1 In twenty-five years AIDS is estimated to have killed about twenty-five million people and infected sixty-five million; thus nearly forty million are currently living with the virus. (UNAIDS/WHO, ‘Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic’ (Geneva, available at http://www.unaids.org; accessed May 2006). As Nugent points out (with reference to R. Shell, ‘Halfway to the Holocaust: The Economic, Demographic, and Social Implications of the AIDS Pandemic to the year 2010 in the Southern African Region’, in Shell, R. et al. ., eds., HIV/AIDS: A Threat to the African Renaissance (Johannesburg: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2000), p. 10)Google Scholar, ‘It is estimated that by 2010, AIDS will have killed more people than all of the previous global pandemics – including the Black Death, smallpox in the sixteenth century and the devastating 1917/19 influenza outbreak – combined.’ (Nugent, P., Africa since Independence: A Comparative History (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2004), pp. 357–58)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Tears do not transmit the virus but has a certain viral load, just like other bodily fluids. See Jackson, H., AIDS Africa: Continent in Crisis, (Harare: SAfAIDS, 2002)Google Scholar.

3 My research project, called ‘AIDS and the Art of Survival: African Community Theatre as HIV Prevention’ (2003–7), is supported by the Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency.

4 Epidemiological surveys establish the incidence (number of new cases) and prevalence (all existing cases) of morbidity of certain diseases or conditions.

5 UNAIDS/WHO, ‘Report on the global AIDS epidemic’.

6 Needless to say, monetary and clinical approaches to AIDS are necessary complements to preventive measures through human resources. It is just that money and pills have for long overshadowed the cultural factors in the expertise of the epidemic. Anti-retroviral medicines have been distributed en masse by WHO in a global scheme called ‘3 in 5’ – alluding to the ambition to reach three million people in five years – but they keep missing their goals even in areas for which they have secured funding and medical supplies. The incidence rates simply exceed the logistical possibilities of distributing medicine in many countries.

7 Campbell, C., ‘Letting them Die’: How HIV/AIDS Prevention Programmes often Fail (Oxford: James Currey, 2003) p. 183Google Scholar.

8 Freudenthal, S., ‘A Review of Social Science Research on Hiv/Aids’ (Stockholm: SIDA, 2002)Google Scholar.

9 Ajzen, I., Understanding the Attitudes and Predicting Social Behaviour (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1980)Google Scholar.

10 Conner, M. and Norman, P., Predicting Health Behaviour: Search and Practice with Social Cognition Models (Open University Press: Ballmore, Buckingham, 1996)Google Scholar.

11 Ormrod, J. E., Human Learning (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1999)Google Scholar.

12 P. Nugent, Africa since Independence, chap. 8.

13 Writing from a female perspective of course involves certain ethical risks, not only about being taken as a white man who wants to save brown women from brown men, as puts, G. C. Spivak it (‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Nelson, Cary and Grossberg, Lawrence, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271–313)Google Scholar, but also due to the epistemological risk of alienating men in an epidemic which is ultimately about establishing gender-balanced negotiations and solutions. Nonetheless, according to statistical data, general research, my own performance analyses, focus-group discussions and interviews (see below), it is undeniable that the most critical risk factors and perilous experiences of the epidemic are female.

14 Barnett, T. and Whiteside, A., AIDS in the 21st Century: Disease and Globalisation (London: Palgrave McMillan, 2002), chap. 5Google Scholar.

15 Campbell, ‘Letting them Die’, p. 9.

16 UNAIDS/WHO, ‘Report on the global AIDS epidemic’.

17 Ministry of Health, ‘HIV/AIDS/STD Surveillance Report’ (The United Republic of Tanzania: National AIDS Control Programme, October 2005), p. 2.

18 Ibid., p. 3.

19 Ibid., p. 45.

20 Ibid., p. 6. It is important to clarify that the links between gender trouble, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and epidemics are not African (cf. Arnfred, S., ed., Re-thinking Sexualities in Africa (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell, 2004))Google Scholar. The situation was very much the same in a country like Sweden. Epidemiological research about the turn of the last century shows that female employees at public institutions in Sweden had to take precautions moving about in public spheres because of the risk of being sexually abused (Holmdahl, B., Människovård och människosyn: Om omvårdnad i Uppsala före år 1900 (Uppsala: serien Uppsalas historia, Vol. VI: 7, 1988)Google Scholar. Statistical data of STDs such as syphilis show comparable circumstances between Sweden then and the developing world today, indicating socio-economic underpinnings as the basis for secondary risk factors.

