The 2010 ADJUDICATION REPORT
Kenya Schools and Colleges National Drama Festivals
Kisumu Pentecostal Church and Kisumu Girls School
31st March 2010 to 7th April 2010
1. Introduction
The 51st Kenya Schools and Colleges National Drama Festivals were held in Kisumu from March 31st to April 7th 2010. Kisumu Girls High School and the Kisumu Pentecostal Church co-hosted the festivals. Kenya’s students, from all the corners of the country, successfully presented 259 items from across the genres during this year’s festival.
The adjudicators herein undersigned are well pleased and humbled for having been granted the honor to adjudicate in this festival. Not only was it an enjoyable exercise but also a pleasant and welcome challenge to be on the bench.
Before we share our opinion of the festival, we would like to salute and celebrate the late Chairman of the National Drama Festivals’ Committee, Dr. Ezekiel Brown Alembi. We acknowledge and appreciate his commitment and dutiful dedication to the improvement of the drama festival for the sake of the Kenyan Child. May his soul find rest and peace!
2. Findings and Recommendations
We have deliberately decided to design our report in such a way that we communicate directly with the various players who contribute to the success of the drama festivals. It is our considered opinion that we can only be useful if we suggest the actions that can further the realization of the festival’s objectives and who would be in the best position to realize those actions.
The Performing Students:
We do note that the performing pupils and students are very interested and dedicated in their actualization of items on stage. They generally seem to enjoy the festival as a forum for expressing their abilities and performance interests. Students showed that they have put great effort and time in doing their best for their items. We encourage that they continue with the same motivation and particularly internalize the basics of performance and principles of each genre. We remind them that opportunities abound out in the world for performers to realize a living. We also applaud those students who have come on stage and been bold enough to tell the stories of their inspirations and experiences. This festival has experienced young people, in some items, captivatingly sharing their point of view with the rest of us. We encourage students to continue working with their teachers to create mutually satisfying items for the festival.
Directors:
For the most part, we find that directors of items have not put enough effort in helping the students to internalize their items, understand the cause-effect relationships in them and hence be able to actualize their performances to articulate meaning, mood etc. It seems most directors are only interested in having students run through their lines and then mask any weaknesses with gimmicks such as gadgetry, spectacles and ineffectual sounds or music. The result is that students shout themselves hoarse, act in a stiff and inhibited manner and generally get exhausted with performance. We recommend that directors bring themselves up to date with all elements of production; this will help students to use their bodies effectively for acting and generally facilitate the students to enjoy the performance rather than be slaves of it. Help students enunciate their words and syllables well and effectively. Directing should not be interpreted to mean enslaving children to regurgitate a crammed script word-for-word and execute difficult and tiring freezes and pauses. Let us save the vocal chords of our children. Finally, our directors need to differentiate between actions that are fit for the cinema and which ones are appropriate for the limited space of the drama festival. Specifically, directors and teachers should avoid experimenting with daring actions, movements and/or spectacles that put children at the danger of injury.
Scriptwriters:
We appreciate that creators of the items have been bold in their choice of themes for this festival and have attempted to deal with them well. The infusion of humor is well noted and variety in the use of popular terms. We find however, that most scripts were poorly constructed. They had too much content and sentences were too complex and compound for the students. There is even poor grammatical construction and low communicative value in the use of language, making us wonder at whether actual teachers participated in their development. There is not deep thought put into finding credible and creative solutions to problems, leading to violent shortcuts using guns, fire, machetes and daggers as solutions. We plead with scriptwriters to expound useful visions to the problems they highlight and for teachers to be fully involved in the scripting process. It is not helpful that many scriptwriters are resorting to the spirit world and ghost characters to explain prevailing phenomena. We also advise that scripts be shortened to allow for space to infuse performance elements. The use of sentences should allow for constructive cause-effect dialogue between characters and help students be articulate in language. We ask writers to realize the child’s point of view in the script rather than adults’ reflections. Just because a child is acting a script does not make the item a child-centred piece. There is too much dwelling on the spiritual world at the expense of the reality of our daily experiences. Finally, we advocate for honesty and total avoidance of plagiarism. While some honest writers acknowledged their sources, others blatantly claimed works and inspirations that were not theirs.
