Youth Workshops

July 10th – 14th:

Concurrent with the Week Two Workshops, a Youth Participant Workshop took place on the Hiddingh Campus of the University of Cape Town, from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. each day. The workshop leader was Mandla Mbothwe, both a member of the Drama Department at University of Cape Town and Magnet Theatre Educational Trust. The fifteen participants were drawn from drama programmes at community centres throughout Khayelitsha township. Common Plants co-investigator Dr. Belarie Zatzman of York University observed and documented the process.
MEach morning, the full group undertook exercises based on Rudakoff’s Four Elements methodology, in particular, focussing on the use of space and body in relation to issues of home. The fifteen Youth Participants were asked to investigate their own histories and to apply their research to generate creative responses to the workshop exercises. As such, their lived experiences became the underpinning for the theatrical examination. Writing prompts were given as a form of inquiry throughout the week.

During the afternoon sessions, participants were tasked to develop a two minute performances about home. The entire group viewed the development of each participant’s work throughout the week. Individualized dramaturgical critiques and feedback were offered each day as part of the development process. At the end of the workshop, the participants, in groups, performed theatrical explorations of home.
The youth workshop was designed as a scaffolded structure: the final creative response performances evolved out of the range of Common Plants exercises and activities the group explored each day.

The relationship between process and product was dynamic; each day the morning exercises informed and pressed forward the exploration of theatre forms. However, rather than prescribing the shape of the two minute pieces, the investigations each morning stood in juxtaposition to the development of the individual work taken up in the afternoons; one offered propositions to the other; the morning work modeled possibilities, offering provocations for what might be explored or deepened each afternoon.

The final undertaking of the workshop focussed on collaborative work, incorporating elements of the individual two minute pieces into four new group performances which were performed at the culmination of the workshop.
MAs with the concurrent professional workshops, the research questions emphasized individual exploration of the self in relation to landscape, configured as the concept of home. The questions that were posed, echoed in other aspects of Common Plants such as the website Common Ground Forum, included: What is home? Where is home? Is home where you are or where you come from? What makes it a home? Who decides it to be a home? What is important about the place of birth?

July 10th:

In an exercise called Telling our Journey of Places, Mbothwe tasked the group to create a mapping of the different homes where they have lived. The Youth Participants were asked to record the journey of their “life of homes” on paper, including homes where they have lived full-time, or places where they have stayed each summer. Mbothwe asked the Youth Participants, for example, to create a map that shows the movement of the journey, recording the movement on the paper. He gave the example, “I was born XXX and moved to XXX; every June I move…”

Later, the Youth Participants evolved this two dimensional exercise of mapping, by exploring the journey of places in three dimensions. Mbothwe explained that the temporal changes should be actual and visual, and he guided the group to use sound or movement to “look at our path, until now”. Thus, the group examined the journey of places physically, vocally and through images

In response to the delivery of Rudakoff’s Four Elements methodology, the Youth Participants were asked to consider place in terms of air, earth, fire and water, and to use the elements to describe home (figuratively as well as literally). Further applying the Four Elements methods, the Youth Participants were asked to identify an element which they deemed as characterizing each place.

As their homework on Day One, the Youth Participants were charged with researching their Clan name and the place they came from.

July 11th:

In the two exercises described below, Mbothwe introduced writing prompts from within the Four Elements methodology and drew upon the primary research questions of the workshop.

In the first exercise, the young people were asked to begin their creative response by completing one of the following prompts:

- My home is where…
- My home is…
- Home…

In the second exercise, the group was asked to evolve and develop their performance of home, by creating an Image Flash, which Rudakoff has described as a means of recording images “that capture quick, undetailed flashes of events, feelings, thoughts, actions, people, or whatever evokes an instant connection…”. In this context, the Youth Participants’ Image Flash began with a sentence fragment which was to provide a snapshot of their lived experiences of home. They were encouraged to develop a list of images or fragments of the beginnings of stories evoking home through the writing prompt: There are stories about...

This second dramaturgical strategy was familiar to the Youth Participants, given that the event that launched our Common Plants workshop was a series of performed creative responses by the professional artists, based upon the Rudakoff exercise called There are stories about......…. By witnessing the performance of the professional artists’ first incarnation of their creatives responses, the Youth Participants were able to envision what might be possible in their own workshop. This viewing served not simply as an example of how to interpret the exercise, but rather as an inspiration to the Youth Participants; this was one of the ways to demonstrate that their own stories, told through the filter of their own experiences was of value not only personally, but to an audience.