21 Nogueira, M. Pompêo, ‘Theatre for Development: An Overview’, Research in Drama Education, 7, 1 (2002), pp. NN–NNCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kerr, D., African Popular Theatre: From Pre-colonial Times to the Present Day (Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1995)Google Scholar; Bakari, J. and Materego, G., Sanaa kwa Maendeleo: Stadi, Mbinu na Mazoezi (Dar es Salaam: Amana Publishers, 1995)Google Scholar; Mda, Z., When People Play People (London: ZED Books Ltd, 1993)Google Scholar; Mlama, P., Culture and Development (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1991)Google Scholar; Kamlongera, C., Theatre for Development in Africa with Case Studies from Malawi and Zambia (Bonn: German Foundation for International Development, 1989)Google Scholar; Kidd, R., From People's Theatre for Revolution to Popular Theatre for Reconstruction: Diary of a Zimbabwean Workshop, The Hague/Toronto: CESO, 1984)Google Scholar, to mention but a few

22 Kerr, D., ‘Art as Tool, Weapon or Shield? Arts for Development Seminar, Harare’, in Jeyifo, Biodun, ed., Modern African Drama (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002)Google Scholar; Byam, D., Community in Motion: Theatre for Development in Africa (Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1999)Google Scholar; Plastow, J., African Theatre and Politics: The Evolution of Theatre in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. A Comparative Study (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, B.V., 1996)Google Scholar.

23 Abah, O., ‘Creativity, Participation and Change in Theatre for Development Practice’, in Harding, Francis, ed., The Performance Arts in Africa: A Reader (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 158–73Google Scholar.

24 Frank, M., AIDS Education through Theatre: Case Studies from Uganda (Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies, 1995)Google Scholar.

25 Mabala, R. et al. ., Participatory Action Research on HIV/AIDS through a Popular Theatre Approach in Tanzania (Unicef: Evaluation and Program Planning, 2002)Google Scholar; M. Klink, ‘Theatre for Development’, in Hands On! A Manual for Working with Youth on SRH (GTZ: 2000) (available at http://www2.unescobkk.org/hivaids/FullTextDB/aspUploadFiles/HandsOnPublikation.pdf; accessed 28-10-2006)

26 Bourgault, L., Playing for Life: Performance in Africa in the Age of AIDS (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

27 Hatar, A., Theatising AIDS for Paralegal Organisations (Dar es Salaam: Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 2001)Google Scholar; A. Hatar, ‘Theatising AIDS in Local Communities’ (unpublished, 1998).

28 Crow, B. and Etherton, M., ‘Popular Drama and Popular Analysis in Africa’, in Kidd, R. and Colletta, N., eds., Tradition for Development: Indigenous Structures and Folk Media in Non-formal Education (Bonn: German Foundation for International Development, 1982)Google Scholar.

29 Kidd, From People's Theatre; Freire, P., Pedagogy of the oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970)Google Scholar.

30 Abah, O. and Etherton, M., ‘The Samaru Projects: Street Theatre in Northern Nigeria’, Theatre Research International, 7 (1983), pp. 222–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abah, O. and Balewa, S., The Bomo Project (Zaria, Nigeria: English Department, Ahmadu Bello University, 1982)Google Scholar; Boal, A., Theatre of the Oppressed, trans. Charles, A. and McBride, Maria-Odilia Leal (London: Pluto Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

31 Mda, When People Play People; Byam, Community in Motion, chap. 3; P. Mlama, Culture and Development, chaps 4–5; F. P. Nyoni, ‘Conformity and Change: Tanzanian Rural Theatre and Socio-political Changes’ (doctoral dissertation, University of Leeds, 1998).

32 Iliffe, J., The African AIDS Epidemic: A History (Oxford: James Currey, 2006), p. 90Google Scholar.

33 In a Tanzanian village called Ijumbe in 2004 it was remarkable to see almost all male spectators, after enjoying an ngoma (dance), turn around and go back to their market stands as they heard the opening stanza of a choir on AIDS.

34 Frank, AIDS Education through Theatre; G. Kwesigabo, Trends of HIV infection in the Kagera Region of Tanzania (Umeå University Medical Dissertations, New Series No 710, 2001); Jordan-Harder, B., ‘Thirteen Years of HIV-1 Sentinel Surveillance and Indicators for Behavioural Change Suggest Impact of Programme Activities in south-west Tanzania’, AIDS, 18 (2004), pp. 287–94CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

35 I have no direct part in the theatre activities I am analysing and comparing, but in fact try to minimize the reactive effects of my presence among the informants. This matter is, of course, worthy of an article in its own right and cannot be exhausted here. I should add, however, that I am a teacher in community theatre at Lancaster University and that I may engage in more direct action research in the near future in Tanzania, although not as artistic trainer but as ‘operational’ researcher and assessor.

