Nepal is known all over the world as a “Shangri-la”, a peaceful and beautiful mountain kingdom. It is becoming increasingly apparent, however, that the snow-clad peaks cover a deeply divided and conflict-ridden society. Sharp divisions between the high-caste elite and the many ethnic groups and “untouchable” are all pervasive throughout the country. Ten years of multi-party democracy has not been able to address these conflicts. Instead, new divisions have been developed between the urban elite, who have become part of the global middle class, and the desperately poor rural countrymen. The main actors to step forward to cash on in them had been the Maoist rebels. After about six years of violent insurgency that cost as much as 2500 lives, Maoists have been declared terrorists and a state of emergency has been imposed in the country since November 26. Conflicts are continuing and peace seems too miserly to dawn for the Nepalese people.

MS has chosen “ Peace, Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation” as the theme for Global Action for 2001 and 2002. This theme is of particular relevance for Nepal in the present context. There is a clear need to explore peaceful and constructive uses of conflicts to build a more just, peaceful and equitable society.

Kachahari Theater is a kind of interactive drama where the audience themselves direct a performance about their own lives. In the Nepali language, the word “Kachahari” means a village gathering or a place to seek justice. It refers to a traditional kind of people’s court where villagers gather to hear and resolve conflicts in their own community. Kachahari Theater attempts to create this kind of forum using drama. The first half of a play is presented by a group of actors. They go to a village ahead of the performance, observe and ask the locals questions about their lives and the kind of conflicts with which they are confronted. In our case the actors are from the local communities themselves, grass-roots activists who have learned some basic acting skills. They already know the broad basis of the conflicts, but through informal discussions with people they learn how such conflicts are seen and experienced locally.

Based on this reality, they put together the first few scenes of a play. The scenes incorporate aspects of daily life in the village in which the audience lives - the irrigation canal that runs through the settlement, the words and expressions that the locals use, the well from which only high-caste people are allowed to draw water, etc. The play builds up to a conflict that somehow embodies the social conflict in which local people are caught. For example, in one village “untouchable” low-caste people are denied access to certain water taps. The play might show an untouchable girl secretly taking water from the tap and getting caught. She is beaten. At this point the play stops.

An animator, or storyteller, who introduced the play, enters the stage and asks the audience what the girl should do now. As the audience comes with suggestions, the actors show them on the spot. Various ideas are tried out and their consequences shown. Often attempts to resolve the conflicts will lead to new conflicts - if the girl gets her brothers to chase down her assaulter, the police may become involved; if she ignores it she may be insulted again in another scene. Where both parties of a conflict are present in the audience, their suggestions to the evolving story may take the shape of response-counter response. A conversation where the words are acted out. The stage provides a platform that is somehow safe to try out ideas. Consciously or subconsciously the audience knows that the play is really about themselves, but the world of drama creates a space where it is legal to see one’s imagination acted out. As the performance develops, the play and reality can no longer be separated. People speak freely about their own lives. They watch their struggles acted out before them on the stage, and at times join and act them out themselves.

Kachahari Theater is a Nepali adaptation of a theater method called Forum Theater, developed in the 1970s by a Brazilian dramatist named Augusto Boal. He believed that theater could be a “rehearsal for life.” That oppressed people could use theater as a place to explore strategies for resistance. Where other socially-engaged theater presents the problems of the oppressed and offers ways to break free. Forum Theater differs in that the oppressed are asked to imagine their response within the play itself. It takes authority away from the director and places it in the hands of the audience. Underlying the performance is an idea that everyone can be a director, both in the play and in his or her own life.

Though Nepal has a strong tradition of street-drama, most of this theater suffers from the same constraints as other socially-engaged theater. The often lively and provocative performances are quite popular. In a country where many cannot read, street drama has earned a reputation of being a great way of “getting the message across.” However, precisely this tendency to present the “right message” has meant that street drama often takes the shape of morality tales. The drama presents simple solutions: people who accept caste discrimination will suffer from it themselves, etc. The full weight of reality - the reasons why people do what they are not “supposed to” - are usually left undeveloped.

