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Articles

Volume 34, Number 2 (2013)

North-South Theatre Exchanges: Sistren's Tours of Canada in the 1980s and Early 1990s

Submitted
February 20, 2014
Published
2013-06-06

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between Canadian development agency funding and popular theatre during the 1980s and early 1990s, the period when Canada was particularly focused on promoting itself internationally as a benevolent nation. Sistren Theatre Collective of Jamaica is used as a case study to demonstrate that popular theatre was seen as an important way for engaging with communities and for disseminating development education in both Canada and the global South. Sistren was funded by a number of Canadian development agencies and toured Canada three times during the 1980s and early 1990s. Its work was seen as a model of grassroots outreach because it was using Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed—among other theatre techniques—and Jamaica’s oral tradition to devise feminist theatre. In the same period, Canadian popular theatre workers/companies were also funded by Canadian development agencies to produce theatre with community groups. With development agency funding, Canadian popular theatre workers/companies formed the Canadian Popular Theatre Alliance, which held festivals of popular theatre every two years. The festivals brought together popular theatre groups from Canada and the global South to exchange skills. Sistren attended the festival held in 1987 in Sydney, Nova Scotia, which was criticised for its focus on the needs of development educators rather than popular theatre workers. This article will argue that the increasing involvement of development agencies in popular theatre during the 1980s turned what started as a genuine attempt to exchange theatre skills between groups from the global North and South into an opportunity to parade funding recipients through development networks.