36 Mlama, Culture and Development, chap. 7.

37 Ibid., pp. 95–6.

38 Ibid., p. 11, 24.

39 Ibid., pp. 26–7.

40 Ibid., p. 103. Femi Osofisan (in Boon, R. and Plastow, J., eds., Theatre Matters: Performance and Culture on the World Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 11–35)CrossRefGoogle Scholar considers students and other educated cohorts the most important target groups for radical theatre, rather than the proletariat favoured by, e.g., Ngugi wa Thiong'o and most other developmental theatre artists and groups in Africa. There are countless school projects involving theatre against AIDS in Africa, but they are mostly temporary and lack financial, administrative and moral support. It is not uncommon that teachers have sex with students, while being reluctant towards sexual and reproductive schooling due to its encouragement of promiscuous lifestyles. For country-specific views on theatre as education see also Lange, S., Managing Modernity: Gender, State, and Nation in the Popular Drama of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (University of Bergen: Department of Social Anthropology, 2002)Google Scholar; Edmondson, L., ‘National Erotica: The Politics of “Traditional” Dance in Tanzania’, Drama Review, 45, 1/T 169 (2001), pp. 153–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Riccio, T., ‘Tanzanian Theatre: From Marx to the Marketplace’, Drama Review, Vol. 45, 1/T 169 (2001), pp. 128–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hatar, Theatising AIDS for Paralegal Organisations.

41 The artistic extension workers were Amandina Lihamba, Penina Mlama and Eberhard Chambulikazi, all from the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

42 Iliffe, The African AIDS Epidemic, p. 23; Iliffe, J., East African Doctors: A History of the Modern Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 223–4Google Scholar.

43 Mlama, Culture and Development, p. 118.

44 Appleton, J., ‘“At My Age I Should Be Sitting under that Tree”: The Impact of AIDS on Tanzanian Lakeshore Communities’, Gender and Development, 8, 2 (2000), pp. 19–27CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, quoted in Iliffe The African AIDS Epidemic, p. 23.

45 Mlama, Culture and Development, pp. 119–20.

46 Ibid., p. 125.

47 Besides the numerous plays, a few interesting films also have depicted sugar daddies, such as the Tanzanian film Duara (2003), collectively written by students at the Fine and Performing Arts Department, University of Dar es Salaam, and directed by Richard Ndunguru.

48 For a comparative discussion on the social functions of ritual and theatre with regard to the AIDS epidemic see my ‘Performative Interventions: African Community Theatre in the Age of AIDS’, in Franko, Mark, ed., Ritual and Event: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. NN–NNCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Banham, M., ed., A History of Theatre in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 305Google Scholar.

50 Kwesigabo, Trends of HIV Infection in the Kagera Region of Tanzania; Jordan-Harder, ‘Thirteen years HIV-1 Sentinel Surveillance’.

51 Kidd, From People's Theatre, p. 8.

52 Barba, E., Beyond the Floating Islands (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1986)Google Scholar.

53 Kidd, From People's Theatre; Salhi, K., African Theatre for Development: Art for Self-Determination (Exeter: Intellect, 1998); Abah, ‘Creativity, Participation and Change’Google Scholar.

54 Cf. Thompson, J., Applied Theatre: Bewilderment and Beyond (Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang, 2003), chap. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I agree with epidemiologist Hans Rosling at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, that health is the best measurement of a good life, even though the concept is packed with economic, ethical and political issues. Health is, perhaps, the most telling angle of approach towards an assessment of worthy ways of living.

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56 Campbell, ‘Letting them Die’, pp. 55–8; Putnam, R., Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon Schuster, 2000)Google Scholar.

57 Kerr, ‘Art as Tool, Weapon or Shield?’; Kerr, D., African Popular Theatre; Kasfir, N., ed., Civil Society and Democracy in Africa: Critical Perspectives (London: Frank Cass, 1998)Google Scholar.

58 Bunmi Makinwa and Mary O'Grady, eds., FHI/UNAIDS Best Practices in HIV/AIDS Prevention Collection. This collection is revised continually, with reference to the following five criteria in HIV/AIDS programmes: effectiveness, ethical soundness, relevance, sustainability, and efficiency/cost-effectiveness (see http://www.fhi.org/NR/rdonlyres/em3hz6h26apfca361cm2qvv5ewgexblrlzy6b2-tr7igba2u2kuemsf4edbz7b3jamukq4n6oz4wllm/FHIUNAIDSBestPracticesredux.pdf; accessed 28-10-2006).

59 Muzzuki, W. M. S., ‘National Response to HIV/AIDS’, presentation at a UNAIDS conference (Arusha, Tanzania, 2002)Google Scholar.