Abstract
This article examines the trial of participatory theater for disseminating new agricultural knowledge among subsistence farmers in Timor Leste, a small underdeveloped country in the Asia-Pacific region. The aim of the trial was to provide information on improved seed varieties and appropriate agronomic practices to maximize their yield among rural communities where rates of adult illiteracy are high and the reach of mass media forms of communication is low. The findings highlight the potential for entertainment-education forms to provide effective science communication tools in contexts where approaches more typical in developed countries are severely constrained.
This article details the trial of a science communication program in Timor Leste, an impoverished nation in the Indonesian archipelago. Many studies of science communication programs and practice are based in developed countries with ready access to media and other relevant resources. Can science communication programs work effectively in developing countries with highly constrained communication contexts?
The Challenge and the Communication Context
Timor Leste faces enormous challenges in terms of food security, due to unsustainable farming techniques, soil infertility, and the generally low yields obtained from traditional crop varieties (Lopes & Nesbitt, 2012). As a result, seasonal food shortages are common. According to a 2011 report by the Millennium Development Goal Achievement Fund, per capita food consumption of more than 42% of the population of Timor Leste was below the food poverty line in 2007—an increase from 31% in 2001 (Noij, 2011). Timor Leste’s Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF), in conjunction with the Australian Government, has funded Seeds of Life (SoL), a program designed to address food insecurity. The principal objective of SoL is to ensure that 50% of farmers in Timor Leste adopt and routinely use higher yielding crop varieties of maize, sweet potato, rice, peanuts, and cassava by the end of the program in 2016 (AusAid, 2010).
The communication landscape in Timor Leste is highly challenging. Access to mass media is inconsistent, due to poor power infrastructure, or nonexistent. The World Bank estimates that 40% of people 15 years and older living in rural areas of Timor are illiterate. This makes printed material largely irrelevant. How then can scientific ideas be presented to this community in a way that is appropriate and effective? Given the lack of typically available communication channels, a different kind of science communication program was needed. A recent commentary published in Science Communication investigated theater as a “valid educating tool in the communication of science” (Lanza, Crescimbene, La Longa, & D’Addezio, 2014, p. 132). We wish to add to the limited body of scientific literature in this area, by describing the use of theater as a science communication tool within a developing country context.
Theater as a Communication Tool
Theater is commonly used in low-income and low-literacy countries to disseminate information and awareness of social issues (Pelto & Singh, 2010; Sypher, McKinley, Ventsam, & Valdeavellano, 2002). It is regularly employed in entertainment-education programs that have evolved from oral and performing arts traditions, including theater and storytelling (Storey & Sood, 2013).
In the development context, theater has been credited as an effective medium of information exchange because it enables villagers to produce and distribute messages from their own perspective (Mda, 1993). It is “made for and by the community [and] engages people to identify issues of concern, analyze and then together think about how change can happen” (Sloman, 2012, p. 44). This highlights one of the strengths of theater as a communication tool. It is able to create a dialogue between experts and the community, allowing a shared creation of solutions (Storey & Sood, 2013). This shared creation is an important aspect of current science communication practice. For true dialogue in Timor to occur, a specific type of theater needed to be used.
Participatory theater is a technique where audiences and actors together produce the performance and in the process enter into a dialogue about known and possible new outcomes. Through the ability of audience members to change the plot and suggest alternative narratives, the performance demonstrates a range of consequences and opportunities. Participatory theater techniques thus create a space for audience members to engage in both defining the problem and generating a solution, with the freedom to discuss issues openly (Mitchell & Freitag, 2011).
This approach has been applied to many different communication strategies, such as health promotion (Storey & Sood, 2013) and sustainable livelihoods (Cardey, Garforth, Govender, & Dyll-Myklebust, 2013), including agricultural communication. Prior to the trial under discussion in this article, however, it had never been applied to agriculture in Timor Leste.
