2011 News

ASSITEJ WORLD CONGRESS AND PERFORMING ARTS FESTIVAL

The 2011 World Congress and Performing Arts Festival was held in Copenhagen/Malmo and was jointly hosted by Denmark and Sweden. Congratulations to these two countries on an excellent event. 

Africa was extremely well represented at the Congress. Delegates from Benin, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe attended, and Mali, Togo and Angola all gave their proxies to African delegates which meant that they too had a voice at the Congress.

Yvette Hardie was elected by the General Assembly to the position of President of ASSITEJ, the first time a President has been elected from the African continent. This is a huge honour and responsibility. The organisation is involved in many changes at the moment - the membership system is opening up, we have a new constitution and there are many exciting projects proposed for the next few years. ASSITEJ is becoming ever more active, vibrant and relevant, and having a President from Africa can only benefit the continental network as we work to make theatre accessible to all children and young people. It was also very gratifying that Etoundi Zeyang of Cameroon was voted onto the Executive Committee, meaning that Africa retained two delegates in the overall group, after Hope Azeda (Rwanda) stepped down.

At the Congress, the African delegates gathered for their annual ACYTA meeting, and four days of long, and very productive meetings were held. There was a great deal of discussion of current contexts and future plans, and we came away energised by the exchange with some exciting ideas now to be acted upon. The policy of ACYTA states that the Chair and Deputy Chair of the network will be held by African delegates elected to the international Executive Committee, and so Etoundi Zeyang was elected Chair and Yvette Hardie, Deputy Chair of the network for the next term (2011-2014).

The International Theatre for Young Audiences Research Network (ITYARN) Conference was the first event of the World Congress.
Cheela Chilala presided as a member of the board of ITYARN. Pamela Udoka from Children's Arts Development Initiative (Nigeria) presented a keynote address, and South African, Tristan Jacobs, presented a paper on "The virtual puppet in the Machinima movement:  discovering virtual puppetry in the 3D performance space of video games." It was great to see better African representation in this important forum. A report and book of papers will be released later this year.

There were two African-focused forums: African Synergies - exploring African-International Partnerships. Mike van Graan (Arterial Network) focused on the partnership structures that currently exist and gave a global context for some of the challenges and issues arising from international partnerships. Jerry Pooe (Stable Theatre/Windybrow, SA) presented personal reflections on his experiences of international partnerships, focusing on the agency of each partner in the collaboration, and providing concrete examples of the elements that make partnerships work. Etoundi Zeyang (Fatej Festival, Cameroon) presented the perspective of the international festival director, working with international artists and using the festival environment as the space for exchange. The forum was well-attended and there was some lively participation, particularly from the Next Generation group of theatre makers who have been involved in a series of cross-cultural international collaborative projects over the last 3 years.

The second forum was Changing Paradigms in Youth theatre in South Africa. Unfortunately this forum was scheduled at the same time as the ASSITEJ Forums in Copenhagen, which meant that there were fewer participants than had been hoped for. Pieter Venter (University of Free State) provided a strong overview of the current field of youth theatre in South Africa, and Chantal Snyman (Arley's Workshop, KZN) and Kyla Davis (Well-worn Theatre, Gauteng) presented their perspectives as theatre practitioners taking work to youth in schools. Vincent Meyburgh (Jungle Theatre, Cape Town) also provided insights into the South African challenges around youth theatre. Some interesting discussion compared the situation in Australia and South Africa.

Hope Azeda (Rwanda) and Yvette Hardie (South Africa) chaired the Assitej Forum on Theatre and Development. This forum examined what was meant by development  and provided fascinating insights into how theatre is being used in completely different contexts from Rwanda, to Hungary, USA, India, Uzbekistan, Argentina, South Africa, England, Cameroon, Ireland, Germany, Brazil, Swaziland and Serbia. There was robust discussion of a range of issues that included instrumentalisation of the arts, theatre AS development, theatre for the development of the very young child, theatre inclusive of artists and audiences of all abilities and "theatre for humanity's sake or theatre for art's sake", to quote Hope.

Yvette Hardie also participated in Voices around International Collaboration, chaired by Bernt Hoglund and with Tulin Saglam (Turkey), Jacques Matthiessen (Denmark) and Magnus Lundblad (Sweden) discussing their experiences. The panel examined questions like "On what grounds and for what reasons is international collaboration taking place?", "Is knowledge about cultural background an absolute condition for a project?", "What does “a deeper cultural understanding” mean?" and "How does the economical conditions effect the artistic result?"

While SEKA's In the Bush (Zambia) and Magnet Theatre's Every Year Every Day I am Walking (South Africa) represented African theatre for young people at the Performing Arts Festival, the many productions that applied to participate were not forgotten. An innovation of the festival was a virtual journey through world children’s theatre with the ASSITEJ2011 video library. ASSITEJ2011 received more than 500 performance applications from all over the world.  It was a very tough job for the Festival Selection Committee to choose 27 International performances to represent all continents and to reflect world children’s theatre today.  The 500 dvds of performances were available during the Congress and Festival  as a ”Theatre of the World” video library and this collection will be handed over to the ASSITEJ Archives in Germany. This initiative was yet another way of crossing borders.


Sharing ideas: colleagues from Cameroon, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

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