ABSTRACT
In 2005 I was in Sudan with UNICEF redesigning a stalled children’s theatre project, called Theatre for Life. The project, which operated in 450 villages across the country, had already been running for five years and had limited itself to basic health messaging. Participation was tokenistic, manipulative even. Plays were commissioned from professional writers in the cities. These scripts were then distributed to teachers across the country. The teachers would select a mere handful of ‘talented’ children as actors, and teach them their lines using the time-honoured pincer movement of rote-learning and corporal punishment.