Performance Development
The initial pilot involved a theater troupe comprising 11 students enrolled in the bachelor of communications (Theatre/Media) degree at Charles Sturt University in Australia, which teaches the use of theater as an educational tool. SoL decided the troupe should promote awareness of two higher yielding varieties of maize—Sele and Noi Mutin—and present information about agronomic practices that would maximize the results from these seeds. Each of the following messages represented a desired behavioral change in the farmers:
Planting the new varieties in rows rather than scattering seeds around garden plots
Planting only two seeds per hole at defined distances
Weeding
Storing grain in airtight containers
A basic performance structure was built around the given messages, but very little in the way of a traditional “script” was used as much of the content of each performance would arise from interaction with actual audiences. The students had already studied basic improvised theater, including “mumming”—an ancient theatrical form common to many agricultural societies that reenacts the patterns of the seasons (life, death, and renewal). As part of their studies, the students had performed improvised shows employing this set structure in various venues in and around their university in Australia. They had also studied physical theater techniques, including juggling, balancing, throws, and tumbling, and many could play at least one musical instrument.
In 40 hours of workshop rehearsal in Australia, the students were introduced to the notion of Playback Theater—a distinct participatory theater technique in which stories are elicited from the audience and dramatized by the actors. Initially in this workshop, students were paired: One would tell a story to the other, who would then dramatize what had been told in gesture and mime, with a director advising on how clearly and quickly the basic message was relayed. Eventually this technique was practiced using the full complement of students before a small audience—members of which were invited to tell the stories and comment on how well they had been dramatized.
On arrival in Dili, a final, 5-hr rehearsal was conducted before an audience of SoL staff members, but improvisation continued throughout the tour. A dance that summarized the appropriate planting and storage techniques was added on the second day of performances, for instance, and a song (in Tetun, the lingua franca of Timor Leste) reinforcing the techniques was composed, rehearsed, and incorporated on the third day.
Performance Structure
The performance would begin with a procession into the marketplace during which the actors—speaking Tetun—would invite people to participate. This was designed to create a warm and respectful relationship between actors and audience as well as to create a performance space in crowded market areas and excite attention in what followed.
The troupe would then enact a prerehearsed “mumming” session, building quickly on the momentum generated by the procession. The actors would play out a harvest (with one actor playing a maize cob). A conflict would then ensue between two actors representing, on one hand, a desire to eat the harvest (han in Tetun, meaning “to eat”) and, on the other, a concern to preserve grain for replanting (kuda meaning “to plant”). Han and kuda would then “fight” over the maize cob until han was subdued, only to be revived in the form of a still more bountiful maize cob in the next harvest. The actors would then celebrate the success of kuda’s prudent decision, and this would lead into a more general celebration of farmers.
One member of the troupe would then engage directly with audience members (through an interpreter). The performance would now take the form of Playback Theater. Farmers were asked to tell stories about the difficulties encountered in growing maize in this particular region (typically in mountainous districts, traditional seed varieties produce crops highly susceptible to wind damage). Farmers would also be asked how they felt about losing quantities of their harvest in these ways. After each story was told, the troupe would enact what had been said (including the emotions recounted), and audience members were asked to comment on how well the enactment represented their experience. If changes were suggested, these would be enacted until the audience was satisfied that the troupe understood the problem. The audience was then asked if they would like a different outcome. If so, the troupe would then enact the problems related by the audience but this time with different outcomes—Sele and Noi Mutin varieties, for instance, are resistant to wind—so that in this way farmers could grasp the advantages of improved varieties.
The actors would then perform the dance as a form of Image Theater. Image Theater does not require language: Meaning is conveyed in concrete form by action. The troupe danced the planting of the new varieties in rows (Message 1), at particular distances, with fewer seeds per hole (Message 2), together with appropriate weeding (Message 3) and storage practices (sealing the harvest in air-tight containers; Message 4). Each cycle of action would be repeated three or four times and was accompanied by the song composed to reinforce these same messages.
The performance would then conclude with a circle dance to which audience members were invited to take part and during which free samples of seed were distributed. Typical performance duration was about 45 mins.
Trial Phases
The 1-week pilot tour was planned for July 2013 in farming communities a 2- to 3-hr drive south of the capital Dili. Three Timorese theater practitioners from Teatru Timor Leste joined the tour in order to reduce language and cultural barriers, share skills, and build local capacity in participatory theater techniques. A fourth Timorese (who had worked in communications for both SoL and MAF) was hired as translator. SoL provided an itinerary of six performances over a 7-day period in village markets, which generally operate between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. The village markets are typically set up under makeshift shelters and line the sides of roads. The larger markets commandeer a block of streets and alleyways. They are bustling venues with people and livestock and with small buses bringing people from outlying villages in to the center to buy and sell produce.
