In progress:
Theatre in use
By
Sherif Nakhla
Dahlia Sabbour is a 29-year-old school teacher working at the Learning Resource Centre in Maadi. Born in Cairo and raised in Bahrain, Sabbour lived in Paris until 1992, when she enrolled at the Amerian University in Cairo to study English and comparative literature. At university and afterwards Sabbour acted in some 10 productions, playing lead roles in plays like Blithe Spirit and The Tempest. It was with this experience that she decided to employ theatre in her profession of choice, teaching.
After graduating I spent two years working in different fields -- hotel management, urban development and journalism. But I couldn't see myself in any of them. Theatre was always at the back of my mind, especially when I was the editor of AUC Today. I continued to audition for AUC plays even though I was usually the only graduate to be joining. Gradually, I began to take theatre more seriously. I decided to apply for an MFA at New York University. Initially I wanted to specialise in acting but then I realised that I didn't want to become another struggling actress in New York, I wasn't ready for that kind of lifestyle. What I was looking for, rather, was a way to put theatre in some kind of context, to make it useful somehow. Drama is a process of growth that brings people together in a community. The programme I applied for allowed applicants to synthesise their own majors and specialisations. In my case I focussed on the combination of drama and education. I didn't want to do something as restrictive as an MFA in acting, my target was to become more knowledgeable in drama in general. The university liked the fact that, though Egyptian, I was fluent in English even though it was my first time in America.
There is a meeting point at which theatre and education converge. Traditional theatre begins and ends on stage. But in educational theatre for children the process extends into everyday life because what they learn is very useful in a range of contexts, it gives them confidence and social skills. In New York I had some hands-on experience with children who lived in ghettos, a huge challenge for me. I spent two semesters tutoring at a public school in Brooklyn, a school for kids whose skills were lower than average and who needed to come up to grade level. I guess I would call this my experimental phase. Most of the students came from broken homes, some were gang members and some simply didn't want to go to school and learn. After watching them participate in theatrical exercises I began to see a potential for educational theatre and before finishing my degree I came back to Cairo to test that out.
My object was to apply a form of drama education but I didn't know where to start so I started with conventional education knowing that eventually I would be able to bring drama on. The Learning Resource Centre focusses on tutoring students with learning disabilities. My students are eight to 19 years old. I've found that students with disabilities tend to have unique talents that make up for whatever skills they lack. Most of them have proved to be great performers and artists, anyway. I like to think of the programme as a talent development workshop -- the students should not feel that they are going to the centre to work on their weaknesses but rather to locate their strengths and figure out how to make use of them. This is where my New York experience came in handy, because it gave me a method with which to approach them.
In special-needs education the first step is to find out where the students' problems are -- usually it's to do with oral expression, self- confidence and other social skills to which isolation from society has given rise. All these issues can be addressed in educational theatre, which makes the students team players. In Boal theatre, also know as theatre of the oppressed, the theatre is used as a forum for problem solving: performers present problems openly on stage and the audience works out solutions, not by talking casually to them but by participating in their actions on stage. This method will eventually be useful to my students but mainly to those who are mature enough. With children you need a trusting environment -- so that they'll recognise their problems and begin to express them. It is normal for most children with learning disabilities not to know what their problem is, the learning process for them is meant to be subtle but extremely beneficial in the long run.
The present workshop started in February with various ideas and I was able to see the students, who had been misbehaving and not doing well academically, open up to the theatrical process. Parents and fellow teachers were giving me positive feedback on their progress. Some of the students couldn't look people in the eye and now they can speak quite freely -- with confidence. The first production to come out of the programme took place in May at the British School, it was the opening ceremony for a conference on education, and demonstrated that there are many ways to reach out to children. The play did more than just serve its purpose: the students performed with even more confidence than they showed during rehearsals. Their parents were very moved by their progress and when they expressed their gratitude I was overwhelmed. In the end I told them that it was the children who did the work, I merely gave them the exercises. I felt humbled more than anything else, in the sense that I felt I was the instrument of something far bigger than myself. If I can help children fulfil their potential, then I have found what I am looking for -- something I see myself practising for a long, long time to come.