Teachers:
We strongly commend those teachers who have completely immersed the creative process of this festival. They work hard to script, direct and produce their institution’s productions. However, there seems to be a few who rely on support from elsewhere and do get cheated or manipulated in the process. They are given poor scripts or their students are directed poorly thus reducing their chances in the festivals. We recommend that teachers try their hand in all the creative processes of the drama festivals and read widely to increase their capacity to be effective producers. We also recommend that teachers protect students from being used to unduly propagate the views, frustrations and opinions of adults. Teachers should actively guide the process of creativity and motivate their students to express themselves. Further, we note that most of the synopses that we were presented with did not succeed in explaining the actual dram. Many of them misled. Such technical issues should be a cup of tea to our teachers.
Colleges and Universities:
Increasingly, the quality of performances at the tertiary level is improving and more institutions are participating in the festivals. We note however that universities rarely explore the other genres of the festival, preferring to participate only in the play category. We request universities to diversify their participation and also challenge them to reclaim their roles as generators of knowledge by exploring possibilities and boundaries of performances.
Journalists:
We appreciate the freedom of the press and are really encouraged by the interest that media houses continue to give the festival. The media has a huge stake in the festival and have an opportunity to provide our youth with the coveted exposure to the performance and advertising markets. Besides, journalists play a huge role in building the students’ self esteem and giving them a sense of achievement when they are highlighted in the media. We appreciate that. We however feel compelled to plead with accredited journalists to exercise moral responsibility and rules of journalistic ethics before filing reports and/or photos that may embarrass the performing students, break them down or vilify their efforts. The adjudicators plead for positive criticism and considerate reporting, while acknowledging the rights of everyone to hold an opinion.
Drama Workshop Facilitators:
The adjudicators feel that facilitators of pre-festival workshops have a great opportunity to shape the realization of effective creativity and productions. They can critique trends and help teacher-producers to appreciate their creative roles in this festival. We particularly want to recommend that in future, drama workshop facilitators should find time to deconstruct past performances with participating teachers. Their goal should be to point out, practically, the elements that promote artistic items and how they can be sustained, while at the same time identifying weaknesses, their consequences and what to be done to avoid them. Workshop facilitators will be most useful to teacher-producers if they can instill the basics of performance and base their facilitation on the firm desire of achieving the workshop objectives.
Drama Festival Committee
The committee has consistently put in commendable efforts in helping achieve the festival’s mission. The regular workshops, review of trends and delegation to regions to run the festival is acknowledged. The fact that the committee maintains a repertoire of competent teachers and theatre practitioners, and mixes diverse experiences shows that great thought has been put in running and facilitating the festivals. We want to encourage them more along that path. We however recommend that the committee thinks of strategies of protecting the student from performances that are detached from the child’s experiences and inspirations. Many items seem more centred on the adult and the performance of the same only enslaves and exhausts the child. The committee too should consider special attention to regions that are lagging behind and are being far outrun by the trends of the festival. We note that the gap between the schools that have mastered the essence of the festival and those that are struggling is embarrassingly wide. We propose special consideration to be made to bring them up to speed and build their capacities to enhance enjoyment of the festival and competence. Sharing lessons learnt and exchange programs could be one of the many ways besides freely availing festival videos to struggling regions. We recommend very highly that the Committee organizes separate and intensive drama workshops targeting ECD teachers. For this reason, the Committee may want to liaise with the active ECD teachers to begin identifying competent special facilitators and adjudicators of the ECD items. Finally, we would like to inform the committee that in this festival, there were mime plays. It will be good in future to include specialist teachers of the Hearing Impaired as adjudicators as more and more special items join in.
