Changing paradigms...
Tibetan women in Yushu - Qinghai Province, China
‘It’s like washing your feet with your socks on!’ shouted out a young, Tibetan truck-driver from the back of the room.
The other men, drinking their strong, salted teas exploded into laughter. The room was suddenly animated.
The young man moved to the front of the room and demonstrated for my benefit.
The local outreach officer translated as we watched the cheeky driver pretending to wash his foot, tugging and making faces at his dirty, grey sock.
His Tibetan workmates, clapped or slapped their legs and cheered.
He was referring, of course, to the discomfort of wearing a condom.
In 2005 - 2006 I spent a year working in Lhasa as program manager of a small NGO run by the Burnet Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health. Our work centred on sexual health education and outreach.
Lhasa - Tibetan Autonomous Region, 2006
To give some context, at that time western China’s economy was booming. Thousands of migrant workers from China’s eastern cities arrived in Lhasa every year. Lhasa’s growing population was deemed ‘at risk’ of contracting and spreading HIV if the virus were to arrive.
My Tibetan colleagues and I were conducting focus group on attitudes and behaviours around safe sex and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
Our outreach efforts were receiving a lot of resistance.
We knew from the high prevalence of STIs among people of all ages that condoms were not being frequently or adequately worn.
It was a perfect setting for HIV epidemic.
No laughing matter.
However, at that moment, among this group of Tibetan men, among the laughter, the teacups, the cigarette smoke and the actions of the young man frantically rubbing his feet, I laughed myhead off.
It was impossible not to agree that wearing a condom was an unpleasant, and in many ways, absurd alternative.
The Team in Lhasa
Chinese worker building the Beijing to Lhasa railway opened in 2006.
Later that day, I sat in our office feeling deflated and disheartened - on the shelves around me, thousands of change behaviour pamphlets we had printed.
Our workshops, our training sessions and outreach efforts seemed to be changing very little.
The focus groups revealed that sexual health (and sex in general) was not something talked about.
How could we encourage the young man to see his role in transmitting the disease?
I thought back to the actions, the theatrics, the laughter; that moment of connection, feeling and understanding between the young man, his charade and us watching.
The moment was aesthetic, it communicated through the senses - its physicality and emotion were key to everyone engaging in what the young man wanted to convey.
I love theatre.
In 2002, I had received funding for producing and directing my play Trollop(e) so the idea of using the medium for education and behaviour change interested me.
Trollop(e) funded by DCA in 2002.
I decided to take the sexual health outreach along those lines and convinced my manager in Australia to let me apply for funding for some theatre pieces.
We eventually received some funding and I commissioned a local playwright, Phunsok Tashi, to write a short slapstick play to be performed at the popular dance hall venues frequented by Tibetans.
For reasons related to political sensitivities of Tibet and the HIV focus of our work, I had to leave Lhasa before the end of my contract, and this play was never performed.
However, in the lead up to my departure I revisited Paulo Freire’s work on working with oppression.
Conducting focus groups for women’s health reproductive health
There were many forms and layers of oppression in Lhasa.
There was the systemic oppression of a strong Chinese military presence representing the foreign power controlling the region.
At the same time, my experience of ordinary Han Chinese, e.g. restaurant owners, hairdressers, shop assistants, and even government officials was generally positive.
Most Han Chinese I spoke with had migrated to the region to take advantage of the economic development to improve their lives.
Many of the Chinese labourers working in the building boom lived and worked in appalling conditions on building sites doing work that Tibetans refused to do.
At the same time, I thought some Tibetans I met who had achieved some status in the system (such as administrators or government officials) were inflexible, bureaucratic and had become part of the oppressive system. They reaped the benefits of belonging to the dominant power.
Also, both Tibetan and Chinese cultures are strongly patriarchal with women’s decision-making power limited especially relating to sexual behaviour.
Training of trainers in sexual health education
I asked myself where does the oppression begin?
Who is the worst oppressor?
The Chinese noodle man who went west to make a living and used sex workers but wore a condom?
Or the Tibetan husband who was colonised but refused to wear a condom and gave his wife and other sex partners chlamydia?
How to create a shift in the husband’s perception so that he could become aware of the harm he caused?
How could that behaviour be changed and who was I to be deciding that it needed to change?
To transform oppression Freire called for ‘praxis’ - action and reflection - then what tools do we need in order to create action and reflection?
I reflected on our methods. Our sexual behaviour change approach involved a one-direction message. Even during focus groups we were directing the conversations.
How could we create real dialogue?
One thought led to another. I wondered whether there could be something like a Theatre of the Oppressed?
So I googled it.
With the incredible Augusto Boal, Omaha, Nebraska 2008.
That’s how I discovered the work of Augusto Boal.
After reading everything I found online about Theatre of the Oppressed I knew I had found a way to work with people in community development and behaviour change.
It aligned theory and practice, or reflection and action, but also used theatre, creativity, and embodied self-expression.
That is how I began my journey as an applied theatre practitioner and
its transformative potential.
That is how I changed my paradigm.