The Kachahari Theater presented by MS and its partners confronts audiences with conflicts they are involved in and ask them to react to them themselves. There are no easy solutions. Serious social conflicts have long histories. If resolving them were easy, the people involved would have done so themselves a long time ago. But factors such as power, vulnerability, resources, violence, mistrust, and fear all prevent the oppressed from acting freely. Faced with this reality, people develop survival skills, ways of resisting oppression and maintaining their dignity while at the same time paying what dues they have to. Kachahari Theater allows them to explore these strategies. What does an “untouchable” girl do when a high caste man assaults her? The plays offer an opportunity to try out different courses of action and see where they lead.

Most of the “actors” in the Kachahari theater groups have never acted before. They are grass-roots activists from the communities where their drama will be shown. As part of the project, they received a 10-day initial theater training. After this the groups went on tour in their own communities, putting on performances and gathering experience with the method. After this, the groups gathered again for a six-day follow up where they reflected together on their work.

All in all, there were 26 participants, nine of them women, from five partner organizations. The training was conducted with the help of Nepali theatre experts in a very participatory manner.

The actual training in theatre began with the facilitators/trainer familiarizing the participants with the history and theoretical aspects of village theatre on the first day and a couple of hours’ of participatory discussions on various kinds of conflicts prevalent in the communities and the causes and resolution of such conflicts on the second day. Besides discussions, group works, practical exercises and rehearsals at the training hall, the participants were asked to go out to the town or wherever they liked in the vicinity of the venue in Banepa, a beautiful township on the outskirts of Kathmandu valley, find real conflicts and present them in the form of a drama back in the training hall. They found some good real conflict stories, one of them in the hotel itself, where they were staying during the training period. A village theatre on the hotel conflict was presented before an audience of the hotel owner, employees, some guests from outside and the participants one evening. It was a real success.

The participants found the Kachahari theatre training quite different from other training program they have attended so far. Each participant had an active role to play. Unlike in other training program the participants were involved in warm up physical exercises, little bit of yoga, voice exercise and different games every morning before the actual training program began to help them remain fresh and energetic mentally and physically.

“The training involves those who are likely to be victims of discriminations in the society. This training is particularly interesting than any other training because it teaches the participants to play a proactive role to root out the conventional social evils and teaches the practical methods to do so,” says a participant.

The participants were divided into five groups and each group was given the responsibility of preparing turn by turn a daily report and presenting it the next day, and producing a wall newspaper every day. Since the wall newspapers contained a variety of materials including the ones relating to the training program itself, personal impressions, comments mostly in lighter vein and mild satires, it generated lot of curiosity and all the participants anxiously waited for the wallpaper to come out in the morning.

“There was no need for any recreation or break during the training because the whole learning process was exciting. The training stirs the human sentiments and helps the participants to think seriously about the ways to solve them. The theatre training is very effective and at the same time it is very useful because it draws a lot of attention amongst the villagers who come to see the drama and go home with a new learning,” commented a girl participant.

The way the training was conducted helped the participants keep themselves busy doing one or the other creative thing, demonstrating their talents and interacting among each other. The training method and all activities done during the training were also essential for team building, and helping the participants to overcome inhibitions and enable them to open their hearts to each other. This was quite important because they were supposed to bring to light the conflicts they are faced with at personal as well as at community level, discuss the ways to use such conflicts positively, conceive a drama to expose the contributory factors behind such conflicts and deliberate on how best community people can be involved in discussions on the issues of their rights, conflicts they are facing and ways to secure peaceful social change.

In the beginning the participants came up with somewhat vague issues. They seemed reluctant or unable to go deep into and share/discuss what kinds of conflicts they are actually facing in their respective communities. Some participants were defensive. Their experiences with oppression were personal and painful. They had learned that telling their own stories could lead people to look down upon them. It took quite some time to help them overcome such inhibitions. But gradually they started looking into themselves and giving vent to even their personal feelings in relation to a variety of unique examples of conflicts. Such honest expressions made the theater original, lively and transformative.

The participants confronted each other throughout the training. But most of all they confronted themselves through the theater they were creating. In scenes showing police stations, teashops and landlords houses, they attempted to express the kind of oppression they felt and saw around them. Putting it on a stage forced the activists to reconsider what these conflicts actually looked like from different sides. They began to ask new questions through their stories: How do people show power and subservience in their daily life? What stops people from resisting oppression openly? How do people respond to power in safer ways?