3. General Comments on the Performance Items
We are concerned that there is extreme intrusion of genres into each other in an attempt at enhancing entertainment, communicative or even rhythmic value. Whereas aspects of one genre can help the quality of another, care must be taken to ensure that those borrowings do not lead to the colonization of one genre by another. We risk totally distorting the demarcations that define genres if this is not nipped in the bud.
We also insist that all those involved in the creative process for this festival must acquaint themselves with, and internalize, the goal and objectives of the festival. The adjudicators were keen to compare the final productions against their achievement of these objectives.
The Play
A lot of attention and effort has been put in play production. Teacher-producers seem to have a keen interest in this category. We however note that this category is infested with unadvisable practices. We have noted that an individual was able to write one play for three different institutions and only changing words here and there. The result is boring similarity and monotony. Some plays are not in the level of the students’ understanding or experiences and deal more with the surreal, relying on ghosts and undue violence to ether explain phenomena or solve problems.
Acting of the play has revealed elements of torturing the students as they shout and struggle to achieve intensity. Poor directing seem to be the cause of this. At the end of the performances, actors are too tired and worn down. We wonder if the students are able to relate to their parents and peers the essence of their plays when the plots are too complex, unrelated and dealing with the issues of death and the spirit world.
The Dramatized Dance
This is the one genre in which we observed students and children expressing their enjoyment as they presented the dance. Additionally, it was in the dramatized dance category that credible stories, experiences and inspirations of young people were successfully expressed. Dancers depicted commendable flexibility, mastery of the instruments, deliberate singing and storytelling using their bodies. Schools too committed resources well to facilitate functional costuming and backdrops.
There were a few challenges though. We note that some schools struggled to infuse stories into the dance, specifically, symbolic expression of drama and meaning through dance steps and movements. The result was reliance on play-lets and oversimplified plots. The same can be said of characterization. Costuming should be designed to facilitate the realization of all the dance steps and formations. For purposes of being prepared, we advise teacher-producers to have spare costumes as a plan-B or emergency option.
The Narrative
The narrative genre seems to suffer most from intrusion by unnecessary songs, dances and recitation rather than telling. The inclusion of ‘support cast’ is also watering down the huge potential of narrators and narratives. These casts, various dubbed ‘dancers’ ‘support singers’, ‘audience’ etc., are only reducing the narrative to a spectacle with too many sideshows. In tandem narration, we note that some weak narrators pull down the stronger ones, thus reducing the overall achievement of the performance. Narrators too do not seem to appreciate the point of view of the storyteller or whether they are observers to an experiences or telling a firsthand account. The inability to create vivid images and mental pictures in the audience is leading narrators to begin relying on gadgets to take over the role of a storyteller. We remind teacher-producers that a narrator is a composite performer who is expected to be able to recreate all aspects and characters of a story. Teacher-producers should also appreciate that songs and dances are not a pre-requisite of a story and are only added if they are necessary or functional in propelling the story’s meaning or plot. Finally, we caution that narrators should internalize that the narrative genre is not an opportunity to embarrass, intimidate or harass the audience.
Verses
The main issue we have with verses (both choral and solo) is that they have too much content and thus lengthy. One verse had 18 stanzas and an average of nine lines per stanza. This obliterates the chance of dramatization. The other main issue is rushing through the verse in a flat voice that is devoid of tonality or any hint of internalization of mood, environment, persona etc. Poets too seem to rely only on rhymes (some forced) to achieve musicality, thus relegating other stylistic forms to the back burner. There is a huge challenge in correct enunciation of words and syllables and the audience struggles to understand what the poet is saying.
Songs are increasingly interfering with the verses, thus masking a lack of well-thought and relevant content.
