attack. The atmosphere was tense. Despite this we decided to continue, developed a short play and integrated the fears of our workshop participants into some of the scenes. Finally we performed to 200 people in a CBCA church. The play was about the hatred of the people of Goma for the people of Rwanda. I saw that the “Rafiki style” could add value to the program of APRED-RGL.

Together with the Rwandan youth center “Vision Jeunesse Nouvelle” we formed Badilika (“Change”), a Rwandan-Congolese Forum Theatre troupe. Badilika works on the prejudices, stereotypes, myths and rumors that divide the people in Africa’s Great Lakes region. After some performances in the border towns of Gisenyi and Goma we toured around for 6 weeks in 2014, entering into conflict-affected communities in Rwanda and DR Congo. 59 performances were done, reaching out to more than 6000 people.

In this book I propose to describe the forum theatre approach developed by Rafiki Theatre in Uganda and South Sudan, and the experiences of Badilika with this approach in Rwanda and the DRC. I will conclude with a chapter about the trauma-healing effect of theatre and some remarks about the opportunities and limitations of forum theatre in peace work.