Each Youth Participant was given a set period of time to chronicle a series of There are stories about...… which related to the idea or reality of “home”. After the allotted writing time, each Youth Participant was invited to read aloud three of the There are stories about...… items from their list, sharing their explorations publicly for the first time. These initial lists became the foundation for the Youth Participants’ individual pieces, and later, their integrated group pieces.

Drama education research underlines the significance of reflection as essential to best practices. Mbothwe committed much time for reflection throughout the first three days of the workshop, in order to deepen the work the young people were creating.
MOn this second day of the workshop, the reflections about home were deeply thoughtful and candid. Mbothwe asked the Youth Participants whether their research about home had been a difficult exercise for them to accomplish. Fundamentally, Mbothwe was asking youth to undertake issues of remembering. Several members of the workshop noted that an examination of the past was more often the purview of the Sombali or a grandparent, who normally do the telling; to now be asked to serve in the capacity of re-telling, was unexpected and revealing. Some participants noted that the inquiry “forced me to look at my mother’s side”; others noted that the exercises and homework allowed them to “know each other better”.
MFragments from the young people’s responses to home offered a sense of the issues with which they grappled as they began developing their pieces about home:

- Khayelitsha is safe and loving
- There is sharing as long as there is family
- In Khayelitsha there is the freedom to express yourself
- There is love here…where children feel comfortable
- It is because of family, it is because of them, because of my mother…
- Home is about acceptance
- Home is warmth of family
- I have love here in Khayelitsha, but my home is where our ancestors are; where initiation will take place
- Cape Town is where job, schooling and opportunities are, but my heart is there, in the Eastern Cape
- Physical, material things--things I can touch and feel--these are home
Our roots--these are home

MMbothwe pressed the dialogue forward asking “What is not home?” and the young people identified differences in food, in smells of the familiar or the unfamiliar, for example. The distinctions between Khayelitsha as the site of home, or the Eastern Cape, opened deliberations about these two entirely different conceptions of home. In framing this reflection, Mbothwe provoked the participants to consider how and where they locate themselves. He asked, “In ten years time, when you have children, when you are fathers with children, where will you point to tell them where is home?” One response to this query, referring perhaps to cultural practise or religious requirements was: “Most of the things we can’t do here. I will tell them the Eastern Cape.” The discourse continued to explore this concept, examining the issue of how to be observant, perhaps adapting the spirit of original practises when rooted in an urban location such as Khayelitsha. The complexity of being true to tradition was also highlighted: “there are too many different practices that might prevent them from being fully present, versus being surrounded by graves in the kraal, with names of their clan all around”.

Further to this discussion, one Youth Participant pondered, “What happens when we grow up in Cape Town, perhaps all our lives, but our home is considered to be where the umbilical cord is buried (e.g. in Eastern Cape)?” Later, issues of gender were raised and the recognition of the significance of knowing the “mother and father’s side equally” was discussed.
MThese insightful conversations, bridging both the personal and the public, served as the foundation from which the participants moved to examine the re-presentation of home as it might be discovered and articulated through a variety of theatrical structures. As part of the work to discover the raw material of the evolving creative responses, “Ingredients of Home” emerged that included: daily activities; home in relation to food and eating; words and rhythm of home; songs and voices; objects; names of places (interior and exterior, names, streets, addresses); texture or size or shape of the landscape (internal and external); clan names; home is made by people; family politics; extended family (does whom you stay with determine where the home is?); hopes and expectations for children at birth; parents’ dreams as opposed to children’s dreams; how you see your families’ expectations and your expectations of yourself?; home, from oral to written word.
In beginning the theatrical exploration of home, the young people were also asked to observe the following guidelines: To tell a story, you must first describe it in detail; describe the specifics of home, in detail, including all the sights and sounds, from the animals to the smells to the landscape; make the detailed descriptions physical; consider narration and sound; what specific things make it a home? Narrating the story is different than being inside the story; choose one of the Four Elements that relates to home and explore the relationship.
MMoving through each of these tasks, the Youth Participants were faced with the challenge of how to translate their lived experiences, narratives, objects into theatrical form and how to transmit the deeply personal to a public audience. While each participant wrestled with facing the challenges of aesthetic translation (and the joy of discovering the beauty in the simplicity of telling stories theatrically), Zatzman struggled with issues of language comprehension as the majority of the workshop was conducted in isiXhosa, with some English. While theatre transcends language on many levels, in order to be wholly committed to the process and the participants, Zatzman maintained active engagement in reading other forms of communication (physical vocabulary, interpretive expression, the presentation of visual images). In order to enrich Zatzman’s perspective on the discussions, improvisations or evolving performance scenes, ongoing dialogue with Mbothwe became an essential component of her role as observer-participant, and provided a more nuanced reading of context and artistic responses throughout the week.
MThe homework assigned by Mbothwe at the end of Day Two was to create a two minute piece about home with attention paid to detail so that place would be clearly evoked. As well the participants were tasked to bring in three objects that represented home to them on an individual level.

