BOOK REVIEW:APPLIED THEATRE AND SEXUAL HEALTH COMMUNICATION:APERTURES OF POSSIBILITY, KATHARINE E. LOW (2020)

摘要

I found Katharine E. Low's book, Applied Theatre and Sexual Health Communication: Apertures of Possibility, an in-depth and open reflection of her applied theatre (AT) practice through her project, Our Place, Our Stage, in Nyanga, a township outside of Cape Town in South Africa. To me, as a reader, it was a real privilege to be a fly on the wall as she debates and debunks what she and others in the past have done as AT practitioners.Throughout the book, she references many AT practitioners and sets out why and how she differs from them in her current practice, which is the case study for the book. In this way, she offers up fresh alternatives with sound reasoning why AT practice should evolve. Low goes into detail around two areas of AT practice that are often at odds with each other. The first area is 'justification anxiety7 (59) around what AT practitioners do and why it is done (Low cites Eleonora Belfiore describing 'justification anxiety7 as the difficulty that often accompanies AT work in finding a balance between the many, often contradictory, demands: the AT facilitator's practice, the research needs of the project, the outcomes wanted by the funders and the associated ethical considerations of the project [59]). The second area of detail is around the impact of the work and the 'impact bandwagon' (58) that she describes as the use of AT by funders for disseminating'political, social, and health agendas [...]'but without the needed funding, training or time necessary to cany out anything other than superficial practice (58). These are two areas in AT practice that are often argued and debated by practitioners - that is finding the balance between top-down agenda setting (by funders) and searching for what the community needs through bottom-up sensitization work. She also fleshes out three themes of safety, risk-taking and moments of subtle resistance, which are investigated by her practice and are the foundation on which participants created works responding to health concerns, crime and limited access to public service (116). The entire book is a search to'gain confidence in the naming of the intentions of our practice' (61).