Where Can We Run? Use Your Words! {StickyNote} You may comment on this article at the bottom {/StickyNote}
A Collaborative Theatre Piece Promoting
Awareness and Social Change
Directed by Mikell Pinkney at the University of Florida
By Hely Perez
“I am in Africa, I finally made it to Africa,” exclaims Anedra Johnson, an MFA theatre student sitting down on a raked oval stage with painted maps of Africa and North America. Above the stage a large projection screen hangs from the ceiling. The premise is clear: A group of actors, all in khaki pants and light blue shirts, describes the experience of four University of Florida students who traveled to [[Rwanda]], Africa, in March 2009 and how their experience relates to their lives back in the U.S. of A. The actors use story-telling techniques, poetry, songs and videos to provide a night full of emotions. “I always dreamed of the city of bones, the water lost legacy of the middle passage. I dreamed of flying high like Solomon to find my song”-- continues Tenice Johnson, another MFA theatre student traveler,--“spreading love, knowledge and U-N-I-T-Y like Africa [[Bambata]] in the [[Zulu nation]].”
Anedra and Tenice Johnson, along with theatre juniors Rachael Jones and Samaa Kemal, were among a group of travelers that also included nursing and arts students. The students travelled with Jill Sonke and Cindy Nelly from the Center for the Arts in Healthcare (CAHRE) of the University of Florida, and cinematographer Gavin Clayton of the U. K. The entire team spent 15 days in the African nation that was ravaged by a horrific genocide in 1994, when “neighbors and even family members were pinned against each other” by radio and television propaganda resulting in the death of almost one million people in one hundred days.
“I kept myself relatively intact during this entire process,” explains Rachael Jones, “that was until we went to the children’s memorial in Kagali (Rwanda’s Capital). Each display had a picture of a child, his or her name, their ages, and finally their last words and how they were killed . . . a two year old boy bashed into a wall, a ten year old girl cut in her grandmother’s arms and finally the story of a seven year old girl, who as they came for her, she jumped out crying: Mommy where can we run? ” Jones continues by making the connection to her experience in the U.S. as she says: “I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t want to turn the TV on at the end of the day. Stories of little girls being raped, little boys beaten; how am I supposed to make sense of anything that happened in Rwanda when I can’t make sense of what goes on here?
WHY RWANDA? The trip was planned by CAHRE as part of AIM Africa: Rwanda 2009 project to help to provide medical assistance and emotional and psychological release to the residents of Rugerero Village and its surroundings. “When you are working in another culture," explains Sonke, "particularly in one with a significant need, it takes a lot of resources. . . . In Rugerero I knew that we could provide benefits that far more than balance the resources that would be expended for us to be there.” The group of travelers used the arts and theatre as a means of healing. “We believe that arts and health go together," explained Sonke during a town hall meeting, "when we dance, when we sing and when we make art we feel better.”