July 12th:

Specific exercises exploring the elements took place during the morning session. The group worked extensively to explore the four elements through physicality.
MMbothwe next posed the following questions to the group: What do the elements mean to us in relation to our homes? What specific objects/ things remind you of a specific place? What objects remind you of a specific element? How might the elements mean different things in different places and in relation to home?
MThe work then focussed on the three objects that participants had been tasked to bring in. In presenting their objects, the Youth Participants were asked to deliberately link the elements with the objects as part of their exploration of home. Two of the elements were discussed in great depth, and what follows are examples of those conversations.

A discussion of Earth explored many ideas such as gardens, earth which provides food, livestock, houses made of mud, land that is rich and fertile, tending the earth where ancestors are and giving them enough space.
MThe Four Elements discussion further made manifest the rupture between urban and rural lived experiences, and the implications and associations of home examined through this lens. As the Youth Participants explored the element of Earth in relation to notions of home, several young people re-told: “if [someone is] buried here [Khayelitsha], the earth is not warm; the person will come in dreams to his mother or sibling to say “you/I am cold”. As the discussion shifted between the elements of Earth and Fire, other Youth Participants reflected: “It is not dark. The lights of Cape Town are everywhere. The ancestors can only come in the dark.The electricity of the city means that it is never dark, and therefore they cannot come.”
MThe discussion of Fire started with an exploration of life in the Eastern Cape where the ancestors of many of the Youth Participants come from. Fire was acknowledged in largely constructive ways: as having traditional associations as a signifier of warmth and peace; as a place of education (sitting around the fire learning); as a space of knowledge, education, warmth, family stories, respect; as a component of storytelling which is part of the oral tradition; as a part of the emotional stories of family which are both sad and happy. The discussion of Fire then moved to Cape Town where it was seen in primarily destructive ways: as a place of division; a signifier of danger, a creator of destruction.
MDuring the morning improvisation exercises, the Youth Participants were also tasked to deliberate on animating the elements in these ways: by considering each of the elements, specifically; by responding to the elements, by becoming the elements. These actions were to include sound and physical activity. The participants were also asked to distinguish between narrating or describing an element and actually being in one of the states of the element.
MIn the afternoon session, the Youth Participants began to build on the discoveries of the morning by beginning to incorporate components of the Four Elements exploration in their elaboration and development of their individual creative responses. Each Youth Participant received dramaturgical input from Mbothwe to further evolve the work.
As homework, each participant was asked to continue to evolve and refine their two minute creative response performances.

July 13th:

The focus of Day Four was on generating a devised theatre process with the group as a whole, in contrast to the previous focus on generating individual work. Throughout the morning, Mbothwe worked intensively to develop their sense of agency in telling and re-telling narratives collectively. In the afternoon session, the emphasis was on building on the collective explorations, and the Youth Participants were tasked to collaborate in groups, linking their individual two minute creative response performances into collages with the theme of home.
MUsing the metaphor of Common Plants, Mbothwe framed this synthesis of the individual pieces: the final staging would gather the individual flowers, each one beautiful and unique individually, but now transplanted inside a garden to be collectively enjoyed, all the more powerful for the beauty of the whole.

