The arepp:Theatre for Life Trust is an edutainment NGO, which has been operating nationally in South Africa since 1987. Using live, dramatic presentations arepp:Theatre for Life travels to schools, providing interactive, social life-skills education to school-going youth, enabling informed choice and developing resilience.

THE PRESENTATION

Presented in the real-life context of the audience, there are two aspects: the live performance of a play, specifically designed for the targeted age group to foster identification and emotional recognition; followed by a facilitated peer discussion, to encourage debate, and further cognitive personalisation, internalisation and contextualising of the issues presented.

Grade 10's watching "Look Before You Leap: Hangin'" Mpumalanga 2003.

These presentations display, encourage, demonstrate and examine life-skills at work, in ‘real life’ situations, and most importantly, in context.

CONTENT

The content addresses the issues inherent in sexuality and the development of self-concept, self-image and self-esteem, and engages in the notions of choice making, responsibility, tolerance and adaptability. What arepp:Theatre for Life terms as developing self-efficacy and resilience.

Resilience in arepp:Theatre for Life terms is the capacity to withstand, transcend, respond to and recover from changes, set-backs or adversity.

Using a rights-based approach each presentation is carefully crafted to highlight and foster thought and debate around the issues of identity, rights, relationships, discrimination, gender, homosexuality, pregnancy, peer pressure, sex, substance use, HIV/AIDS and STIs, violence and physical and emotional abuse. The presentations support the initiatives and objectives within the National AIDS plan and compliment the Department of education’s Life-skills/Life-orientation Curriculum.

OBJECTIVE

The specific objectives of each arepp:Theatre for Life presentation are

the encouragement of a positive self-concept,
the enforcement of self-esteem and self-value,
the provision of relevant information,
and the development of decision making life-skills,

so that the learners will be enabled to

make sound, informed lifestyle choices about what is best for them, and their community, in their particular contexts;
accept and take responsibility for those decisions;
be flexible and robust in responding to the consequences, both foreseen and unforeseen.

The learners develop resilience and are enabled with informed choice for sustainable decision-making.

PROJECTS

The Sangoma in a scene from "About Us: Playing for Keeps" Durban 2002

arepp:Theatre for Life runs repertory touring teams, and is able to perform in 4 project focuses; Primary Schools (grades 1 to 3 and grades 5 to 7) and Secondary Schools (grades 8 and 9 and grades 10 to 12). arepp:Theatre for Life works with specifically identified schools, engaging South African school going youth in English, Afrikaans, IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, SeTswana and SeSotho.

An arepp:Theatre for Life team spends a full day at each school, performing three presentations to, up to, 12 classes a day. In addition, the arepp:Theatre for Life performer/facilitators interact with the learners formally and informally in their breaks. In this way they are able to engage in immediate guidance and support if necessary, as well as conducting informal focus groups and discussions for monitoring and evaluation purposes.

At the end of the day, the team present the school with a report on the impact of the presentations, recommendations for further follow-up and support - as well as contact organisations and services for this, and a follow-up lesson plan.

EVALUATION

Using an Action Learning approach, research, monitoring and evaluation are embedded in every level of the intervention. Each presentation is evaluated by an educator and groups of learners, who complete assessment questionnaires. These, along with the team’s school report, assess and analyse each presentation, and the engagement and interaction of the audience, allowing arepp:Theatre for Life to highlight concerns, trends and issues, and to assess potential impact.

Grade 3 learners watching a performance of No Monkey Business: Inside Out. Tembisa 2004

In a 3-year Impact Evaluation completed in 2005, the results indicated that “the arepp:Theatre for Life approach has a specific impact. In other words, if x (the arepp:Theatre for Life presentation), then there will be y (a change in sense of self-efficacy)” and that the arepp:Theatre for Life approach “encourages openness, plain speaking and debate; this adds up to ‘increased self-efficacy’.” (Nell, M & Shapiro, J (2005) Beyond Gut Feeling)

In this way, the learners at each identified school can receive an intensive, supportive, ongoing, holistic programme.