4. Summary Evaluation of the Realization of the Festival Objectives
Obj. 4.1: Across the festival categories, we have witnessed our youth demonstrating excellent abilities to enact scenarios, vividly imitate characters and create mental pictures in our minds successfully in their storytelling. Teacher-directors seem to have identified and nurtured raw potentials into great artistry. There are however some hiccups in a few instances when the directing seem to negate the principals of performance thus tiring them, endangering their health through too much shouting etc. This can however easily be dealt with.
Obj. 4.2: Many of the items that the youth engaged in articulately expressed the consequences of negative traits, both to the individual and the society and we think that as the youth act and watch these performances, they were able to deduce the repercussions and thus make the decision to develop positive behaviors.
Obj. 4.3: The Kenya Drama festivals is fast becoming the premier forum for showcasing talents and scouting for artistic excellence as depicted by interest from various stakeholders. In a way, the festival was a microcosm of the diverse experiences from all corners of our country. The French plays managed to integrate aspects of French culture in our festival while allowing us to express out culture and experiences to French-speaking audiences.
Obj. 4.4: The dances, narratives and verses hugely borrowed from our many cultures and also depended on the same cultures to help us appreciate ourselves. We witnessed cross-cultural borrowing for the improvement of items and sharing of messages and lessons.
Obj. 4.5: We observed the youth from various schools helping their colleagues set up the stage and universal appreciation of performances from competing schools. Though a competition, we did not detect any instances of negative rivalry. Besides, many items performed by the youth advocated for peaceful co-existence and avoidance of the vices of hate, tribalism, regionalism, gender discrimination etc.
Obj. 4.6: While we appreciate that many students were able to enunciate the words and articulately communicate in mother-tongue, Swahili, English and French, we nevertheless noticed that at the secondary and tertiary levels, performers mainly mouthed or ‘ate’ their words and were not easily understood. Teacher-directors should work to help all performers to clearly bring out the syllables and respect turn-taking. We also advise that they pay special attention to helping the youth relate their words to the feelings and mood of the moment to enhance credibility.
Obj. 4.7: All items presented based themselves on the current and topical themes and provided a huge range of interpretations thus informing the audiences and inviting them to consider various options to dealing with those issues.
Obj. 4.8: As the gala has proved, this festival was the place to be over Easter to find fun and while the time away on the background of guaranteed entertainment.
5. Conclusion
This festival has made a great leap toward the achievement of the stated objectives. We would give the attainment of the stated objectives a solid B+. The young people have depicted contentment and seem very committed to the festival. We only need to point some issues so that we can improve future festivals:
• We note that there is a huge struggle between child-centred versus adult centred items: we recommend that we elevate the child in all our creative processes;
• Revise the KNDF Rules and Regulations to include ECD objectives and guidelines of performance.
• We note that script developers are not often teachers and that some writers have presented their own works to multiple institutions (which may mean that teachers are hugely relying on others to script for them). We challenge teachers to take charge and exercise their creativity and recommend those who have mastered the creative process to the benefit of their students and schools. We also encourage students to begin appropriating the creative opportunity and write scripts.
• When creating performances, let us aim for shorter scripts that will then facilitate creative directing and credible acting;
• Even as we engage in creative exploration and experimental production, let us return to the basic principles and identifiers of genres;
• Kenya as a nation already experiences unbearable violence. We are saddened that we had to be exposed to so much violence in the productions and grotesque depictions of death, and elevation of the instruments of guns, particularly guns, fire, daggers and machetes. Teacher-producers should consider creatively eliminating the celebration of violence as a quick and effective solution to issues and problems;
• All elements of a production should be geared towards achieving children’s enjoyment, building genuine talent and eliminating instances of labored and tiring performances.
6. Adjudicators
1. Murundu Rosemary
2. Dr. Milcah Mudeizi Choka
3. George Gitau Murimi
4. Daniel K. Mwaringa
5. Elizabeth Ngare
6. Toili Jeordrey Khisa
7. Charles Mutava
8. Obilo Ng’ongo
9. Beatrice K. Mwangi
10. Oluoch-Madiang’
11. Prof. C. J. Odhiambo
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