The fifteen Youth Participants were divided into four groups for the final presentation. The challenge for each of the newly constituted groups was to retain the specificity, authenticity and voice of the individual creative response performances, examining each to distill the essence of each individual piece while striving to identify the common ground of this new “garden”. The groups began the process of integrating their pieces and after a short rehearsal period, presented their newly devised collective work. Mbothwe encouraged the participants to develop a piece that suggested their state of being; reminded them that text is not the only method of oral communication; reminded them to locate sound physically, find the balance of narrating and interpreting through action; explore the Primary Element fully; allow the audience to “see” home; simplify, clarify and edit.
MMbothwe and Zatzman provided dramaturgical feedback on the development of the collaborative creative response performances as each group continued to rehearse.

July 14th:

The final day was devoted solely to rehearsal and then to performance for the Artist Participants and the Creative/Research Team. Throughout the week, Mbothwe had focussed on experimentation with text and image, sound and movement, not fixing the product until the end of the workshop. Each of the four culminating creative response performances were five minutes in length.
MPerformances took place in a series of sites throughout the building in which the workshops had taken place, on the Hiddingh Campus of University of Cape Town. These sites included in the large studio space in which we had been working, in other open classroom spaces, and in a hallway defined by a massive stairwell, in which the structure of the site itself served to shape the relationship between actors and audience.

For example, the long, narrow space of the hallway and stairwell determined the linear, channel staging of one of the performances. In this creative response, the environmental theatre practice reflected the content of the scene, itself. With Air (wind/ breath/whistles/movement) as the primary element in their re-presentation of home, the characters were wildly tossed within a site that propelled them back and forth down a hallway, as they grappled with how best to understand where and how home is constructed. We were witness to the struggle of the characters, thrust between the ancestors and contemporary practices of religion; between Cape Town and the Eastern Cape; between forgetfulness and remembrance; technology and spirituality. In the new South Africa, since the fall of Apartheid, the post-struggle years present yet another challenge in locating and narrating identity, especially for youth who were babies or toddlers in 1994.
MThe personal stories that informed the narratives of the creative response performances were built on a range of memories: those of the participants themselves, as well as those shared by their families. The Four Elements work, its application through the exploration of Clan Names, and examination of issues related to identifying home, for example, precipitated the questioning of fathers and mothers. The young people went home to ask family members about their histories, about their clan names, about places of their ancestors, about journeys their families had taken. Often, the narratives they shared in the workshop were new discoveries borne out of conversations never before undertaken with their families.

Locating and creating the narratives and histories was illuminating for all, and uncomfortable for a few. One young woman expressed her uneasiness by suggesting that it felt as if she had died; as if people were talking about her at her funeral. One young man was candid in telling us that he had never spent so much time in conversation with his mother, as when he began to investigate issues of home and clan names for this Common Plants project. Many of the Youth Participants, in fact, when reflecting during the post performance discussion, volunteered that these discussion were ground-breaking for them, as they had never sustained such lengthy discussions about such family related topics with their parents before. The work also, the Youth Participants acknowledged, led them to the discovery that their own stories, even when told to strangers, were important.
MThe Youth Participants also became acutely aware of the notion of home as a contested site as they investigated their own location in relation to questions of “Where is home?”. Further they explored this concept as they played with and within the state of confusion of living between cultures/ancestors/histories/sites/homes. “Even the President himself is confused,” said one of the male Youth Participants, performing in-role as an Elder.
MDoes one need to make a choice? How does one find one’s way? Does one live in a state of becoming? Does the one assume the state of “living between” as home? Each of the Youth Participants, as well as Mbothwe and Zatzman, spent the week asking these and many other profound questions. Questioning through theatrical forms (sound, language, movement, metaphor, role play, images) allowed the workshop participants to work against the grain of fixedness, and to avoid tidy answers to narratives which are inherently unfixed, particular, contextual, relational and continuous.

The Artist Participant Workshops and the Youth Participant Workshops were initially staged as parallel structures. However, in order to further cultivate the relationship between the two branches of the Common Plants project (in addition to the shared methodological stance of Rudakoff’s process, to Mbothwe’s contribution to both projects, and to the initial group event where the Youth Participants viewed the Artist Participants initial creative response offerings and met the Creative/Research Team) Mbothwe and Zatzman raised the possibility of the Youth Participants presenting their There are stories about... pieces to the Artist Participants and the Creative/Research Team at the conclusion of the week. For the whole of the group this cross pollination fulfilled an important aspect of the Common Plants mandate: creative response based on exploring difference and commonality; listening to and narrating stories of identity and location.

Week One | Week Two | Youth Workshops