Popular Theatre and Development‐Challenges for the Future: The Tanzanian Experience

Abstract

Popular Theatre or Theatre for Development created much excitement in the 1970s and 1980s. Theatre practitioners all over Africa were attracted by the potential in Popular Theatre to effect qualitative grassroots participation in the development process. Various versions of Popular Theatre were put into practice in the rural areas of Nigeria, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Tanzania. These practices have been extensively documented in a number of studies including Kidd (1979), Kamlongera (1987), Eyoh (1986,1991), Kerr (1981), Mlama (1991), Abah (1994), Bakari and Materego (1995).