The Eritrea Community-Based Theatre Project

Abstract

Following Jane Plastow's contextual history of Eritrean theatre in NTQ50, Paul Warwick gave an account in the following issue of its previously undocumented role during the thirty-year Eritrean struggle for independence, describing the efforts of the freedom fighters to create theatre for the first time in a rural context. The Eritrean People's Liberation Front not only deployed theatre as a propaganda weapon, but also recognized its value as an agent for educating the people in matters ranging from women's rights to the benefits of modern medicine and farming methods: and with victory came measures further to stimulate the growth and development of theatre as part of Eritrean culture. Jane Plastow, in this third and concluding article, takes up the story with the invitation issued by the new government to her and her colleagues to initiate the ‘Eritrea Community-Based Theatre Project’, in an attempt both to widen the perspectives of Eritrean actors and to draw upon all relevant traditions, African and European, in developing a popular but distinctive theatre for the people. In addition to her role as director of the project, Jane Plastow is a lecturer at Leeds University, having worked in theatre for some years in a number of other African nations.