Prof Teer-Tomaselli, Mr Dominic Zulu and Offender* )On 1 December, Professor Teer-Tomaselli presented certificates to 20 offenders at the Youth Centre at Westville Correctional Facility. This marked the completion of a course that used theatre to address topics identified by the management at the Youth Centre pertinent to the work there. The topics included: maintaining the self-esteem of staff and offenders; implementation of a no-smoking policy; managing sexual assault amongst offenders. The offenders worked with Dr Christopher John from the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Drama and Performance Studies programme and five postgraduate students and collectively made plays that drew on audience participation techniques in order to pose problems and generate suggestions from the audiences made up of sentenced offenders. Professor Teer-Tomaseli described how this work combined three major areas of academic work, teaching, research, and community outreach. The office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor and Head of College of Humanities, Prof Ayee, supported the celebration.
Dr John has led the collaboration between the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the Department of Correctional Services for 11 years running theatre projects at the Medium B (men’s maximum-security) Centre, the Female Centre, and the Youth Centre. The collaboration is sustained because benefits are identified for all the parties and therefore the project is not dependent on direct funding. The university staff and students benefits from access to a research and a learning environment; the offenders benefit from the social impact of participating in Arts projects; the Department of Correctional Services gains an extension to their capacity to deliver programmes to offenders as well as project evaluations and research reports.
Dr John said that sometimes people think work with offenders, particularly in the area of arts and culture, reeks of the bleeding heart liberal and then described how he had been robbed and assaulted in his home and a few months later his father had been murdered. He added that a few days before this celebration, two of his assailants had finally been sentenced. He then went on to say that, “Working with offenders, and inevitably most of them have committed violent crimes, is not a soft option. Correction Centres cannot be left alone and expected to resolve social ills. They do not, we know that. We come from a violent society and not just one of physical violence. Our history produced many barriers between people not only those of race but also divisions based on, economy, class, and ethnicity. Violence is only possible when we perceive each other as less human. It facilitates violence. Public and offenders need to negotiate how they perceive each other. Arts and culture provide an important opportunity to renegotiate this and promote a counter culture in which we perceive each other as more fully human.”
In this project, offenders produced suggestions about how they and correctional staff might access behaviours and interactions that broaden and humanise the over-determined roles of guard and prisoner in which they are locked. Through the theatre, the offenders have held problem-solving discussions across the informal boundaries of the numbers gangs and explored more democratic behaviours related to collective bargaining in order to address some difficult issues: this rather than resorting to gang violence as a tool for negotiating. They have also discussed the sensitive issue of sexual assault amongst offenders. The suggestions generated during the plays have been circulated to the management and correctional staff and back to the offenders completing a cycle of communication involving speaking out and listening.
For more information on this project, contact Dr Christopher John at the Drama and Performance Studies programme at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on 031 260 1076.
(* The names of offenders are not permitted to be published)
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