“Village artists will learn about the forum theatre and will experiment their learning to raise awareness in their society,” says one of the participants. “I will try to utilize the learning from the training to strike at crucial conflicts existing in society and resolve them peacefully by being a part of the problem.”

By the time the training concluded and the participants were about to go to perform in their respective villages they looked confident, enthused and more self-aware. Ten days of staying together, working together and getting close to each other, however, made many of the participants and even facilitators cry at the time of departure.

Given the exceptionally positive response the Kachahari Theater Project has received both from the participants and the audiences, we expect that the project will be built on further in the coming months and years. The responsibility for developing the project has been placed in the hands of the participants. So far some the initiatives to emerge have been:

Local theater troupes: Partners will continue to develop the method in their own work in the villages. Some partners have already made plans for formalizing theater troupes locally and going on village tours.

Manual: The participants of the training produced the rough outline for a manual for Kachahari Theater. Aarohan and MS/Nepal will support the eventual publication of the manual.

Network: The participants have discussed the idea of forming a network for people working with Kachahari Theater.

International exposure, training and performances: MS/Nepal is actively committed to further developing the use of the theater approach to expose the social conflicts involving deprived communities. We are trying to put together an international exposure trip for our partners that would combine human rights and conflict resolution training with opportunities to perform abroad and develop new linkages. Perhaps they will be coming to a village near you soon!

Your ideas and suggestions… We are still experimenting, learning and developing this kind of theater in Nepal. We would very much like to hear your responses to what we have done or your own experience. Write us!

A group of the participants decided to do a play about the hotel in which they were staying. As with many other small hotels in Nepal, the guesthouse employs children as servants and in the kitchen. The participants wanted to expose the situation of these children, the fact that almost none of them went to school.

As they went to do their pre-play research in the hotel, they had some problems. The owner was kind and responsive to their questions himself, but was very reluctant to have them speak to the boys. Whenever they seemed to get one of them alone, the owner would have something important for them to do. Clean the rooms! Get the lunch ready! The boys for their part were shy of speaking in front of their employer. Eventually one of the participants managed to get into the kitchen where she found an 11-year old boy next to pile of dishes that literally dwarfed him. The participants had not even seen his face over the past week. It seems he was never let out of the kitchen.

The group now had good material, but the problem was how to present it in a way that would spark honest discussion, rather than simply anger the owner. Many of the boys had requested the participants to be careful in how they did they play. They were afraid of loosing their jobs. The children receive room and board and some small salary, most of which is sent to their families. Most come from desperately poor families. They accept working long hours and very low wages as an improvement over what they otherwise would have had. The participants wanted both the owner and all the staff to see the play. Somehow their situation had to be presented in an open ended way.

In the end the participants decided to present a drama showing simply what had happened when they went to collect information. The play starts with the facilitator asking the training participants to go and find a “problem” at the hotel about which to make a story. The participants try their level best, but the owner keeps interrupting their conversations with the staff. There is some comedy here, with the participants parodying themselves and mimicking the owner’s mannerisms.

Eventually, one manages to enter the kitchen and finds the child dishwasher there. He speaks softly of his hardship and we see how even the older boys never help out, but only seem to pile more work in front of him. The interviewer asks if he would like to go school, and the child says, “Yes, of course, but what can I do? My family is too poor.” The participants return to the training hall with the owner saying that there really are no problems in the Chandani Guest House. They repeat this to their trainer: “We couldn’t find any problems in the hotel. What should our play be about?” The play freezes here and the animator comes out on stage. He explains that they have a real problem here - they have to make a play, but they can find the conflict. Perhaps the audience could help?

