Theater of Life

Wan Smolbag, a Theater Troupe in Melanesia, Raises Awareness by Acting Out HIV and STD Basics

by Liz Thompson

The documentary film Groun Bilong Yumi recently looked at the use of popular theater as a method of developing social and political awareness in Melanesia. Both here and in the Pacific Islands in general theater is used as a tool to inform the community about a wide range of issues that face them, a tool that will help its members make more informed decisions about the issues they are confronted by. When many members of the community are unable to read, the most direct and immediate way of communicating ideas is through theater. Often environmentally focused in the earlier years of its conception, the work of contemporary popular theater now often explores health issues such as STDs and HIV/AIDS–as is the case with Wan Smolbag Theatre Company in Port Vila, Vanuatu (located between Fiji and Australia).

The work of Wan Smolbag is a long way from austere settings and seated audiences–the group’s work has a fresh, spontaneous feel to it. Sometimes performed in the middle of the jungle, without any need for electric lights, the idea is that they can fit whatever they need into "wan smolbag"–one small bag. Directed by Peter Walker, many of the company’s plays are written by his partner and scriptwriter Jo Dorras. The company works out of a large warehouse in the back streets of Port Vila and all the actors seem to be extremely enthusiastic about the work they do.

The company has managed to build up a strong reputation and often works in conjunction with governmental bodies, recently working with the United Nations Population Fund to look at reproductive health education through drama for nurses. The actors teach people who don’t necessarily want to put on a full-scale play how to liven up clinic discussion or outreach work. All sorts of health issues are covered, with a particular focus on contraception. A reproductive drop-in center opened by Wan Smolbag in conjunction with the Vanuatu Ministry of Health is a sign of their commitment to this particular issue. "Many young people had no access to condoms," says Morinda Tari, an actress with Wan Smolbag’s Group 2. "They couldn’t go to the hospital to get free condoms because people would see them, and they wouldn’t buy them, because they have no money. All our work was useless, unless we could get free condoms out there, and that’s why our clinic started."

Raising awareness of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) has also been a major focus for the theater company. To this end they developed a series of short plays called the "STI/AIDS Sketches" to make understanding these infections easier. They found that, as they performed their plays for live audiences often followed by question-and-answer sessions, many people who have no medical training and had received relatively little reproductive health education often found it difficult to understand how STIs spread or what HIV does in the body. The sketches they developed in response to this are a sort of living biology lesson. In preparing the performances the group worked closely with the Vanuatu Health Department to ensure all information they were providing was correct.

The actors play the parts of sexually transmitted infections as well as sperm, semen and eggs, and perform short one-minute plays showing how an STI spreads from one person to another. At various stages the actors freeze and a narrator asks the audience some questions to see whether they have understood what they’ve seen. Toward the end of the sketches the actor playing one of the sperm rushes forward to meet the egg and gets trapped by a condom; the audience is laughing, but also understanding the gag. "People want more information," says Noel Aru, one of the actors in Wan Smolbag. "It doesn’t mean they suddenly change what they are doing, but at least they know the dangers and know what to do if they get an STI." The HIV/AIDS sketches work along the same principle.

Wan Smolbag has encouraged theater groups throughout the region to tackle the issue of HIV/AIDS and has trained performers in numerous countries, including the actors of Women’s Action for Change (WAC) Theatre Group based in Suva, Fiji. WAC has produced its own play on HIV which focuses on the discrimination of living with AIDS and conveying the fact that homosexuals are not the only people who contract HIV, a still commonly held belief in many Melanesian and Pacific countries. WAC performers often take their work to prisons and use the theater to communicate ideas to prisoners. In conjunction with these performances they use Playback Theater in which prisoners relate and share stories of their lives and experiences, which are then acted out by the group. The performances often inspire dialogue and help people look at their own situations from a new perspective. However, Penny Moore, WAC’s director, came to the conclusion that work related to raising HIV/AIDS awareness had to be done in conjunction with raising awareness around the issue of alcohol. Penny Moore also wrote a play trying to encourage people to get tested for the virus and to negotiate safer sex. Wan Smolbag regularly feed back issues raised in audience discussions to relevant government departments which will then hopefully incorporate these ideas and needs in their attempt to produce relevant and effective government programs.

In 2000, Wan Smolbag attempted a fairly ambitious project which was to produce a radio soap opera called Family Blong Serah, or Serah’s Family. In a recent survey, over seventy-eight percent of people asked in Port Vila were listening on a weekly basis to the unfolding drama. In one of the story lines, one of the characters dies of AIDS and his wife and daughter are left to deal with the community backlash as it’s one of the first cases in the country. The drama attempts to promote understanding and care for the person living with AIDS and his family rather than apportion blame. The use of radio has meant that the work of the company is able to reach a far broader audience and Family Blong Serah is broadcast on Radio Australia’s Tok Pisin service, which is broadcast weekly to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Various videos have been produced by Wan Smolbag about HIV/AIDS and reproductive health topics: Positive (2001), for example, explored the government’s response to the rising AIDS epidemic. "Some people in the rural areas had never heard of AIDS. Now most people do know about it, but lots of them still think local doctors can cure it!" says Lucy Sersere, from Group 1 of Wan Smolbag: "When the first AIDS case was announced, people in the villages told me they were frightened to come to town! So there’s still a lot of work to be done explaining how AIDS spreads!"

Liz Thompson is a photographer, writer, radio producer, and filmmaker who has travelled extensively in the Asia-Pacific region. She wroteand directed the documentary Breaking Bows and Arrows, which was recently awarded the United Nations Media Peace Award for Best Television. Recently completed is Cave in the Snow, a documentary which, through the the life and work of British-born Buddhist nun Tenzin Palmo, looks at the issue of gender inequity in religious organizations.