Where is My Sweet Potato? Creating Change through Forum Theatre with Street Children in Burundi

ABSTRACT This paper examines the innovative use of Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (Forum Theatre) with a group of 30 street children and young people in East Africa. Drawing upon a project in Burundi, this paper reveals how participants utilized the process of performance making through Forum Theatre as a platform to make visible problems in their lives, and a vehicle to challenge inequalities, abuse and violence. The authors demonstrate how the adoption of this methodology raised questions about interactive theatre as creative activism and a tool for opening up possibilities for dialogue with a community-based audience. This paper illuminates ways in which street children, explored, examined and problematized their lived experience, through the creative lens of Forum Theatre. It argues that this methodology generated a sense of collective consciousness, through which the children and young people created personal and social change, which extended beyond the life of the project.

The use of using digital tools in developing branching narrative

As a lecturer in computing at Moray College UHI, and having recently rekindled my passion for branching narrative and particularly gamebooks, when an opportunity arose to conduct the ‘Digital Futures’ research project, I was able to merge my interest in software development with an exploration of digital tool use in writing branching narrative. The aim of the research is to enhance the employment opportunities of creative writing students by potentially developing pathways into authoring gamebooks, digital games, televisual media or theatre productions. I conducted a background study examining the historical and current state of branching narrative and conversed with gamebook authors about the software tools they used and their world-building and publishing experiences. Similar conversations were held with games writers/developers and an interactive theatre producer. This article presents the key elements of that background study and conversation highlights, along with an evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of using digital tools to develop branching narrative.