Both the boys working in the hotel and the owner had a deeply emotional response after we showed the play. The atmosphere was tense at first. Eventually as they began to come with suggestions for the play and see their ideas acted out, the tension gave way to a kind of tender interest. One of the boys had tears rolling down his cheeks; others actually had to leave the room. The owner himself spoke in very personal terms about his situation. The suggestions they came with for the play revolved around what expectations the two sides had for each other, and what kind of solution was realistic. Some of the suggestions that the actors showed included:

1. The older boys ask the owner if the child could go to school.

2. The child speaks to the owner himself

3. First, the boy proves himself, shows that he will stay and work, then broaches the subject of school with the owner

4. The other older children help the boy when there is too much work for him

5. The owner expresses an interest in the future of the older boys who have worked in the hotel for years.

It became clear to us, that the play actually changed something in the relationship between the owner and the boys working there and between the boys themselves. They had seen themselves through other eyes and had a conversation where they could hear their own voices. Previously we had never seen the face of the young dishwasher. In the days following the performance, we began to see the boy in our training hall and around the hotel. The owner and the boys rearranged the shifts to allow him to spend part of the day out of the kitchen. Some weeks after the training had ended, the boy himself approached the owner and asked if he could get to go to school - just as he had done in the play. Currently he is receiving tutoring from the other boys. The owner has said he will try to get him enrolled in the coming months.

An important lesson the actors learned was the role of comedy in easing tension in the audience. At times in the play, when confrontations were laid bare, it was very difficult to watch for some. Particular the hotel owner felt exposed to the whole room. His character was played expertly a woman who managed to give bring out laughs at key times, through mimicking his sayings and small mannerisms - playing with his cap, swinging the key-chain, making cracks about when the boys would marry, etc. This ability to pull and release the rubber band of tension with the audience is very important to keep them identifying with the play.

This is a play about the ways in which Dalits, or "untouchables", themselves are made to participate in their own suppression. In many places in Nepal, Dalits are not allowed to enter teashops, people’s homes, temples, etc. It is a peculiar type of racism, however, because it is not always immediately apparent from a person’s appearance whether he or she is Dalit or not. Outside of their own village, where everybody knows their families, Dalits often lie about their background.

In this play, a tailor (this is one of the "untouchable" occupational castes) has gone to the bazaar for some work. In the first scene, a girl from his village recognizes him, and reminds him he is late in sewing her some new clothes. The audience now knows he is a Dalit. The next scene is in a teashop. We see a customer and the owner discussing loosely about life. The customer throws out some remarks how Dalits are rumored to have entered this teashop lately. The owner denies it - this would have meant that his shop was "polluted." The tailor then enters the shop, orders a cup of tea and falls into conversation with the other customer. The owner and the other customer do not know he is a Dalit. The conversation goes along nicely, until the other customer at one point asks the Dalit his family name. Answering honestly would reveal his caste identity. The play stops here - the actors freeze with the question hanging in the air. The animator enters the stage and explains that the actors have become stuck. They don’t know what they tailor should answer. Should he tell his name truthfully or lie to prevent the conflict from being exposed?

Whatever the audience answer, the story unfolds through their ideas. New situations emerge, the actors freeze and the audience again how the characters respond.

This play is about the exploitation of agricultural laborers, and in particular the practice of laborers children working for the landlords in far away bazaars and cities. This is quite common among former bonded laborers in South-western Nepal. Landowners demand that laborers send their children to work in city homes in return for the parent’s right to farm the land.

In the play, a family of bonded laborers, or kamaiyas, has been left landless and jobless after the government’s emancipation declaration. The father goes to speak to the local Brahman landowner. The landowner offers him half of the harvest of his a certain field, on the condition that the laborer send his daughter to work for him. The labor returns to tell his family. The mother agrees, as they are desperate for food. However, on the to send his daughter he meets another laborer who had farmed the field last year. He accuses the father of using his daughter to "outbid" him, and take his land from him. As they are about to fight, the play stops. The animator asks the audience what the father should do.

The play deals with the reluctance of older generation of "untouchables" to challenge the oppression they live with in their own lives. The play centers on an older Dalit man, whose son has returned from Kathmandu. The son, whose name is Chetana, meaning awareness in Nepali, wants to challenge the caste rules in the village that discriminate against them. The father is afraid of the consequences. He feels his son is not aware of the local situation anymore.

The play opens in a village teashop. Due in part to a misunderstanding, in part to the son’s provocation of his father, the old man tries to leave without cleaning his own cup, as is required of low castes. The teashop owner strikes the old man. Seeing this the son intervenes and soon the police are involved also. The father begs his son to leave it be, but the son is enraged. The police arrest him and carry him off. The father collapses crying in front of the owner. The play freezes and the animator asks the audience, "What should the old man do?"