In the second phase, SoL contracted Teatru Timor Leste to conduct a further extended trial, employing the same participatory theater techniques, over 4 wks (in August/September 2013) in the districts of Aileu and Manatuto. Using only local theater practitioners significantly reduced the cost of this phase (as did the smaller number of performers—five in total) and removed language barriers entirely. Performances were shifted to nighttime venues when farmers were more able to attend. In a 1-month period, the local troupe gave 38 performances (18 in Aileu and 20 in Manatuto).
Evaluation
Two questions were addressed in the overall evaluation of both phases: How effective was participatory theater in (a) attracting and retaining Timorese farmer audiences and (b) conveying messages to achieve desired outcomes? To address the first question, simple counts of audience numbers were used. This provided some gauge of the ability of theater to create a forum for information sharing. Audience numbers were counted at the start of the performance and after 20 and 40 mins to further indicate the ability of the performance to retain audience interest.
To answer the second question, a short survey, in Tetun, was developed in conjunction with SoL. The survey was kept to six closed questions and two open questions with the intention of first identifying if the farmers found the performance interesting and second if the broad communication messages described above were conveyed and understood. Audience members were chosen at random after each performance to participate in the survey. In view of the fact that adults were likely to be illiterate, the Timorese members of the troupe read out the questions and wrote down the answers. This approach limited the number of surveys that could be completed before the audience dispersed, but it also minimized the possibility of false or misleading answers being given out of politeness to foreigners.
Audience Feedback
Over the six performances in the initial 1-week pilot tour, total audience numbers exceeded 1,000 people (about 70% adults). Most adults stayed throughout the performance (given the early morning schedule many children left for school). In the second (4-week) phase of the trial, the 38 performances were seen by a total of 5,300 community members in the two districts. One performance, in Cribas (Manatuto), which was well promoted in advance by MAF staff among local village chiefs, attracted an audience of 2,000 people from surrounding villages. In both phases, the majority of the audience remained for the full 45-min performance.
A total of 121 surveys were undertaken across all performances, providing indicative results only. All respondents indicated that they found the performance interesting and would like to see a similar performance about agriculture in future. The open-ended survey questions provide broad indications of the effectiveness of the theatrical performance in communicating the key messages, as typified by the following: I can see directly with my own eyes and therefore I can do it on my own. (Female farmer, 53 years) When I go back I’ll plant only two seeds a hole and put my grain in drums. (Male farmer, no age given)
The comments also indicate that theater is an acceptable and effective means of communicating to these kinds of audiences given the constraints: The show is easy to understand and the information is clear because most farmers here can’t read. (Male farmer, 32 years) Theater makes it a lot easier for farmers to understand the information. (Male farmer, 42 years)
All of the respondents indicated that they would be interested in trying the new varieties of seed and that they would “do something” because of what they had seen and learned in the performance.
Discussion and Conclusions
The results of the trial indicate that village performances are capable of both attracting and retaining large audiences. It is not possible to conclude that the presentation content was absorbed by all participants, but retention rates through each performance do indicate that they must have been compelling and interesting enough to capture the audiences’ attention.
Audience members’ responses to the style of this presentation provide an indication of the appropriateness of theater as a communication tool for Timor Leste. Partnering with local organizations in program development, promotion, and delivery ensures greater local relevance and attendance and is recommended for practitioners undertaking science communication projects in developing countries. This is an area of practice largely underexplored in science communication and the results presented here indicate that practitioners should consider the use of theater in their activities, particularly in areas of low literacy and poor media infrastructure.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The initial 1-week pilot was funded largely through an Australian Government international student mobility grant, with a small subsidy from Charles Sturt University and student contributions. Seeds of Life provided resources on the ground in Timor Leste. Bill Blaikie of Charles Sturt University was the performance director. The nature of these funds was such that grant numbers are not available (as they were not allocated).