By Michael Dibie | Abuja
Creative practitioners from around the globe have gathered in Abuja, Nigeria, for the first-ever Global Playback & Improve Theatre Gathering in Africa, bringing together performers, educators, and theatre enthusiasts from around the globe.
Tagged ‘MeetInNigeria’, the one-week first-ever Africa’s playback theatre festival brought together artists, educators, humanitarians, development practitioners, corporate leaders, and community facilitators from across Africa and the world.
The cultural festival organised by Access to Creative Play Foundation and The Ensemble Improv Theatre Company organisations Is to create space for connection, collaboration, and exchange between artists and audiences.
Organisers say the cultural festival is a platform for expanding creative opportunities and social transformation through storytelling.
Aside from entertainment, practitioners at the event say theatre can be used for social justice, hence this year’s theme, “One story at a time improvisation for social justice”.
According to the Executive Director, Access to Creative Play Foundation, Oluwadamilola Abdulai-Apotieri, the foundation has been working with internally displaced persons for the past eleven years using stories as a form of resilience building and psycho-social support.
“So theatre plays major roles even in community development, in human development, so part of improvisation is called applied improvisation where we use theatre as a tool for building communication, patient safety in the field of medicine, so in corporate setting, we do applied improvisation for team building workshop, in medical setting, we do medical improvisation, to building patient safety, build bedside manners for medical practitioners, in prisons, we use improvisation to build resilience,” he added.
“Theatre is an incredible source of soft skills for listening, collaboration, and being more confident in everything you do. It is a great way of bringing people together, theatre is a universal language which allows people to laugh and brings connections that may not exist,” said Stephanie Ryan, a theatre actress from the US.
Beyond the stage, the artistic event created a space for connection for global artists and audience unity using the universal language of theatre and the transformative power of human stories.
“Art in general takes you a little bit out of your head and more to your heart and body. It is therapeutic because people are more human than logic they have been convinced into. Improvise theatre specifically is like breaking down our conversations and interactions into tiny little pieces, working out how we can have more useful conversations that turn out well. So it is really specifically useful in that, and in fact a lot of organisations use improvisation training specifically to help companies, countries think through cultural issues,“ said Nick Bone, from Australia.
“I think laughter is something that people, no matter the language they speak, so when you get people together, and just that moment when they are having that same likeness, same joy, it’s really something that can transcend the official language,” said Stephanie Ryan.
Improvisational Theatre involves unscripted live performances where actors create scenes. dialogue, music, and movement are often instantly based on audience suggestions.
Founded in 1975 and practiced in more than 70 countries, the show allows the audience to share their personal experiences or stories, which are re-enacted on stage by the artists.
