Express Yourself

The first day at Power Child Campus Matt, Shala, Yoonie, Rick and I got to sit in on the Campus drama program. The program is lead by a local resident Monabise who began acting as a means of social protest during the Apartheid-protest era in the late 1980s, early 1990s.  Monabise told me his story: he would go to political protests in Cape Town where movement leaders would be speaking. Monabise started miming out what the leaders were saying which was both amusing and instrumental for those in the crowd who did not understand the language the leaders were speaking. Monabise began doing this at more and more rallies, traveling around the country. While he has no formal training in acting, he has picked up many performance skills and exercises along the way. Physical communication is second nature to him. Many times in talking with Monabise he would break off his sentence and begin to express his meaning physically or indicate how he or another person was feeling through exaggerated facial expressions. I can easily see how he applied this same method to expressing the concerns of the anti-apartheid movement and the oppression of apartheid itself.

Monabise now applies his method of expression to his work at Power Child: working with children who are victims of domestic abuse. Monabise opens the vocabulary of the body to help these children express themselves, open their eyes to new creative outlets, and even get into specifics of the abuse they experience at home. The children have written a play based on their own experiences of abuse and the challenges they observe in their community including drug abuse, domestic strife, and unemployment. While I was not able to see all of the play itself, watching and participating with the children in some theater exercises was amazing in and of itself. These kids fully opened up: expressing themselves with theater, song, and dance. It was clear that the children had found not only something they enjoyed, but also a creative outlet they could use to express and explore themselves.

- Sigrid von Wendel